Can TikTok win over beauty brands in Japan and China?
No longer a fad, China’s video-sharing app TikTok has cemented its popularity with half a billion active users, mostly young people, around the world. We take a look at how beauty brands are using TikTok in Japan and China.
TikTok users in Japan are predominantly young women. In fact, a study found that 53% of female first-year junior high students use the app. So it’s easy to see how TikTok is a perfect tool for beauty and fashion advertising and promotions. Although several beauty brands in Japan are beginning to use TikTok, they still have a way to go.
Pantene’s hashtag challenge garners over 130 million views
In Japan, one successful example is a TikTok video uploaded by Maybelline New York. The video advertised a Maybelline product with prominent TikToker Rikoriko, who has 600,000 followers, dancing to the original song “Matsuge Kareshi”. The video earned around 48,000 hearts (the TikTok equivalent of “likes”), plus a jump in other users’ posts who lip-synced to the song in their own videos. Total views of all related videos numbered over 10 million.
Then there’s cosmetics brand Opera, which posted a promotional video featuring a TikToker duet. That video received around 17,000 hearts while total views of videos tagged with the hashtag #operaduet also hit more than 10 million.
An even more effective promotional tool on Tiktok is hashtag challenges. This is where users are challenged to film themselves doing something specific. A common example is when a company asks users to create a video of themselves lip-syncing and dancing along to a product-related, promotional song.
Kanebo Cosmetics started a hashtag challenge centered around its sunscreen brand “ALLIE” using the hashtag #KyouWaKoreDeAllie (or “this is fine for today”). It became popular with its catchy pop-style song and cute dance choreography. More than 80,000 users posted their attempts at the challenge, with overall views of the videos surpassing 70 million.
P&G Japan started its Pantene Micellar Dance Championship from November 2018 with a video featuring model Maria Tani dancing to a song about “smooth, soft hair” sung by singer-songwriter Koresawa. The company challenged users to create their own versions of the promotional video, with the winning entry to be displayed on Pantene’s official Twitter account. Although the challenge officially went on for only two weeks, entries still continued to be posted even after it ended, and views of videos tagged with #micellardance surpassed 130 million.
In China, popular challenges surpass 3 billion views
Despite the examples shown so far, utilization of TikTok in the beauty industry is still in its infancy. This is also the case in the app’s homeland, China, where few brands use the app for beauty promotion purposes. Out of these, the companies with the most followers on TikTok are PerfectDiary (approx. 41 million), Dior (36 million), Shiseido (2 million), Estée Lauder (1.8 million), Etude House (1.7 million) and Maybelline New York (1.4 million).*
In China, brands with many followers tend not to do hashtag challenges. Dior, for example, only posts promotional videos. However, Dior still maintains a large number of followers, which is a testament to the power of its brand and the use of celebrities in promotions.
Yet, hashtag challenges do take off in China, and when they do, their impact is stratospheric. Take Shiseido China. The beauty giant recruited Fan Chengcheng, younger brother of superstar actress Fan Bingbing, to be the new face of skincare product WASO, which is targeted at younger customers. The company then started the hashtag challenge #FanChengChengWasoYouFan, or “Fan Chengcheng WASO has fans”. It asked users to create TikTok videos using WASO advertising material featuring its new spokesman, with the best five videos winning products signed by Fan himself. In all, the videos garnered nearly 460 million views.
Meanwhile, Maybelline New York launched #NiYaoDeMeiXingDouNaZou, or “take away the eyebrows you want”. Its hashtag challenge asked users for their ideal eyebrow line and awarded products to the top 20 users with the most hearts, amassing an amazing 3 billion views from overall related videos.
The need for more thorough compliance
Although TikTok continues to grow, it’s still unclear whether it will become a promotional tool on a par with the likes of YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. This is due to certain risk factors that have come to light. In February, in the US, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance was fined US$5.7 million for allowing videos that targeted kids under 13, whose personal data was illegally obtained. In April, in India, the Supreme Court banned new downloads of the TikTok app after copious postings of inappropriate videos were made, although subsequent news articles report that this ban will soon be lifted.
Still, it can’t be denied that TikTok’s rapid global expansion has left countries around the world struggling to contain it. TikTok has set up an authentication system for companies and individuals, but the screening process seems to be lax in some areas compared with other platforms like Twitter. Maintaining TikTok’s growth will hinge on whether the app can comply more thoroughly with the laws of the world.
*Numbers in parentheses are follower numbers.
Text: Denyse Yeo
Original (Japanese): Team Roboteer
