TikTok Advertising
What brands and filmmakers are getting right about video advertising on Gen Z’s favourite platform.
Tik Tok currently has about 700 million global users, most of whom are fitting comfortably into Generation Z — those born after 1996 until about 2010, depending on whose definition you use.
It’s its own world, creating trends and styles difficult to understand from the outside, and historically extremely difficult for brands, agencies, and even individual creatives to properly utilise. After all, how may people born after 1996 are CMOs of international brands? How many people have only just got the hang of what makes a good Instagram advertising campaign?
2021, however, might be the year that traditional advertisers have cracked it. At the front of this? Cheetos! They’ve partnered with Bad Bunny, musician and Gen Z icon, to promote their Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
Their #DejaTuHuella (#LeaveYourMark) campaign challenged viewers to “leave their mark” on society in whatever form they choose — perfectly fitting in with Tik Tok’s focus on expression through music, fashion, comedy, etc.
The challenge also has a competition aspect to it, seeking to give 10 lucky students $50,000 each to be used towards their post high school education. This aspect of the challenge has been shared by key influencers all over the app, as well as by the entrants themselves, who unsurprisingly are keen to get one of those 10 slots.
The key to a successful campaign like this is not necessarily in an actual Tik Tok ad, which Tik Tok does have the capacity for. Ads on the platform get excellent impressions, and decent numbers of click throughs, but far more valuable is this kind of branded ‘challenge’.
The app largely centers around users taking snippets of songs or videos, and lipsyncing around them to create their own content, along with signature dances. With a branded video and song like this, creating a specific trend tied to the Cheetos brand, there’s no need for using an advertsing platform itself — users will download and reupload the audio a million times over, creating content for the challenge, and boosting Cheetos (and Bad Bunny) in the process. Utilising other influencers is also usually the key tactic in these campaigns too, increasing the spread of viewers into a wider market.
It does, however, involve significant groundwork, and is usually most successful with a star attached that is already popular with TikTok’s key demographic, such as Bad Bunny.
The campaign is likely to follow in the footsteps of the #BeatsDaisyChallenge, a challenge created by Beats by Dr. Dre and singer-rapper Ashnikko, which called upon the global TikTok community to be part of Ashnikko’s new music video which was made using content created on TikTok. It was, and remains, one of the most successful brand campaigns run on TikTok, with more than 7.1 billion views of the challenge, and 460 million engagements.
