TikTok Trends - Will They Impact Your Future?

Varsha peri, SPONSORSHIP DIRECTOR

Nowadays, it is rare (maybe even impossible) to come across someone who does not know what TikTok is. Since launching in 2016, it has shot to popularity and now amassed nearly one billion daily users globally.

TikTok features short videos of all genres, from comedy to cooking to book reviews. Most interestingly, it has become a marketing platform for all types of brands, whether it be football teams, airlines or even restaurants. These brands have sought to expand their audience through the app’s massive online outreach. By creating comedic adverts, they have opened new doors to marketing never before entered.

You may know that one of the most popular brands on the video-sharing app right now is Duolingo. With nearly 5 million followers, its green owl mascot Duo features in every video either dancing to a trending TikTok dance or referencing a popular meme. For instance, one of their videos applied their recurring storyline of how Duo hates Google Translate to the trending Taylor Swift song ‘Enchanted’. Simple right? Well, this video attracted 28.2 million views and 5.6 million likes.

Source: ​​Social Media; @duolingo

Perhaps even more crazy is the Empire State Building’s TikTok account, which has just over half a million followers. Its videos merely consist of a filter where a person’s eyes and mouth appear on the building as if it has a face, and the person is lip-synching to a popular audio. Think about it: a building with a face has attracted half a million followers and accumulated nearly 20 million likes on all of its videos. It’s insane!

Source: Social Media; @empirestatebldg

What’s more is that people love when these brands comment on other users’ videos, and find the idea of an owl or building, for example, commenting on a popular trend so absurd and funny – “unhinged content” as an article by magazine Digiday put it.

It isn’t only brands though – Bendigo Health Hospital recently started a TikTok account nearly a year ago and has accumulated over 100,000 followers. With videos ranging from educational to doctors or dentists taking part in famous trends, they not only make followers laugh but can have such a profound impact as well. As 60% of TikTok users are Gen Zers, think about someone young who has white-coat anxiety, or in other words scared of hospitals and doctors. Seeing a neurosurgeon dance along to a routine made popular by a celebrity would definitely change their perspective, even slightly!

This is the heart of TikTok marketing. The app has humanised brands or companies in general and made them so much more relatable, and people feel like they share their own relationship with the brand. At the end of the day, isn’t the purpose of marketing ultimately to build and develop business-customer relationships?

In this way, viral marketing on TikTok has already become immensely successful. Its advantage lies in its simplicity: it costs nothing to set up an account and gain access to thousands of trending sounds and ideas. The most important thing is that companies embrace non-traditional marketing opportunities on platforms such as TikTok. After all, what is non-traditional now may very well be the most popular approach in a few years. We can only imagine what role TikTok will play in the future workplace.

Maybe CEOs will have their own company TikTok account and participate in popular dancing trends?

Or employers using TikTok as a hiring platform?!

Who knows, what new technologies might appear? How will companies react to them? We can’t be certain how consumerism will change in the future. But we can be prepared. Trends can happen just like that, or at least, one video at a time.