How brands can use TikTok to create and influence cultural moments

The media landscape is becoming increasingly fragmented, with gaming, streaming, social media and more all cutting into consumers' finite attention spans, making it harder for brands to reach audiences and measure media spend effectively. That's why brands need to look for innovative ways to drive relevance and deepen relationships with their audiences. One of the best ways to do this is by embedding your brand in culture – informing, influencing and creating it. Just look at the world's most successful brands and it's clear that cultural relevance drives sales. In fact, according to a study by Magna, a brand's cultural involvement makes up a full 25% of a consumer's purchase decision[1]. So, as you look to 2023, which may see squeezed budgets and increased attention on ROI and impact, creating big cultural moments could be the secret weapon that sets your marketing strategy apart.

At TikTok, culture is shaped, influenced and created every single day on the platform. Think back to the 'Corn Song', an interview that was remixed and went viral on TikTok recently, creating a social phenomenon whereby you'd be hard-pressed to find a person who couldn't repeat 'it has the juice' when singing along, and corn products and recipes were suddenly all the rage. Brands and users enjoy the same status on TikTok, so brands are perfectly positioned to tap into cultural moments like these and authentically reach their audiences. With the Corn Song, Samsung, Amazon Prime and the Paralympics were just three of a handful of brands who were quick to respond and, in doing so, became a part of the moment alongside the 1.3m TikTokers who joined in.

Like the Corn Song, it's also important to know these moments don't just stay on TikTok – they're amplified by our community, creators and brands until they spill over into the real world, influencing culture and ultimately driving consumer behaviours, like purchase intent. Take the recent star turn of the negroni sbagliato, which received a stratospheric spike in attention – and sales – after an interview with House of the Dragon stars Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke went viral on our platform.

To better understand this relationship between TikTok and culture, and the myriad opportunities it presents for brands, we conducted a study in partnership with Flamingo Group. The study confirmed that a massive 60% of people believe TikTok helps embed brands into culture[2]. To see what else we learned, and how your brand can use TikTok to create and influence culture, keep reading.

How TikTok drives culture

We're currently witnessing a global paradigm shift from mass culture to niche culture, where niches – smaller, more passionate, more engaged communities – are now influencing mainstream culture. And the TikTok community has been leading this reinvention, creating an environment where culture is too fast and varied for an elite few to dictate the feed. This has allowed diverse interests and new worlds to coexist and thrive together, with many gathering enough pace and traction to break through into the mainstream.

It's important to note that, in this new reality, not all trends become mainstream culture, but all mainstream culture is rooted in trends. It's why it's so vital that brands are part of the cultural conversation on TikTok in a meaningful and authentic way. Just keeping up with trends isn't enough – that's just culture mirroring; to truly drive cultural relevance, brands need to create culture. Like Levi's, who found a home in the thrifting community (#thrifttok has 1.5 billion views*) and seamlessly featured their products, demonstrated a positive brand purpose, and helped to repopularise sewing skills and upcycling with collaborative content.

Or Zara, who leveraged a long-term TikTok trend, #ASMR, and collaborated with popular ASMR creator @davidbeck to create a unique product unveiling outside of existing fashion content and expressions. The brand actively stepped outside of its expected creator collaborations to tap into a different community on the platform.

And there are plenty of examples of other brands doing the same – to drive fame, connection, relevance, or inform a new strategy or aesthetic – both on and off the platform. Like Celine taking aesthetic inspiration from the E-Boy subculture, supermarkets like Asda generating grocery bundles off the back of FoodTok trends or Amazon leveraging BookTok. It's not just about the fleeting viral moments – these are brands leveraging niche communities to drive long-term, meaningful connections with consumers.

And that's what we mean when we say Culture Starts on TikTok. But it doesn’t just stay there. Thanks to a content-first recommendation system, brands that play in these spaces in a native way are embraced just like the rest of our community. This also puts unknown brands on a more level playing field with the big players than ever before – the rise of challenger dessert brand Little Moons is testament to that.

Harness the power of our community with TikTok Creator Marketplace

There's one clear way for brands with any level of experience on TikTok to find cultural relevance, and that’s through creators. Creators are responsible for feeding trends on TikTok with endless streams of entertaining content. They can be the key to unlocking real community connections and helping brands to drive cultural relevance and fame. Promoting talent from specific subcultures is also adored by the TikTok community, like when North Face and Gucci collaborated with everyone's favourite trainspotter, Francis Bourgeois.

As the official platform for branded content collaborations on TikTok, TikTok Creator Marketplace (TTCM) connects brands and agencies with over 800,000 qualified creators around the world. Create a TTCM account for your brand today and start tapping into cultural moments tomorrow.

Start building cultural moments with Branded Mission

On TikTok, culture begins in the platform's subcultures – the groups that bond over specific, sometimes niche, shared interests. And there's lots of them! It's why 71% of users agree that TikTok is where people can find communities that suit all sides of their personality[2]. That means there's plenty of opportunity for brands of all types to get involved and find their audience, like when Starbucks promoted a range of new drinks with the help of popular creators.

To make it easier for brands to tap into the creative power of TikTok communities and co-create authentic branded content that resonates with users, we've launched Branded Mission, an industry-first ad solution that enables advertisers to crowdsource authentic content from creators on TikTok, turn top-performing videos into ads, and improve brand affinity with media impressions. Read more about how it works here.

It's never been more important for brands to be a part of culture, and there's no better place to do that than right now on TikTok. Nowhere else do brands have the license to show up as their authentic selves, get involved in subcultures and engage with communities. And it's here where the opportunity to impact culture and drive sales lies. After all, #ItStartsOnTikTok.

* As of November 2022

References

1. The Impact of Culture: What it Means for Brands Today; Magna

2. TikTok Marketing Science EU Understanding TikTok’s Impact on Culture 2022 conducted by Flamingo Group