What The Breakfast Club Taught Me About TikTok
Could You Describe The Ruckus, Sir?
A bottle of Tabasco sauce is singing to you about how much it loves to dance. Cans of beans appear to be obsessed with Danny Devito. Kermit the Frog performs a Gregorian chant, and you finally understand why chickens can’t wear pants. You’re not delirious. You’re on TikTok, DeepTok to be precise. It’s just one clique among hundreds on the platform. All different, but all together.
That’s when it hits you. TikTok is The Breakfast Club. The beauty of the collective is derived from the fierce individuality of its members: the brain, the beauty, the jock, the rebel and the recluse. It’s the genius combination that made the film a classic. A similar mixture of personalities powers the success of TikTok.
Embrace the Weirdness
While the variety of TikTok videos couldn’t be greater, what they have in common is weirdness and an earnestness for self expression – whoever that self may be. This is not a new concept. It’s what drove the early success of Twitter, Facebook, Vine and Instagram.
When we get served a digital lump of clay in the form of a new app we tend to play with it. We shape it into what we think makes sense, entertains us, or informs us. This multiplicity of motivations often coalesce around a set of features that appeal to the masses and then – mediocrity kicks in. The weirdness wanes. Pragmatism wins. Another app fades, and we look for the next shiny thing. What if there was a way to bake the weirdness into the model? That ratio of strange-to-scalable is where TikTok excels in a time when the world has gone a bit mad itself.
The Future is Fearless
The tempest of TikTok is growing, powered by a perfect storm of demography, technology and sociology. Quarantine fueled our FOMO, generating 315 million installs in Q1 2020, the most for any app on record. Growth was led by millennials and young Gen Xers – both influenced by Gen Z who now drive global culture. Younger users (ages 4-15) spend an average of 80 minutes a day on the app, while average usage has grown to 52 minutes daily.
For brands, participating means inspiring actions through encouraging creativity. Think of TikTok as more of a social game than a campaign. To see real success you have to be brave enough to hand the brand over to consumers and see what they do with it. Tiktok can be worth the risk when done well as it outperforms other social channels with an average engagement rate of 52%, compared to Instagram's 1.22% or Twitter's 0.045%.
The Cult of Youth Culture
Sun Tzu once said opportunity thrives in chaos, and we've plenty of chaos these days. Lockdowns, racial injustice, and an American president ignoring a pandemic. All of which are fueling the dialog of youth culture on TikTok. These conversations are sparking creativity in a myriad of ways that manifest in the form of short videos. Happy dances by shiny people, gut-wrenching stories of systemic racism, and self-organized movements inspired by a Grandmother designed to derail a presidential campaign rally.
TikTok communities have a history of shaping culture, from launching the #1 hit song, Old Town Road, to birthing new forms of fandom led by cult leaders like Melissa Ong who commands her Step Chicken followers. Most recently DeepTok and AltTok have grown to represent the flip side of the pollyanna performances on StraightTok (the mainstream section of the app). Bottom line? TikTok is not for every brand. The ones that do want to participate need to be open to reinventing the rules to reward individuality, creativity and self-expression in exchange for cultural relevancy.
Key Considerations
The beauty of TikTok is derived from the fierce individuality of its members across a range of communities and interests
Weird content works well on TikTok, it inspires users to let their guard down, have fun and authentically express themselves
Tiktok is growing at an accelerated pace, powered by a perfect storm of demography, technology and sociology
While not for every brand, TikTok rewards the ones willing to take a chance and give up some control in exchange for cultural relevancy
This article originally appeared in the July 1, 2020 issue of Moving Image & Content’s agency newsletter. Register here to subscribe.