The Marketing Power of Tik Tokers

By Claire English

Over the past couple of years, the creative app Tik Tok has grown to be incredibly popular amongst millennials and gen z. Like any form of social media, influencers surfaced and gained a huge following from Tik Tok and across multiple platforms. Addison Rae, the 19-year-old who gained over 80 million followers from her Tik Tok dance routines, and now has 38 million Instagram followers, almost 5 million YouTube subscribers, and was even featured on episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians due to her friendship with Kourtney Kardashian.

Sparking a large following on Tik Tok is not unheard of. While the beauty of Tik Tok does allow for a multitude of new influencers, there is also an element to it that anyone can go viral on Tik Tok. While the odds are low, the For You page on Tik Tok allows for anyone to scroll and see anyone’s videos. This has led to a huge marketing power from the app, while some brands have taken advantage of the growing popularity of the app with influencer marketing campaigns, some clips just gain popularity from threads. The marketing power that Tik Tok popularity and threads creates an enormous demand from Tik Tok users across the globe. This trend is often seen with Gen Z; the most frequent and prevalent Tik Tok users.  

Nashville Hot Chicken Tenders

Ok, yes, I fell victim to this trend and waited in line for over an hour to hear that delicious crunch. KFC announced their new Nashville Hot Chicken Tenders a while back in 2016. It took one Tik Tok from @jenheifer doing a KFC food muck bang; a popular content that creators use for food reviews. The Tik Tok got over 1.8 million views and after that a ripple effect of people trying the Nashville Hot Chicken Tenders, including the popular internet star Trisha Paytas. On May 4^th Business Insider wrote that the spicy and crunchy treat would be MIA due to its growing demand from Tik Tok.

Zara

Zara is a Spanish clothing company that gained popularity because of a pair of jeans. Like most Tik Tok trends the someone posted a video of the high rise wide leg Zara jeans that were only $40. Just like the chicken tenders, threads on threads of Tik Toks were created. When you visit the Zara website, those exact jeans are sold out across the world and when they’re back in stock, they sell out again. This trend didn’t just stop at jeans, Tik Tokers are also obsessed with other clothing pieces from Zara, which has sparked a huge demand in the Spanish clothing brand.

An important thing to recognize with this trend is that it can be very spur of the moment and random. Like most of the internet, there isn’t a table of contents for what’s going to go viral or become a trend, it is all random. These two examples are amongst many ranging from wildly different categories. A takeaway? In the world of social media marketing, Tik Tok has sprung its way to the top and is doing fabulous.