#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag going viral with marketers
Get ready to fire that boring data guy that fooled you into believing the future of marketing is programmable.
When TikTok influencer Hannah Schlenker featured a pair of American Eagle leggings on her feed, which has an audience of nearly 900000 followers - the product almost instantaneously sold out.
Spotting the obvious commercial opportunity that this example illustrates, TikTok have recently embarked on developing the platform to bring creators and product fulfilment capability more in alignment with one another, something they are calling 'community-commerce'.
This is interesting because unlike other social media commercial platforms, (insert your favourite Silicon Valley-unicorn here) that are currently available to marketers, TikTok influencers, and their legions of followers, tend to form far tighter 'tribes of fans'.
Not all influencers are alike, it turns out.
TikTok influencers are more 'influential' than others, which means that when they recommend a product that they love - that product tends to sell out quickly.
This could be a strong signal of a trend reversal in marketing.
What's happened in the last decade in marketing circles is that marketers have gotten very, very lazy and unimaginative.
These days it's sadly more likely that your head of marketing is a dull data scientist than somebody who actually knows anything about storytelling and compelling content.
The result is that global marketing spend and marketing ideas have become a total commodity; in other words, completely dependent on price (making it way too expensive) and largely ineffective. The industry is struggling to build brands that differentiate.
As as consequence what we are seeing not is that any ounce of real marketing creativity gains huge traction. Brands that are bold enough to still believe in the power of storytelling and take a chance on aligning themselves with these authentic audiences - do very well.
Rethink the marketing strategy
Before you go ahead and blindly sign off on yet another outrageously expensive PPC-bias marketing budget that makes the Silicon Valley-syndicates even more wealthy - consider that now is a good time to bring back some authentic creativity into your marketing efforts.
Perhaps hire a few people with personalities, individuals with flair, ideas and a backbone - and see how you might be able to return organically-generated consumer interest back into the brand, rather than just trying to outbid your competition for limited digital real estate.
Ilyse Liffreing