Boon or bane? Businesses tap into TikTok trends to attract younger audiences

SINGAPORE: Do you recall scrolling through TikTok and seeing multiple videos of people mimicking a dance sequence from the Netflix TV series "Wednesday"?

The viral dance, once used by businesses to promote products from food to electronics, almost never appears on the platform anymore.

Its virality lasted only a few months.

With the rise of newer social media platforms like TikTok, businesses of all sizes and industries have been jumping on the bandwagon to promote their products.

But this can be resource-intensive given the constantly changing nature of trends. What makes TikTok attractive for businesses and are there pitfalls in pursuing short-lived campaigns?

THE ALLURE OF TIKTOK FOR BUSINESSES

For 22-year-old Katrina Lee, her foray into TikTok began in January 2021 when she started her home-based nails business.

"Our generation likes to get information really quick and easy. So using that, I think it garnered me a really big audience really fast," she said, noting that she has a few viral videos to her name.

"People start noticing you and it converts into like sales and in my case, bookings," she added.

Ms Lee started Nailsbynanako, which provides gel manicure services such as extensions and nail art, and promotes it via "little nail videos" on her TikTok account.

"I thought at the time, we were coming out of COVID-19 and everyone was looking for nail inspirations," she said, adding that TikTok is like "an outreach platform – a good search engine" for users.

At the time, a compilation video of nail trends she made went viral and garnered more than 900,000 views.

Recalling that video, Ms Lee said it "took effort" compared to two other "simple" videos of hers with more than a million views each that only required "lipsynching and putting text".

Another video of her unboxing nail polish from Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao also made its rounds on TikTok, reaching about 700,000 views.

There are an estimated 1.83 million TikTok users in Singapore, and an average of 16 hours a month is spent on the platform, according to digital marketing agency OOm. An advertisement can potentially reach about 30.8 per cent of the TikTok audience, OOm added.

According to Statista, Generation Z - or those aged between 19 and 25 – makes up one-third of TikTok users in Singapore as of June this year. This is followed by those aged between 26 and 32 making up more than a quarter of users on the platform.

"TikTok started off as a more 'entertainment' type of social media and the users are mostly younger generations that are harder to reach through traditional or even more established social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram," said Dr Suwitchit Chaidaroon, senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

"Since the platform is friendly to both consumers of information and content creators, TikTok grows very fast, especially in Southeast Asia where social commerce is widely adopted. Singapore is no exception."

He noted that even more established organisations and politicians are increasingly developing their presence on TikTok to reach the new target audience.

With more than 20 outlets in Singapore since it first opened at Paragon Shopping Centre in 2003, Taiwanese restaurant chain Din Tai Fung began adapting TikTok trends for its business in March last year. 

The restaurant chain found itself constantly changing its business strategies to keep up with the trends, especially in the long run, and saw the need to plan ahead and "be at the forefront of trends", a spokesperson told CNA.

For example, Din Tai Fung jumped on the "He's a 10 but ..." TikTok trend last year which saw it racking up about 1.4 million views. Other popular videos on its page include point-of-view (POV) trends of the restaurant chain's chefs. 

Din Tai Fung's business marketing strategy has garnered praise from TikTok users in its video comments.

Even though there isn’t a particular trend that has significantly helped the business, the spokesperson noted that being on TikTok "definitely contributed" to boosting its brand presence, both online and offline, with younger audiences.

This also helps retain "top-of-mind brand recall with TikTok growing as an impertinent marketing tool perpetually".

"The crucial part is to filter what trends work or do not work for the brand and adapt it to create the right synergy to ensure an accurate representation. It requires some trial and error, and finding out what kind of content our community reacts positively to, and what kind of content can get viral ahead of time," the spokesperson said.

TikTok’s “ease of use” for both businesses and consumers to create content and consume information is what makes the platform appealing as a marketing tool, said Dr Chaidaroon, adding that the trends also allow niche audiences to be reached - which cannot be done so through traditional media.

"TikTok trends can facilitate the penetration to this group," he added.

Not only is TikTok used for targeting the younger demographic, but the algorithm and format of the platform draw them in as well, said senior lecturer Dr Wong King Yin of Nanyang Technological University's College of Business.

“Users are more satisfied when they use TikTok because they find that what TikTok is feeding them is more welcoming to them and they like to spend more time on it.”

Consumer tech company PRISM+ sees TikTok as a fun platform to reach out to a younger audience.

The brand, which sells monitors, started on TikTok in late 2021 to "explore and get a feel of the platform". It started creating regular content to reach out to the younger crowd in late 2022.

PRISM+’s managing director Jonathan Tan said: "It was very experimental, and a lot of the time we allowed the younger members of our marketing team to have fun with the platform, so long as it kept within the brand guidelines."

He added that the short-form videos "saw some success", with some of them gaining millions of views. Some of their popular videos involve trends like autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) and POV, with the latter amassing at least a million views on the platform.

A report by Google in March noted that younger shoppers are twice to thrice as likely to have shopped using emerging media, such as social media. 

Mr Tan attributed the shoppertainment trend on TikTok to a direct impact on PRISM+'s business, which saw a 58.6 per cent increase in sales from 11.11 to 12.12 sales events in 2022 after amassing a following due to their consistent content on the platform.

TRENDS ARE FLEETING

Businesses face inherent challenges while promoting on TikTok due to the fleeting nature of trends.

According to The Business of Fashion, TikTok trends run in 90-day cycles and last for six months at most. 

This can be resource-intensive and time-consuming, especially for smaller businesses with limited marketing budgets and resources to constantly adapt and update their strategies to remain relevant.

“TikTok trends are quite elusive as the content that appears on every individual’s For You Page (FYP) differs based on their content of interest. There’s no fixed frequency of when TikTok trends would surface,” noted Din Tai Fung’s spokesperson.

“As users of TikTok ourselves, the way we keep track is to incorporate it into our daily digital consumption and track the trend as it comes,” said Din Tai Fung's spokesperson, but added that TikTok trends and the content created could sometimes be a hit or a miss with the local community.

Dr Chaidaroon said he believes that jumping onto trends will increase a brand’s visibility only over a certain period of time before it becomes “saturated”, with common backfires including brand fatigue, loss of brand uniqueness and brand avoidance or resistance.

Hopping on the TikTok trend bandwagon is “fast and easy” as it does not have to be created from scratch, said Dr Wong. But when certain types of content do not match with a brand’s identity, customers may get upset instead.

“I think marketers need to be sensitive themselves in order to select things that can really represent their brand and also to connect with their customers,” she said.

PRISM+'s Mr Tan noted that although going viral with TikTok trends is great for visibility and helps to give a “fun voice” to the brand, virality is “somewhat like hitting a jackpot”.

“Videos that typically do well on TikTok are generally authentic, and less polished, which is challenging for a brand to fit into for more commercial purposes,” he added.

“Rather than producing content in the hopes of one video going viral, we think it is more important to produce content regularly and consistently to slowly build and communicate with your audience.”

Mr Tan also noted that brands have to carefully balance between creativity and authenticity for TikTok’s organic content, in which they are still attempting to explore.

Nailsbynanako's Ms Lee pointed out it will be an issue when one keeps chasing trends.

“At the end of the day, everyone starts off on TikTok because they want to blow their business up, but then they will start falling down the rabbit hole of clout-chasing,” said Ms Lee.

“You will lose sight of who you are and what you’re even doing it for … You have to be posting for the right reasons.”