š Viral Brand Responses
How brand's are leveraging TikTok to drive sales
Good morning everyone, happy Friday. Hopefully everyone is feeling accomplished and ready to head into the weekend feeling proud. Today I want to discuss a new marketing trend Iām noticing, where brands are leveraging viral TikTok moments and thoughtfully responding to drive sales and brand awareness.
First some top stories ā
Headlines
NYC is introducing congestion pricing for lower Manhattan drivers. The pricing is tiered for ride share drivers: $2.50 per entrance. Great, now my weekly uber from williamsburg back home will cost $77.50
The CyberTruck is finally here. I canāt even lie I think its pretty cool.
Variety just announced the return of their āActors on Actorsā series and the pairings are sure to create some viral moments. Pairing Cillian w Margot Robbie was a no-brainer. I donāt know about you guys but I thought Oppenheimer sucked.
How Long Gone is having a show in NYC tomorrow, with a launch party for CBās new zine tonight at Friends Editions. See you there?
Leveraging Virality
On November 15th, a woman posted a video of her car after it caught fire and was completely destroyed. The only thing that survived the fire? Her Stanley cup, in tact and still full of ice.
The Stanley cup has been a staple of millennial and Gen Z consumers for awhile, surging in popularity this year, but this video set a new peak for brand virality. The video racked up over 70M+ views.
This must have been a dream for the Stanley marketing team. Millions of free, organic impressions showing how insanely durable your product is? They had to respond.
One day later, Stanleyās President stitched her video, sharing his sympathy for the loss of her car, and pledging to purchase her a new car.
This video did over 30M+ views, and showed the goodwill of the brand.
So, quick math, thatās 100M+ views for Stanley. The average CPM for a campaign on TikTok is around $10. Meaning Stanley wouldāve had to spend over $1M to generate as many paid impressions. Their response was critical to the success. Hereās what they did well:
Paid attention to viral content surrounding their brand
Quickly responded
Replaced her car
So now, leveraging viral customer moments is key to creating compelling narratives for short form video platforms. Surely no brands would fake this right?
Faking a Viral Moment?
After seeing the success of the Stanley viral moment, the North Faceās social team got to work to copy this methodology. On November 16th, an under the radar TikTok account posted a video of her climbing a mountain in the pouring rain. She was wearing what she expected to be a rain proof North Face jacket. But the tech was failing (should have bought Arcteryx) and she was soaked.
She called out the North Face asking them to deliver a new coat to the top of the summit. This video got 11M views, which I find suspicious as it was the accounts second video, ever.
The North Face responded, stitching her video and showing a worker grabbing a new rain jacket, and delivering her a jacket via helicopter as she requested.
Combined, both videos have received $15M views.
The North Face took a page out of Stanleyās playbook, finding a viral ācustomer serviceā moment and quickly responding in a creative way.
However, this particular campaign feels too calculated. I suspect its faked. But I work in marketing so I donāt care either way, its a very smart strategy.
Lessons for Success
For years, the agency or in-house marketing playbook has been to throw huge budgets to get sets, locations, actors, insane visual effects, and more to create splashy video ads to drive sales and brand awareness. Do these campaigns work anymore? Sometimes, but they are largely the the last of a dying breed. What do consumers resonate with now?
Authenticity and narrative. Gen Z consumers care significantly less about production quality and more about an authentic story. When marketing teams are agile, smart, and understand this, they are able to quickly leverage real (or seemingly real) viral moments to create momentum.
What do you think about this trend? I suspect we are going to be seeing a lot of in in 2024, and the best ones? You wonāt even be able to tell they are staged, the product of several mid 20s people working from their laptops around the world to drive sales for the new viral TikTok shop product.
About Jake
Jake Bell is a content marketing strategist based in NYC. He specializes in branding, art direction, creative strategy, content creation, and making things cool.
To get in touch visit www.jb.studio
Like video? Check out his TikTok
Like fit pics and pictures of chairs? Visit his Instagram.