To stand out this year in our evolving, vibrant and fast-paced culture, marketers will need to be as creatively brave as their audiences. The TikTok What’s Next 2024 Trend Report highlights how brands can move away from traditional story arcs, showcase the unexpected and build a better connection with audiences by leaning into three Trend Forces: Curiosity Peaked, Storytelling Unhinged and Bridging the Trust Gap.
“2023 has seen an audience of over 1 billion people regularly coming to TikTok to find community, surprise and delight,” said Sofia Hernandez, global head of business marketing for TikTok. “In an era where storytelling has become predictable, TikTok showcases creativity without a typical beginning, middle or end.”
Providing entertainment value
It’s up to brands to keep up with the trends on TikTok, which can be a template for creativity as well as a way to find the right conversations, the right times to engage and the right creators. With better insight into Trend Forces, or macro trends, on the platform, brands can build experiences for new consumer behaviors around how they tell stories, find people and get inspired to shop.
TikTok is a space where creators openly communicate with brands and their communities about their passions and initiate conversations over shared interests. Consumers rely on the platform to discover new interests or to have their Curiosity Peaked. According to the TikTok Marketing Science Global Entertaining Ads Study 2022, conducted by Marketcast, users are nearly two times more likely to agree that TikTok introduces them to new topics they didn't even know they were interested in.
The For You Page (FYP) connects users with brands and content related to their unique passions, interests and communities. Users can get tips on saving money with #FinTok, share a favorite recipe on #FoodTok or discover products dogs love on #PetTok. These social communities set the trends, and brands can jump in and become a part of existing conversations.
To do that, brands need to understand what’s relevant to the audiences they are trying to reach, and that’s just what the TikTok What’s Next 2024 Trend Report delivers. By looking at trends, brands can gain insight into what a particular TikTok community values and discover creative ways to offer content they care about and will help amplify. Brands that succeed on TikTok know how to connect with the audience and add to the experience and culture that users are already creating on the platform.
Building for the people
It’s not the traditional way of storytelling. With Storytelling Unhinged, the TikTok community can help shape a brand’s identity and narrative on the platform.
For example, a trending conversation and community effort on TikTok has emerged around delusional comfort, or “delulu.” Adopting a fake-it-til-you-make-it attitude, creator Sabrina Bahsoon turned the London Underground into a stage and built a loyal following around being confident and dancing like no one was watching. An educational and entertaining video shared how users can get in on her trend and be a tube girl in just three steps.
Her “delulu” energy caught the attention of MAC Cosmetics, and their partnership demonstrated how the brand can also help unlock confidence for audiences around the world. MAC was able to leverage the moment, build connections with audiences around joy and positivity, and join a conversation already initiated and embraced by the TikTok community.
TIkTok can be an engine for word-of-mouth marketing for brands. In this culture, an actual unfiltered human experience can share a product’s value with millions on the platform. It’s how many consumers find new products and ideas today. Why? It’s because 41% of viewers trust a brand more after seeing an ad on the platform, according to the TikTok Drives Brand Trust Study 2022, commissioned by TikTok Marketing Science Global and executed by Edelman Data and Intelligence.
The key to Bridging the Trust Gap is to build for the people. Brands can enter the conversation by tapping into authentic entertainment that creators are already making. Intersloth, for example, embraced an in-joke, a gaming community-specific reference to pet petting and incorporated it into Among Us. The concept was fun and easily recognizable by the audience it wanted to reach.
Adding more variety
Brands that want to stand out should also diversify the type of content they produce. Creative variety is fundamental to growing and moving forward as a brand. According to TikTok Marketing Science, CPG Sales Lift Meta-Analysis, 2021-2022, campaigns with five to seven pieces of creative are 1.5 times more likely to make a greater impact. There is no one-time marketing solution. Diverse content increases relevance and resonance within communities.
When brands become proficient in the way TikTokers communicate with one another, they can adjust their messaging to fit in with what’s happening on the platform and with particular communities. For example, Ulta Beauty tapped into the popular #girlmath trend in this video to promote how its loyalty program rewards money for spending money and shows it’s the “only kind of math that matters.”
Content like this lets users know a brand is not just interested in selling products but is on the platform to watch, listen and create along with them. Each campaign and piece of content is an opportunity to share, listen and learn, as well as build brand trust and values together to generate deeper loyalty on and off the platform. After seeing an ad on TikTok, viewers are 31% more likely to be loyal to the brand and 33% more likely to say the brand is a good fit for who they are as a person, according to the TikTok Drives Brand Trust Study 2022 commissioned by TikTok Marketing Science Global and executed by Edelman Data and Intelligence. It’s about Bridging the Trust Gap. According to the TikTok Drives Brand Trust Study 2022 commissioned by TikTok Marketing Science Global and executed by Edelman Data and Intelligence, viewers trust brands 1.5 times more after seeing ads on TikTok with comments turned on.
One way to help keep content fresh, engaging and entertaining is by showing a different side to the brand. Unpredictable, collective stories are at the heart of Storytelling Unhinged. Going behind the scenes, detailing how a product is made or pulling back the curtain can help develop rapport with customers and interest in how a story transpires. Target, for example, brought a take on the Wattpad trend to the platform, sharing a customer’s story of living out her Wattpad romance as she shopped and shot her shot with another customer in the store.
Videos such as this are more relevant because they feel like they are created by everyday people just having a conversation. When community members have the opportunity to authentically tell their stories or share their experiences with products, brands can discover things about their products they never even knew.
Download the TikTok What's Next 2024 Trend Report for more insight into how brands can leverage trends to inform their longer-term content strategy and connect better with consumers.
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