Indian brands exploring TikTok: Lessons to learn

With brands in India looking at new avenues to promote products and offerings, TikTok appears to be a platform worth exploring. A quick look at how Indian brands use TikTok?

During the recently concluded ICC World Cup, Tik Tok rose as an interesting platform for brands in India to explore. The platform has about 200 million users that can be potentially targetted by brands.

The official ICC account on Tik Tok has 1.1 million followers and their campaign #CricketWorldCup was able to hit the mark of 9.9 billion views. Hotstar too spiced up a few interesting cricket clips with background sound and shared in on the platform. They have 26.9 K followers here.

Social Samosa takes a look at how Indian brands TikTok marketing strategy.

Pepsi India

Prominent Campaign: #SwagStepChallenge

Use of the platform: Riding on the popular craze for cricket and dance, Pepsi India was able to run a successful campaign by crowd-sourcing videos for #SwagStepChallenge. The hashtag has over 17 billion views on the platform. From the perspective of integrating influencers in the campaign, they positioned Tiger Shroff and Disha Patani as benchmarks for people to match dance grooves to. The tune to which they all danced is an original.

Lesson: Leveraging crowd-sourcing & UGC

Zomato India

Prominent campaign: #ZomatoRideToFame

Use of the platform: Though Zomato India neither has a significant number of followers nor a regular supply of content, they have been able to achieve over 339 K views for #ZomatoRideToFame. They have used Zomato delivery partners as their strength, giving them a platform to sing, dance and showcase talent. They have incentivised the process by announcing the possibility of the activity resulting in prizes worth Rs 1,00,000.

Lesson: Creating a platform for the team, targetting the right demographic through TikTok

Lay's India

Prominent Campaign: #Wavez4India

Use of the platform: With over 5 billion views on #Wavez4India, Lay's India was able to launch a new product and create user-generated promotional content around it on TikTok. The campaign was topical as it integrated cricket with the help of Yuvraj Singh and the aspect of dance was amplified by involving choreographer Shakti Mohan. The tune too incorporated the spirit of cricket and dance perfectly, giving people a reason to groove as well as cheer for India.

Lesson: Using TikTok for product launch

FoodFood

Prominent Campaign: #FoodOfIndia

Use of the platform: FoodFood has shared a decent number of snackable, bite-sized videos on TikTok. Additionally, they created a space for chefs and food enthusiasts to share recipes in a visual format. They have been able to garner over 536 million views for the campaign.

Interestingly, the content being created by people is not limited to recipes and actually includes a plethora of videos that are themed around food. The fact that the brand has added an aspect of how people can win food hampers worth Rs 10,000 is the cherry on top.

Lesson: Creating an avenue for people to share experiments (quirky/offbeat content)

Hopscotch

Prominent Campaign: #MomRapChallenge

Use of the platform: Hopscotch took to Tik Tok to wish people on the occasion of Mother's Day. The resulting campaign gave people an avenue to act with their mothers and their kids, creating fun content. Hopscotch is a kidswear fashion brand that benefitted from the over 4.8 billion views that the campaign was able to get. Mothers in the age group of 25 to 40 years participated in the campaign, augmenting the potential customer base of the brand.

Lesson: Create a topical challenge, augmenting potential customer base