Marketing in 2020: A Blog

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Social Media Success: Not all platforms are created equal for social media success

Charli D’Amelio is TikTok’s largest star with nearly 50 million subscribers. Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, or better known as PewDiePie, is the person with the most subscribers on YouTube with 103 million. Twitter’s top profile is President Barack Obama, followed by 115 million users. On Instagram, soccer player Christiano Ronaldo takes the prize with 213 million followers. 

But why is there such a large difference between the top performers on these social media platforms? Below is a list of the top performers on each platform as well as their performance on other social medias. 

When we look at this data, we can see that the numbers vary drastically on all platforms, with President Barack Obama having the highest number of users on Twitter but not being active at all on TikTok or YouTube. 

Part of this has to do with the characteristics of the social media platform. Using social media is essentially self-marketing, meaning each decision made on the platform is a decision about your personal brand. Therefore, the use and strategy of social media is your personal marketing strategy. 

For example, TikTok and YouTube are video platforms. To be successful on these platforms, one needs to be comfortable in front of the camera and in creating original content. TikTok and YouTube tend to include collaborations between other users as well, which expands brand awareness and audiences. The more collaborations that a user does, the more potential followers they can expose their content to. 

On the other hand, Twitter and Instagram tend to be more still content. Photos can be staged and retouched, tweets are well phrased to fit the character limit. Additionally, Twitter and Instagram have more room for audience engagement through the form of replies, retweets, and interactive Instagram stories. Twitter and Instagram also tend to be more popular among celebrities with packed schedules because they can be run by a team as opposed to the one celebrity. With a video, the celebrity needs to spend time to make the video. With a photo post, a staff member can upload a few-weeks-old photo to the celebrity’s account to gain traction. 

Social media usage is also dictated by the personal brand and unique features. PewDiePie became famous for livestreaming him playing video games and has since branched out into collaborations with other YouTubers. But this skill set and this audience is not likely to find a 140 character tweet interesting, since it does not align with his brand. Therefore, PewDiePie has chosen to align his social media usage with what is demanded of him by his subscribers. 

Additionally, Charli D’Amelio is famous on TikTok for dance videos and modeling. It makes sense that her largest social media platforms are TikTok and Instagram as that is where she can best highlight short dance clips and stunning photos. 

Personal Marketing is so similar to Corporate Brand Marketing. Once you figure out the product you offer better than anyone else, you have to find where you can best sell or market that product. After that, you have to determine how to make money off yourself, whether through paid brand promotions or acting/modeling contracts, etc. Then, you have to continuously put out content on your chosen platforms to keep promoting yourself and your personal brand. The 4Ps apply to every kind of marketing, even if you’re a 15-year-old TikTok star from Connecticut who is marketing in your bedroom. 

As platforms rise and die, it will be interesting to see what platforms take over in the future. YouTube is beginning to fall as younger users prefer short clips to long videos. Instagram is taking over Facebook, and many in Gen Z don’t even have Facebook accounts. So, which platform do you think will withstand the test of time? Is TikTok going to win this battle? Will Twitter become the next MySpace? I guess we will have to wait and see. 

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#ButterGlossPop: The RIGHT way to advertise on TikTok

The best makeup advertising that this generation has ever seen is in the form of NYX’s #ButterGlossPop challenge. TikTok, an uber-popular app amongst those under 30, is a platform where users can post short videos dubbed on top of another user’s prerecorded sound. NYX’s #ButterGlossPop advertising campaign combines the entertainment app with the societal desire for full, luscious lips with success that no other company is recent history has seen.

The #ButterGlossPop challenge was started by NYX Cosmetics earlier this year. It is a challenge for TikTokers to record videos with the hashtag #ButterGlossPop for a chance to win $1200 in NYX makeup. NYX began its campaign by reaching out to 6 famous TikTokers and paying them for their promotion of the Butter Gloss promotion. They then marketed the campaign as a way to find the TikToker who could “Pop Their Gloss” best. To date, the campaign landing page has 8.4 billion views and the original ButterGlossPop theme song, used in the paid TikTok campaigns by popular TikTokers, has been used more than 12.5 thousand times. Users have generated over 3 million videos with the #ButterGlossPop hashtag. Additionally, the hashtag #ButterGlossPop is starting to appear on all genres of content, and is now gaining popularity like the #foryoupage hashtag, which directs videos to a playlist for users who may be interested in their content (and appears on almost every video posted on TikTok).

The most popular TikTok star that NYX recruited for a promotion is Addison Rae, a 19-year-old from Louisiana. Her Butter Gloss ad video has 1.5 million likes from her 33.3 million subscribers.

NYX’s advertisement is the most successful TikTok ad campaign in history because it its strategy. First, the marketing team created a new jingle for the campaign that was catchy and short enough to hold the attention of TikTok users, especially when the app has a time limit of one minute for videos uploaded. This jingle was used for the traditional paid branded ads that are about 10 seconds long and placed in between user content on the for you page. Second, NYX also paid famous TikTok dancers and makeup artists to promote the Butter Gloss product in videos on their pages, meaning they appear for every user who subscribes to them. For this, they teamed up with 6 large influencers with over 5 million subscribers each, and dozens of smaller influencers with 1-3 million subscribers. This combined effort for NYX made it appear as if almost all of TikTok was on NYX’s side and loved the Butter Gloss, therefore influencing viewers in mass numbers.

Third, NYX created the #ButterGlossPop challenge, where users who generate a video with the #ButterGlossPop hashtag are entered to win a lot of NYX makeup. The sheer desire to use the same hashtags as their favorite influencers allowed for the widespread use of #ButterGlossPop, with the added benefit of being entered to win. These 3 strategy pieces culminated in the massive success of the campaign, as the hashtag became so popular, it spread from makeup-themed videos to being tagged on comedy, dance, horror, point-of-view, and trend videos across the platform. #ButterGlossPop became known as the popular hashtag and not just a brand campaign. It crossed ethnicities, national boundaries, gender boundaries, and became another tool in the toolbox for small TikTokers looking to make it big. By placing this hashtag on their videos, TikTokers had the ability to get on a user’s for you page and gain new subscribers.

Based on the immense popularity of the #ButterGlossPop campaign, it is evident that more and more brands will begin to market their products on TikTok. But, to what lengths will the next brand have to go to beat NYX’s campaign? NYX did not use any traditional celebrities in their marketing, only TikTok neofluencers, but would their campaign have been even more successful if they used faces known off the app, like Ru Paul or Lady Gaga? I am stunned by the marketing stunt that NYX pulled off, and I am ready to see what brand steals the hype next.

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Want to become the next musical star? Move over Dance Moms, TikTok is here

Charli and Dixie D’Amelio. Chase Hudson. Addison Rae. What do these names have in common? Theses 4 teenagers are mega-popular American creators on TikTok, the 2nd most popular app of 2019, with over 1.5 billion downloads worldwide since its creation in 2016.

Developed in China, TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular apps for those under 30, with a US study showing that 49% of American teenagers have used the app in the month prior to the study. Overall, the app has 800 million monthly active users. Why are so many people attracted to the app? Well, the premise of the app is to create short videos, up to one minute long, and add another user’s prerecorded audio on top of the recorded video. This makes TikTok the ideal platform for lip syncing videos, dance trends, and reactions.

TikTok users can post an unlimited number of short videos per day in hopes of going viral. The largest star on the platform, 15-year-old Charli D’Amelio from Connecticut, caught the “hype” in 2019, and in a matter of months has amassed almost 50 million subscribers. Charli’s MO is to create brief dance trend videos while sipping on her Dunkin Iced Coffee, something which has landed her recognition, free merchandise, and brand deals. In fact, Charli’s most liked video posted in April 2020 is a ‘How I make my Dunkin Coffee at Home’ Quarantine Tutorial. In total, Charli has 3.1 billion likes on her videos on the platform. 

Charli’s sister, 18-year-old Dixie, is also a star on the platform, and her funny videos and dances have gotten her modeling and talent contracts, plus the ability to take lavish vacations with her family. Charli and Dixie, along with Addison Rae, a 19-year-old from Louisiana, and Chase Hudson, a 17-year-old from California who goes by Lil Huddy, have pooled their TikTok clout and joined the Hype House, a house of 20 of the biggest TikTok stars in the world. Together, they rent a mansion in Los Angeles to create, film, and edit TikTok videos together. Having so much hype in one house has lead to a large number of paid brand deals for these stars, as companies get the influence of all 20 TikTokers instead of just one. 

While it may seem like a far-fetched dream for a normal high schooler to become one of the nation’s most famous teenagers overnight, TikToker Haley Sharpe made this dream a reality. She choreographed and posted a dance to musician Doja Cat’s song ‘Say So’. Her dance took off and became a huge trend on the app, eventually leading to Doja Cat performing the dance in the official music video for ‘Say So’ and inviting Haley to have a cameo in the music video as well. Since the premiere of the music video, Haley’s dancing career has taken off, with her announcing college admissions and scholarships on her TikTok account because of her clout.  Members of the Hype House have also collaborated with Jason Derulo, David Dobrik, and James Charles, and have become neofluencers to the world through their sponsorships and promotions on the app. 

Typical highschoolers have the ability to create a future for themselves on TikTok and have even shown more success than the stars of the hit reality TV show Dance Moms. Dance Moms Dancer Mackenzie Ziegler’s 16.4 million subscribers pale in comparison to Addison Rae’s 33.1 million. Future dance stars are able to showcase their talent and market their abilities to major stars on the app. Up-and-coming artists can also use clips of their songs to gain traction on TikTok, just like rapper Lil Mosey did with his song ‘Blueberry Faygo’. Just since February 7 of this year, ‘Blueberry Faygo’ went from an early single from an unknown artist to having over 2.2 million videos featuring his song on TikTok, over 175 million streams of his song on Spotify, and peaking at number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Without his effective use of TikTok as a self-marketing campaign, it’s unlikely Lil Mosey would have developed the fame he needed to hit number 19 on the charts himself. 

With the creation of TikTok, aspiring performers no longer need to move to LA, attend thousands of calls, or spend years trying to make it into the business. All they need is a smartphone, originality, and a desire to succeed. However, TikTok is not appealing to all users. Since it is very easy to create an account and start posting, there is a very large threat of new entrants to the self-marketing industry. Also, the large number of users creates a lot of competition between hopeful performers and it also poses the threat of not being deemed ‘original’ or being a ‘content stealer’. This is why the TikTokers with the most consistency and highest volume in their postings are the ones with the most success. 

But, will large brands find success in advertising on TikTok? With teenagers as the main target audience on the app, interested brands will need to branch out from their typical marketing style to advertise on with video on the app. Additionally, I wonder if an increase in paid promotions with TikTok stars on the app, seen as fake and not genuine by users, will decrease the number of subscribers that said TikToker has. Only time will tell, and as the free time users have increases due to the pandemic, brands who want to advertise on TikTok should do so soon to expose their product to the maximum number of users. 

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What to do when you can’t leave your room? A look into Disney+

The recent announcement by Pennsylvania State Governor Wolf, which extends the closure of schools across the state through the end of the academic year, means that parents and caregivers must come up with more at-home activities to keep their children stimulated. In the mind of Bob Iger, what better way to keep the family entertained than Disney+.

Disney+ is an online streaming service for Disney fans of all ages. When it was launched on November 12, 2019, users say that it “broke the internet” due to the high volume of users signing up for the service at one time. Now, it has hit 50 million subscribers who can enjoy content from Disney Channel, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, Pixar, and more.

This announcement of healthy subscriber growth comes at a time when Disney+ is bringing in a higher percentage of overall Disney revenue than ever before. Theme parks, hotels, and resorts run empty across the world as COVID-19 runs its course, meaning the iconic Main Street chute up to Cinderella’s Castle is closed to tourists, cast members, and Minnie and Mickey, too. Disney+ has taken some steps to capitalize on the strategic uncertainty that is this pandemic by releasing feature films to Disney+ instead of the movie theatres.

One of these releases is the movie Onward. With the voice of Tom Holland (aka the most recent SpiderMan) as the star of the show, the movie was highly anticipated for an early March release into theatres. With theatres being closed, Disney+ can market its service as a home theatre by adding Onward and Frozen 2 to its subscription. See below for the trailer for Onward.

Disney is not alone in releasing feature films digitally. Universal has released multiple movies for home video release, yet the price tag to rent these movies is steep at $19.99 per movie for only a 48-hour rental. Disney+ is much easier on the wallet, with a subscription starting at $6.99 for a month of unlimited streaming. In my mind (and it seems like most consumers agree with me based on the increase of Disney+ subscribers), I’ll choose the cheaper option.

As the pandemic forces families to stay home for longer than expected, parents can use the large variety of movies offered through the service to keep their children entertained. Last week, my mom hosted a family movie night and played The Apple Dumpling Gang, a comedy-western from her childhood that’s available to watch on Disney+. Seeing the memories of this movie come flooding back for her allowed my family to create new pandemic memories of our own. The range of movies and TV shows bring me back to my childhood as well (although it was only a handful of years ago) and I’m able to add Hannah Montana, Kim Possible, and Lizzie McGuire to my binge-watching list.

With all the time that we now have on our hands, I wonder if throwback TV shows and movies will become popular again. I could see schoolteachers assigning movies like Aladdin or The Lion King to their students to watch and write a reflection on. Perhaps English professors will adapt their coursework from comparing the plots of plays to comparing the plots of Pixar movies. When the world stops turning, I wonder if creativity does, too.