Commercialising the Zeitgeist: Crafting a Successful TikTok Strategy

The objective of this white paper is to equip the international fashion, luxury and beauty industries with strategic insight on executing effective TikTok strategies. From brand identity and community engagement to organic and paid campaigns, creator collaborations, commerce solutions, user-generated content (UGC) and a host of other commercial considerations, BoF has analysed and investigated best practices from across the industry and interviewed independent experts, brand executives and TikTok leaders.

The Attention Economy

In the last four years, the entertainment platform TikTok has amassed over 1 billion community members globally and 170 million monthly active members in North America. US adults spent a movie’s worth of time on TikTok every day in Q2 2024. On mobile, that is 1.3x more minutes than on YouTube, 2.5x more minutes than on Facebook and 3.1x more minutes than on Instagram, according to Data.ai.

The entities that dominate this emerging attention economy are evolving, as is our content consumption behaviour in engaging with them. Today, audiences typically use multiple devices concurrently — a Media Science study commissioned by TikTok in 2023 found that 99 percent of surveyed individuals used their phone while watching TV, with 84 percent of those surveyed saying they focused their attention on mobile during TV commercial breaks.

This behavioural shift has had a significant impact on the efficacy of advertising and marketing. Gen-Z, for one, loses active attention for ads after just 1.3 seconds, according to a global study by Yahoo, Omnicom Media Group (OMG) and Amplified Intelligence.

“The fight for people’s attention is so ripe at the minute,” says Jordan Mitchell, the co-founder and co-CEO of Good Culture, a cultural marketing agency working with brands like Marc Jacobs, Good American, Speedo, Barbour, Alo Yoga and Creed.

TikTok, however, engages audiences in a different way — the platform is 1.2x more likely to be the sole focus while users are on it, according to a Marketcast study commissioned by TikTok in 2022.

“By nature, it’s difficult to be passive [on TikTok], from it being a sound-on, full-screen experience, but [also because] you have to take action to get to that next video,” Matt Cleary, TikTok’s head of retail, told BoF. “That naturally creates a connection both with the platform [and] with attention.”

TikTok’s emphasis on discovery plays a key role in keeping its community engaged, due to its interest-graph algorithm offering content based on user interests: from the trends with which you engage to the music you listen to, the search terms you use and the comments you read. “Every time you engage with a piece of content, that signals this might be something you’re interested in,” says Cleary.

Rather than its community curating their own feed based on who they follow, TikTok automates this with strong results. Indeed, 64 percent of social video platform users agree that TikTok outperforms all other algorithms in showing content that is relevant to them, according to National Research Group’s “Future of Social Video” study in 2023.

What’s more, TikTok is now increasingly considered a source of truth by its younger audience. For example, almost 40 percent of Gen-Z use TikTok and Instagram over Google for queries relating to places to eat lunch, as shared by Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan on stage at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in 2022.

The Zeitgeist

Usage and engagement rates cement TikTok’s role in cultural conversations, but it is the platform’s idiosyncratic content trends and forms of creative expression, along with the new form of influence its creators typify, that have led to the app shaping the zeitgeist today.

The variety of creative expression the app enables is a core part of its appeal, enabling audiences to join trending conversations through mediums that appeal to them. For example, the summer of 2024 was christened “Brat Summer” following the release of musician Charli XCX’s album “Brat”. What started as trending sounds and a dance routine for the single “Apple” was followed by a mass adoption of a “Brat” attitude on social channels.

Memes were crafted; the vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ campaign was rebranded in “Brat” colours within 24 hours of the confirmation of her run. The album cover’s acid chartreuse also inspired makeup looks, styling edits and every conceivable product line. UGC emulating its spirit was captured in the millions. Party themes, interior colour schemes, even behaviour and confidence become “Brat”-coded and “Brat”-branded on TikTok.

The platform feeds off and into cultural conversations at speed. This is driven by a receptive audience primed to engage with subcultures turned aesthetic-core-trends — whether Tomato Girl-core in beauty or Coastal Grandma-core in fashion — as well as formats, such as #GRWM and What I’m Wearing videos to Ins/Outs, “stitch incoming” and seasonal colour filters.

These evolving content formats further the sense of digital intimacy, nurturing a sense of community online. Stitches — a format that allows for one creator’s video to be integrated with another — sees TikTok community members respond to each other, enabling direct interactions within communities. Content creators also engage with #storytime, a hashtag corresponding to 32.7 million posts and directing the audience to share what is “going on in your life” — reflective of the increased openness and intimacy within digital audiences.

TikTok is “integral to your growth and sustaining your cultural relevance,” says Mitchell. “It’s about observing those native trends and conversations emerging, getting it at the ember of what that is [rather than] waiting for it to be a big moment.”

Indeed, 70 percent of users believe TikTok communities have the power to create change in culture, according to a study by MRC Data and Flamingo, commissioned by TikTok in 2021.

The platform’s level of engagement and the routes it provides to over a billion community members has already altered the music industry’s marketing strategies. Artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat, Lil Nas X and Raye, have dominated the music charts through songs that became trending sounds on TikTok as users repeatedly overlay audio snippets onto videos. They later inspired cultural and creative trends, like Sabrina Carpenter’s latte makeup aesthetic or Megan Thee Stallion’s “Watashi Wa Star” dance, bridging the worlds of anime and rap.

Taking Niche Global

The proliferation of content and the ease of access the 5G smartphone era ushered in, compounded by the pandemic, has increased our ability to experience community through screens and in digital spaces.

Arguably, TikTok’s most pervasive influence on the zeitgeist is the opposite of artificially generated or intentionally manufactured culture. For You Pages, or “FYP”, have popularised niche and idiosyncratic subjects that appeal specifically to our individual interests, from BookTok to GardenTok, BeautyTok, StyleTok and MangaTok, all the way down to specific neighbourhood or school-related content.

Connectivity around content themes creates a richer, more expansive experience for the TikTok community, driving the popularity of once niche subcultures and activities. This generates large but tightly aligned online communities on a platform that, critically, has no barrier to entry, creating a sense of digital intimacy at scale.

If you’re on the platform, what you’re sharing is a window into your world, so there’s no going back.

—  Vanessa Craft, global head of content partnerships at TikTok.

Some 72 percent of TikTok users say it is easy for strangers to connect and bond around shared life experiences on TikTok, according to a study conducted by Flamingo Group, commissioned by TikTok in 2022, while 75 percent of users feel like a part of a network of people with shared interests on TikTok, as reported by an earlier study by Flamingo for TikTok in 2021.

The power of these digital forums, driven by shared experiences and a sense of community, is significant. BookTok is the largest community tok, with over 38.7 million associated posts. This community has been partially credited for supporting the mass resurgence of the publishing industry in recent years.

These community toks and the subcultures they reflect have a direct impact on trend cycles, manifesting in aesthetics and communities like #darkacademia and #mobwife, #cleangirl and #quietluxury, as well as the ubiquitous “-cores” — the suffix denoting a popular niche inspiring creators and their content, from Cottage-core to Grandad-core, Gorp-core to Corp-core.

While these subcultures exist as more passing aesthetic trends versus learned behaviour that informs long-term expressions of identity, they capture the interest of the moment — and the pace at which trends now rise and fall.

Consumer Expectations Around Authenticity and Trust

In addition to its innovations in connecting communities around content, the evolution from influencer and follower dynamics to creators and audiences that has taken place on TikTok positions it centrally in the evolving zeitgeist.

The term “influencer” is more aligned to driving commercial activities like sales — to influence others into action — often achieved through creating engaging social posts. Content creators are associated with content creation, although many commercialise the skillset through brand collaborations. The critical distinction is the commercial-first versus content-first mindset adopted and there is a widening gap between the two cohorts of individuals who make their living by sharing content online.

Today, as social and entertainment platforms designed to connect us are exhaustively commercialised, audiences are increasingly wary of hidden commercial agendas. A consumer survey for BoF’s The State of Fashion 2024 report, created in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, found the most favourable attributes consumers like about their favourite fashion influencers are that they are relatable (43 percent) and post authentic content (40 percent). Celebrity status only resonated with 15 percent.

Comparatively, after seeing an ad on TikTok, viewers trust the brand 41 percent more, and for fashion and apparel brands specifically, trust increased 1.5x, according to a 2022 study commissioned by TikTok and executed by Edelman Data and Intelligence. Gen-Z and Millennials surveyed by influencer marketing company IZEA in 2022 also said TikTok is the best platform to promote a product through an influencer.

Consumers want content they deem authentic and subsequently trustworthy, favouring relatable content creators over influencer status and celebrity appeal. “Creators are so important because they’re also just users — they are representatives of the communities on our platform,” says Cleary. “It’s tapping into someone who is an active and participating part of that audience and that fabric of the platform.”

The creators that typify TikTok are both aligned to this shift in audience sentiment and a partial cause of it. Relatable and typically more diverse in socio-economic background than the influencers associated with Instagram and other social channels, TikTok creators lack the polish of their predecessors, which plays a role in their success.

“The strength of that connection [between content creators and their audiences] is based on a relatability with their human experience,” says Sara McCorquodale, founder and CEO of social influencer intelligence platform CORQ. Indeed, CORQ found that 41 percent of the most engaging ads in January of 2024 were by creators with less than 100,000 followers.

“I assume that we’re in for a long time of authentic conversation and realness,” says Vanessa Craft, global head of content partnerships at TikTok. “If you’re on the platform, what you’re sharing is a window into your world, so there’s no going back.”

Establishing TikTok’s Use Cases Relevant to Fashion and Beauty

TikTok’s discovery-first approach and interest-graph algorithm has created distinctive use cases for fashion, beauty and retail brands across price points.

Critically, there is the opportunity to reach a much wider audience. The algorithm enables brands the chance for their content — whether organic or paid marketing campaigns, creator partnerships or UGC — to reach any user, whether they have followed or engaged with a brand’s TikTok page or not.

As a result, TikTok is the top platform for discovery of new luxury products or brands for users, according to a survey conducted via AYTM for TikTok in 2024. At time of writing, #fashion boasts 62 million posts, #beauty has 45 million posts and #luxury more than 7.2 million posts — reflective of the expansive content about these industries and audience engagement with them.

Some 44 percent of users have visited TikTok with a specific outcome in mind and ended up discovering something they didn’t intend to discover, according to a study conducted by Material for TikTok in 2023. Meanwhile, 59 percent of TikTok luxury shoppers reported having tried new products or brands after joining the platform, according to a 2022 survey via Suzy for TikTok.

Due to the nature of discovery on the platform, TikTok drives search around brands, their products or services. Indeed, almost a third of TikTok users come to the platform specifically to search for a brand or a retail account, while 45 percent of users continue searching for more information on the platform after they discover something new, according to the Material study in 2023.

The platform’s expansive network of content creators offers a portfolio of creatives with which brands can frequently collaborate, boosting reach and driving engagement, as well as providing new creative ideation and expertise on the platform, its inner workings and the cultural zeitgeist.

The resulting content drives purchase intent and sales conversions — 53 percent of users who have seen a brand’s TikTok Shop were likely to purchase apparel, according to the Material study in 2023.

Sales conversions can also take place off-site — driving audiences to brands’ own websites — as well as on-platform, through TikTok’s newer range of social commerce functions like TikTok Shop and Video Shopping Ads.

Critically, TikTok can also be used to speak to and engage all generations of consumers. Despite its associations with the younger generations like Gen-Z — those born approximately between 1997 and 2012 — and the youngest cohort Gen Alpha, TikTok’s greatest demographic growth is in older generations on the platform. In fact, the average age of the TikTok audience is over 30.

“What most people get wrong [is that they] assume [audiences] are solely Gen-Z,” says Cleary. “Rich communities on TikTok are the ones you might not expect, such as parents.”

“I would stand next to TikTok and debunk the myth that it’s a Gen-Z platform,” says Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer of E.l.f. Beauty — one of the first and largest beauty brands on the platform. “If people think it is just a Gen-Z platform, they are missing out on a massive opportunity.”

Featuring actionable insights and analysis from global experts: