How can brands use TikTok efficiently? Try this method!

Recently, a friend from the brand marketing department lamented in the group, "It's not that we don't want to do TikTok, but we don't know how to do it more efficiently." This caused a lot of resonance.

Short videos themselves are a form of content that has a higher threshold than text and pictures. Add to that the social attributes and the fact that it is a platform mainly for young people born after 1990, and it becomes even more complicated.

According to incomplete statistics, there are several common concerns:

1. The field of TikTok is too new and requires comprehensive skills. It is difficult to find versatile people, and the cost of trial and error in forming a team is high.

2. The content positioning of Douyin is difficult to grasp. If it is too official, it will not be popular among netizens. If it is too superficial, there is a fear that the front-line operators will not be able to grasp the scale. How can the top management delegate power and be both down-to-earth and have a good tone?

3. Not to mention the daily operations, the Douyin platform also has a unique way of placing advertisements. Some brands complained that they spent six-figure advertising fees, but the fan conversion rate was dismal and the tuition was high. Some brands do not operate Douyin themselves, but use KOLs. When they inquire about the price, the cost ranges from six figures at the highest to five figures at the lowest, which they lament they cannot afford.

4. The shelf life of Douyin routines is short, and the daily intensive creative output of content is very challenging and it is easy to encounter bottlenecks.

Recently, the author discovered a special Douyin account "Junhui JAN" and observed his gameplay for a while. Although it may not be able to solve all problems, it is also a new idea for a brand to play Douyin, which I would like to share with you .

The up-host of this account is an editor with a magical camera. He looks a little aloof, but he actually has a lot of inner drama and has some attraction to a female colleague. He would have a telepathic conversation with the camera. No matter where I go, I never leave my camera.

JAN’s Tik Tok content is a series of sitcoms, and some key plots in the skits are driven by the camera. The development of the relationship between him and his female colleague Dalu has also become a motivation for netizens to follow the drama. This camera has many special functions. It can take pictures to open any door, and it can also allow the up-loader and the cat to exchange souls.

There are two possibilities,

Possibility one: the up director chose a camera as a prop, and the choice of the brand was purely coincidental.

Possibility two: this is a Douyin account jointly incubated by an up-host and a brand, and the entire existence of the account is for the purpose of promoting the camera. Up hosts and brands jointly create IP on the Douyin platform.

I support the second possibility. If I guess correctly, I have to say that this is a smart approach: the brand and the up-host jointly incubate the program IP. The brand provides sponsorship, the up-host provides the personality, ideas and execution.

Although JAN never mentions the name of the brand in the drama and downplays the brand's existence, each video shows the camera lens so that users can see the brand name of the camera. The brand joins the situational drama as the secondary protagonist or a key prop, becoming an important member of the plot.

In more than three months, JAN has gained 603.1W likes and 1.17W followers with 61 short videos. The most popular video, "Tarzan", received 480,000 likes:

JAN's female colleague Da Lu is obsessed with the divine song Tarzan and will sing it anytime and anywhere in the office, making JAN lose hope in life. He pointed the magic camera at the office, turning an ordinary door into a random door. He opened the door and threw the deer into the primitive jungle where apes gathered.

JAN just breathed a sigh of relief after closing the door, when another male colleague hummed a song without knowing it and accidentally opened the office door. JAN was unable to stop him, and at the end of the video, only the male colleague's "soul-destroying" screams were heard.

The video focused on "noise pollution in public places" which resonated with netizens, and sent the noise makers into the "Tarzan" scene which made netizens feel refreshed. The video ended with an innocent male colleague accidentally entering the scene. This mistake unexpectedly added some humor to the story.

Another popular video has the general plot that a colleague named Lu Dan asks JAN to hide himself in a magic camera in order to avoid his ex-girlfriend. Over the past few days, several colleagues also hid from the camera for various reasons.

JAN remembered this incident a few days later, thinking that they would be bored to death, but he found that they were having a great time dancing in front of the camera. At this time, the ex-girlfriend of Lu Dan appeared again in a menacing manner. The ending of the story is of course that everyone danced happily together.

A story background that is a bit imaginative, coupled with the blessing of Douyin's hit song and the tension in the actors' performances, made this not-so-complicated storyline ignite the audience's emotions within a minute and received more than 300,000 likes.

The approach of "using important props to advance the storyline " is not uncommon in traditional television and web dramas.

Doraemon, who has a four-dimensional pocket, is the childhood playmate that every child wants to have. If Popeye can launch online shopping while broadcasting online, his ability to sell canned spinach will surely be no weaker than that of current Internet celebrities.

In recent years, some snacks, cars, and clothing brands have been ubiquitously embedded in TV series, movies, and web dramas. However, in the vertical screen short video ecosystem, every shot will be magnified, attracting the user's attention and cannot be ignored. However, the way key props drive the plot has lowered netizens' vigilance .

The book "Positioning", a must-read for marketing planners, states that the "inducement" level is more effective than the "teaching" level . It seeks a strategic fulcrum, while diverging to the extreme, also focusing on the breakthrough of the "point".

In this low-key cooperation, the brand can advance or retreat, quietly gain a lot of exposure, and quietly earn word of mouth, without having to bear a certain mental burden like official operations. If you do the economic calculations, incubating up-masters who are not yet famous will be more economical and cost-effective than investing in celebrities, KOLs and other pay-to-win games, and is suitable for the long term.

For up-loaders, with brand sponsorship and incubation, they can focus on the areas they are good at, reducing investment costs in the early content production. After successful incubation, they can still use soft implantation to carry out secondary brand harvesting.

According to incomplete statistics, cosmetics brands MAC, Nongfu Spring, clothing brands Li Ning and New Banlance appear in this series.

One of the simplest definitions of creativity is, “Creativity is the sum of two different things.”

A camera + magical power make this Douyin story background special.

An up-host + a brand has created a new gameplay model in the new ecology.

This approach is suitable for many consumer brands, such as cars, digital products, food, pens... These high-frequency used products can imagine a rich range of usage scenarios.

It is also possible to put the short video gameplay of certain brands on other platforms into the Douyin ecosystem. After a chemical reaction, it may stimulate new vitality.

An idea is like a magic trick; it may fail if you speak it out.

It is unrealistic to copy JAN's approach, but you can learn from the ideas behind this gameplay. Only by constantly innovating, breaking conventional thinking, and creating new gameplay can you have the opportunity to attract everyone's attention.

You can run a behavioral experiment with a brand for several days, or work together to create a reality show or sitcom with a story and scenes.

If a brand does not consume KOLs once and for all, but instead carefully selects and customizes up-masters that fit its own brand, and jointly creates characters, scenes, plots... and turns an advertisement into a wonderful content product, then for many netizens, it is no longer important whether it is an advertisement, and they will naturally not be stingy with their likes and reposts.

In this case, they did:

1. Focusing on the characteristics of the brand products, choose an up-host with a matching tone and tell a background story.

2. Even if someone sees through it, they won’t reveal it. The brand and the up-host will jointly create the persona and maintain a sense of mystery.

3. Focus on content and don’t overdo the spotlight. Increasing exposure and retaining users are the most important.

4. Form a matrix with other big accounts, comment and like each other, and direct traffic to each other.

It should be noted that there are some things that need to be clarified before cooperation.

1. Does the ownership of the Douyin account belong to the brand or the up-host operator?

2. Is the brand the sole sponsor or is it exclusive? Does it have a veto over new sponsors?

3. Can the up-host open a new account and create new programs with other brands?

4. Where there is cooperation, there is the possibility of separation. In order to restrain each other and avoid risks, it is necessary to add a time limit to the cooperation.

“Choose a potential amateur creator, bind a brand, and jointly incubate the IP.” This is the new way of playing that I have observed.

If you were a brand, would you do this?

If you are a KOL, are you willing to deeply bind yourself with your sponsor and grow together with him? You can also add my WeChat guchenyan and chat together.

In addition to new methods like JAN, I have also summarized some common methods used by brand companies to play Douyin. Of course, many companies not only use a single method, but also use a combination of methods.

1. Krypton Gold Method

Brands represented by VIVO and Montblanc belong to the krypton gold faction, clinging closely to the official and keeping in sync with the official.

VIVO opened a Blue V and sponsored the "Tik Tok Wonderful Night", using customized dynamic stickers, brand challenges, customized music, and KOL participation in demonstrations and guidance. These various gameplay methods have gained nearly one million fans and the topics initiated have exceeded 4 billion views.

Montblanc did not open its own Douyin account, but co-created content with Douyin. The six videos it shot were posted on Douyin’s official @美好影像志, and celebrity Yang Yang and KOLs were invited to participate in the video shooting, which received more than two million likes.

The official has some standard ways of playing, with celebrity KOLs participating in demonstration and guidance, targeted delivery, boot screen, advertising shooting, customized dynamic stickers, hot search recommendation positions, brand challenges, and customized music . If you follow the official rules without making any mistakes, you will most likely stand out. It’s just that some of the gameplay is unaffordable for ordinary brands to learn, and is suitable for RMB players.

2. Stealth method, operating invisibly

Whether it is the spontaneous creativity of netizens, the merchants going with the flow, or the merchants intentionally incentivizing KOLs and ordinary netizens to create and participate in content production, there is no doubt that the story of Haidilao has become a classic marketing case of Douyin.

This type of gameplay is suitable for industries such as fast-moving consumer goods, catering, cultural and creative tourism, etc. The process of consumption is to participate in the creation of content.

Douyin Blue V has also launched a POI details page, where companies can direct traffic to their stores by locating content and different offline stores. Some companies also use offline stores as a source of traffic entry, and use some small tricks to encourage customers who come to the store to post on Douyin to associate positioning and increase the company's popularity.

Of course, if you don’t open your own Douyin account, you can also cooperate with Douyin celebrities to implant products .

Haidilao has not yet operated its own Douyin, but it has gained a lot of exposure and conversion on Douyin, actively responded to users offline, and announced on its WeChat official account that it would provide a Douyin package "Shaking Gluten Balls", attracting users across the platform.

3. Expert route, providing knowledge and skills

Brand players of all sizes use this method to attract targeted fans. Mobile phone brands teach you some selfie skills, training institutions teach you some knowledge, and adidas neo’s content is naturally inseparable from dressing.

Xiaomi has launched a series of tutorials on how to shoot blockbuster movies with your mobile phone, or use your mobile phone and other props to stage a casual concert in the office. As a clothing brand, Inman positioned itself as a clothing stylist and shared some practical tips on how to wear and organize clothes.

There are also cases where the company's founder or core figures appear on screen instead of the company. The character in "Dad's Review" is the founder, Wei Laoba, "Drunk Goose Lady" herself is a red wine expert, and the mobile phone repair platform is incarnated as "the fifth prince who repairs mobile phones" to teach some mobile phone common sense. This type of brand founder has KOL attributes and is an expert in the industry. Using individuals instead of companies makes it more approachable and authentic.

4. Scenario Method

Some brand merchants record the process of producing and selling products and shoot them into short videos just like live broadcasts.

Alibaba posted photos of its company cafeteria, soft drink shops posted photos of their queues, and even the "Heihe Kidney Sister" who sells barbecue became an Internet celebrity for her photos of herself grilling skewers and her special way of greeting customers, "Here you go, brother."

5. Creating people

Some companies take the safe and steady route, while others take the more challenging and personalized route. Whether it is like "Wangzai Club" that presents a pair of acting virtuoso girlfriends in the office, or like "Uncle Mana" and his father who jointly interpret the characters of a fashionable father and son, the challenge lies in the actors' expressiveness and the ability to produce stable and high-quality story scripts.

Douyin officially released the "Vertical Screen Advertising Creative Guidance Manual" , which compares the data of 150 short video advertising ideas and the final delivery effects of 30 brands in the platform's seven vertical fields, and extracts several rules for companies to play Douyin. Some suggestions are also applicable to daily operations. These are the real experience summaries of the brand and are worthy of study by all brand operators.

Brand Douyin operators , among the many ways of playing, which ones have you chosen and what are the results?

Source: GuGu