TikTok in 2020 was the year of Dalgona coffee, Tiger King, songs. They were impressed by isolation-fuelled boredom, instructional hacks, political discourse, lockdown traits, and older generations scurrying over to the platform. We additionally noticed extra unorthodox and surprising brands discover their ft on the app as OOH promoting became futile because of the pandemic. These things set the inspiration for brands utilizing TikTok in 2021. We have been maintaining a close eye on the brands making a splash at the beginning of the year.
Who has been turning our heads? Let’s discover out who’s the best of brands utilizing TikTok in 2021.
Ryanair: Turning trends into viral moments
This one surprised us. Who would’ve thought that an airline, within the midst of a pandemic might actually make waves and prepare for take-off on TikTok? (excuse the pun). Properly, I guess it just goes to show that TikTok can really make it work for any brand.
They began their account around May 2020 and have managed to rack up 139k followers and 2.4 million likes. The #ryanair hashtag has even accrued 90.7 million views! Their content material normally revolves around what’s trending at the time and incorporates clips of their planes and behind-the-scenes footage. I consider that the reason they’re receiving such adoration for their videos is pure. Customers are surprised at how they’ve efficiently been able to make something as mundane as an airline hilarious, cool, and very ‘Gen Z’. Additionally, they just don’t take themselves too seriously.
One of their most popular videos is definitely very simply done. It’s a video of one among their planes moving towards one of their plane instructors. However, they overlaid the video with a viral song known as ‘Walk’ by Saucy Santana that was circulating TikTok. They were able to completely draw customers in with 4.3 million views and 1.1 million likes.
Another high-performing video of theirs leverages an identical hack. This video with 1.6 million views, is just a clip of their airplane in the sky coupled with a viral sound and textual content memes. Viral sounds and textual content memes occur to be two of the most powerful substances needed to deliver a high-caliber piece of content material on TikTok. They were able to craft a seemingly effortless viral video from 1. Taking note of the popular sounds and trends on the platform and 2. Implementing textual content memes – the language of TikTok.
Individuals are loving these videos a lot that they’ve begun to generate a considerable amount of curiosity within the comments around who’s managing the account. Amongst these comments, customers are additionally offering their stamp of approval and displaying their help for the page. A few of these include: “the only good person who works for Ryan air is this TikTok person”, “Now here’s a firm that is aware of the best way to utilize TikTok” and “I live for Ryanair TikTok”.
Yahoo: Offering hot political news to Gen Z
In case you instructed me Yahoo News would have 1.1 million followers in 2021. A couple of years ago, I don’t assume I’d have believed you. However, TikTok has transformed massively since then and has moved towards more critical, instructional content (indicated in their #LearnOnTikTok initiative).
Yahoo created their first video on TikTok on the 4th March 2020. It has since been able to drive a mammoth of 52.9 million likes (at the time of writing). Lots of their content consists of bite-sized chunks of information and updates concerning US politics, clips from necessary US dates such as Biden’s inauguration. In addition to, alternatives for their followers to interact with their content by asking for their ideas on particular matters.
Their account is dominated by one face specifically; a journalist referred to as @juliamunslow. She features on their page so commonly because of the face of Yahoo News. We’ve seen this work for comparable accounts before such as @washingtonpost where Dave Jorgenson, also called the ‘Washington Post TikTok guy’ creates hilarious, on-trend videos for the profile. This has confirmed effective in solidifying brand consciousness and affinity with their viewers. They’ve made it simple for their viewers to distinguish their content from different brands.
This is one of their most engaged videos with 5. Four million views and 1.2 million likes (at the time of writing). Julia talks about what Biden did on day 2 of becoming President of the US and from the comments. It’s clear to see that the customers on TikTok are politically engaged and in the political discourse occurring on the platform.
Leveraging TikTok to precise one’s political identification has proved extremely popular amongst customers since 2020. A year characterized by the pandemic, political unrest, and protests. We’ve seen users interact in political discussion, show their affiliation with a particular political group, and stand up for issues that they consider in.
Little Moons: One of the best food brands utilizing TikTok
Little Moons are not simply small celestial bodies that orbit planets. If I mentioned Little Moons to a TikTok person, they’d let you know that it’s the latest TikTok trend. Mochi ice cream brand that has taken the entire TikTok world by storm.
Although Little Moons have been around for a while, it seems that TikTok has put it in front of TikTok customers everywhere and compelled them to expire of their homes, discover the nearest retailer and grab themselves all of the different flavors of Little Moons to see if they reside up to the internet hype.
They started their account in August 2020 and are now at 63.7k followers and 932.2k likes. I’d describe their content material as being very on-trend as they, similarly to Ryanair, are quick to jump on the trends and incorporate viral sounds of their videos. Nevertheless, I’d say that their most popular videos attraction to a selected community on TikTok that significantly enjoys ‘satisfying’ food content.
This and this video are two of their highest-performing videos with a combined 3.6 million views and 251.9k likes. Each of those videos pairs viral sounds with the squishing of the mochi’s which correspond with a popular meal trend on TikTok where users either cut into, crush, smash or create ASMR out of their food. These are hugely popular amongst TikTok customers and Little Moons has achieved an amazing job at tapping into that.
What’s more, they’ve additionally succeeded in creating two organic hashtags surrounding their brand. #littlemoons has garnered 26.5 million views and #littlemoonsmochi has 23.9 million views. So many customers became so curious concerning the mochi balls that they felt compelled to purchase them and evaluate them on TikTok for everyone else to see. That’s why you’ll see predominantly ‘review’ and ‘testing’ videos on these hashtags. This mochi craze has even seen Little Moon’s sales skyrocket by 700% at Tesco.
This is the exact response you’d want as a food brand on TikTok. I’ve to commend them for creating nice content that sparked curiosity in customers and creates an army of followers. That’s results in millions of views without them having to lift a finger.
Conclusion
TikTok has grown exponentially since 2019. These new changes open up the chance for varied different brands as we have shown in this article on the best of brands utilizing TikTok in 2021.