Connection Craze: How TikTok Can Create Unique Brand-Audience Connections

A feature story for a PR Writing class. This piece was written to shed light on how brands can use TikTok to benefit their communications strategy. It was curated to be pitched to the Betsy Plank Center's Platform Magazine. It's original intended audience was college students studying public relations.

Figure 1: Just how much has TikTok changed the way brands do business online?

New York City is renowned for the busy lives of its inhabitants. known globally as the city that never sleeps. Thousands of people have dreamed of starting their professional lives there, wanting to join the throngs of people who are constantly on the move, making their dreams a reality. Humans of New York on Facebook set out to tell those stories. Through empathetic and emotional storytelling on social media, the brand has garnered the attention of millions of people online. The brand has since seen mountains of success, traveling to dozens of countries and even producing a best-selling book. The brand has proven just how much a well-developed social media presence can benefit a brand.

Given the roaring success of Humans of New York on social media, how can other brands curate a similar response? How important is an empathetic connection in their online presence? Just how far will they go to engage their target audience?

The simple answer: pretty far. Social media is everywhere. TikTok specifically has seemingly taken the world by storm over the last four years. The algorithm that dictates the app curates its content to the individual user and promotes videos that it thinks the user will engage with. Creators, like Charli D’amelio (current Dancing with the Stars contestant) and Dan Povenmire (who helped create Phineas and Ferb), share content that targets specific audiences. These videos then pop up on the user's “For You” page. The engagement that the videos on this page get varies for a number of reasons.

Creators work extra hard to curate the videos they put out to attract the right kind of audience. The platform has attracted a variety of users although most are millennials and younger. As such, it has become a popular platform for brands who are attempting to reach younger audiences. Just like creators on the app, brands are working hard to engage their target audiences.

So, how are brands engaging with and relating to their audiences?

The Brands

Several brands have gone to extreme lengths to engage their audiences in new ways on social media, primarily on TikTok. Duolingo and Scrub Daddy are just two examples.

Duolingo is a language learning app that was launched in 2012. They offer dozens of languages and other services to increase knowledge retention when it comes to learning a language. They target younger people between the ages of 16 and 22. Their online personality consists of their owl character following current trends and creating mountains of what users are calling “unhinged content”. The bird shows a clear love for singer Dua Lipa and an aggressive disdain for those that refuse to do their daily language study, sometimes going as far as to threaten kidnapping user’s dogs and family members until their daily lessons are complete.

Scrub Daddy, also launched in 2012, got its start on SharkTank. The company sells several types of sponges for every type of cleaning. They work to target working moms, single people, and college students. The brand also closely follows trends and uses trending audios on their videos. They have a unique tactic for self-promotion that perfectly engages their target audience. They incorporate videos with a giant version of their sponge product and showcase their fun-loving CEO and founder on their account. They have shown that they listen to their audience by releasing products and making changes that were requested online. The brand also receives attention from a variety of different spaces on TikTok where word-of-mouth promotes their product, such as cleaning videos and restock content.

Both brands, having been around for just over 10 years, have seen and participated in several shifts in social media. However, their greatest success has been on TikTok. Both brands target the overall demographic that is found on the platform. After entering the platform, all they had to do was engage the users on the platform. But how?

The Tactics

When social media was first introduced as a possible ground for brands to reach their audiences, their tactics were fairly simple. The original tactic was to leave a message or advertisement, hoping to hear a response from their intended audience.

“In the heyday of social media, it was more about connection,” said Kevin John, associate professor at the BYU School of Communications. “It was more about leaving personal messages to individuals and anticipating a response. As we’ve gotten more comfortable with social media and as its use has gotten more widespread, the way that we interact on social media changes. It’s much less of a conversation and it’s more like talking at each other.”

Many brands still attempt to create engagement with this tactic although they have not seen a significant uptick in engagement. However, brands that have succeeded with engagement on social media have used a different tactic. They work hard to create an authentic conversation.

“When you look at how brands use social media, originally it was just like pure advertising. There was no real attempt to engage or anything like that,” said Professor John. “[Brands] realize that by capitalizing on the interactivity of social media then they could get more customer involvement. So, they started taking that approach, which is a good thing to get customers involved.”

To involve their customers, brands are doing just that. First, they focus on what is going on around them on the platform. In PR terms, they practice social listening. This means spending time on the app and scrolling through what’s popular. Through this method, they quickly discover that self-promotion ads don’t perform well on TikTok. So, they started to look for another route. Then came trending audios. The brands quickly noticed that by simply following trends, their brand could grow a more personable presence. With a personality beginning to develop and a better sense of what they audience related to, the brands began to change their tactics. This type of attention to what audiences were looking for helped each brand develop a sense of empathy for their audiences.

The Results

Duolingo developed a tactic to follow the trend on the platform, giving the big, green owl a more friendship-like relationship with users. The brand listened to the response of their target audience in their comment section and quickly developed a sassy personality, similar to that of Wendy’s on Twitter. Duolingo’s page now consists of relatively unhinged content that perfectly captures the attention and loyalty of its target audience.

Scrub Daddy has followed suit. The brand works to be “just like” its consumers. The brand is transparent in its dealings and has found a way to self-promote in its videos in a way that doesn’t drive people away. They follow trends and respond to comments, constantly listening to the feedback they receive on the platform. Essentially, the brand has found a way to harness the close relationship that TikTok can provide between a creator and their followers.

What Does It Mean For PR?

These brands have shown just how important PR is online. Through the creation of a new interactive and honest space, brands need to be prepared for backlash or negative reactions.

“You find that even in an advertisement or even in a post that has nothing to do with one of your particular products,” argues Professor John, “you might have people who had bad experiences with those products all of the sudden pile in the comments section and start leaving massive negative reviews or comments. It kind of short changes the effect there.”

PR professionals working with brands’ social media work must be prepared to deal with these kinds of reactions. If a brand can find the right balance of authentic content and self-promotion, there is a chance of reduction in the negative reaction that may surface. However, these new connections between brands and audiences on social media, despite all of the possible negativity, have proven to work well for those brands willing to take control of uncharted territory. Scrub Daddy and Duolingo are pioneers in this aspect and have shown that it is possible.

Through the connections they have built, both with their audiences and through word-of-mouth, on TikTok, these brands have shown that PR can thrive on social media if they are willing to match the platform they are on. After all, it’s all about empathetic connection.

So next time you are scrolling through TikTok, think about how the brands you see connect with you.