TikTok: Study presents marketing advantages of world’s most valuable social media brand

TikTok is now the most valuable social media brand in the world, haven overtaken Facebook in 2023. On this social network, it is particularly important to pay attention to your content, as opposed to your network of followers. Based on this information, Benjamin Rosenthal, a professor at the FGV Sao Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP), wrote an article called “Marketing in the TikTok Kaleidoscope,” which was published in the school’s journal, GV-Executive.

The article discusses the rise of TikTok as the world’s most valuable social media brand, surpassing even Facebook. The platform’s revenue has grown significantly in the last two years, reaching around US$10 billion by 2022, mainly from advertising.

“TikTok’s format is significantly different from that of other platforms, and it has radically altered people’s browsing experience. On networks like Instagram and Facebook, you receive content from a portion of the contacts you have actively chosen to follow, such as by marking a contact as a priority,” Rosenthal says.

The platform offers specific creative capabilities for making short videos, thereby helping energize pop culture and influencing how users consume content. It encourages users to discover content from new sources, changing the value equation and diminishing the importance of building a network, in contrast to traditional social networks.

The TikTok browsing experience has led to changes in the algorithms of other networks, such as Instagram and Facebook, which have started to promote discovery experiences. The article discusses how this new browsing dynamic affects the user experience and lists implications for brands and businesses, such as the need to adapt to the platform’s trends.

In addition, the study addresses the specific characteristics of TikTok in relation to building a social identity, conversations and relationships, highlighting how the platform differs from traditional social networks in these aspects. It also explores the platform’s impact on brands, addressing influencer marketing, entertainment and contextualized content, and how brands must adapt to the platform’s cultural and esthetic codes.

In short, TikTok presents a different user experience, demanding performances inspired by the practices and visual and musical codes of local culture, promoting greater engagement and representing a fresh space for brand communication.

The platform offers a different user experience – more frenetic, visual, humorous, unusual, authentic and less predictable. For this reason, it demands different performances from creators and brands, inspired by visual and musical practices and codes in local culture, which are frequently reinvigorated.

“TikTok promotes greater user engagement, which represents capital for creators and potentially for brands, who have a fresh space for communication on this platform. Finally, as TikTok brings together very young people, many of them teenagers, we need to be aware of the risks of producing content for products designed strictly for adults, which might end up in the hands of teenagers. It’s up to the platform to find ways of reducing this risk,” the author says.

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