TikTok’s Marketing Minefield
Navigating Digital Consumerism
—by Madylin Eberstein
TikTok. As I scroll, audio blares from my phone speaker like some forbidden siren call. My thumb pedals mechanically as I am drawn further out to sea.
Aptly named, the new social media platform has consumed the lives–and wallets–of young people everywhere since its launch in 2016, and since then, TikTok has become the authority for what is trending.
On TikTok, it is common for short videos to become highly sensationalized or “viral,” and users become transfixed on the idea that their content or account might soon, too, “blow up.” The result? TikTok has since become a breeding ground for aesthetic hegemony. Trending clothes, such as the ubiquitous TikTok leggings or this summer’s viral Strawberry Dress, tech equipment, like colorful LED lights, and more leave users always wanting–and buying–more.
For some more than others, the app has become a recognizably consumerist, de facto marketplace, inspiring the trending tagline, “TikTok Made Me Buy It.” Aside from a handful of viral products, many users constantly see products to buy and businesses to support. Whether to be trendy, unique, beautiful, or helpful, TikTok’s pressure to spend has become a rampant issue on the app.
Navigating the App
At twenty-two years old, Holly is immersed in consumerist culture, working part-time in retail and in her free time, shopping online and watching TikTok. “I watch too much [TikTok],” she admits, around 3 hours per day. “I watch that instead of Netflix or Hulu.”
Like many, Holly is also a habitual online shopper. In fact, on the day of our conversation, she had just spent over one hundred dollars on Amazon goods. Before that, she bought a new pair of Fabletics leggings. “I have six of them already, and I don’t exercise.”
For Holly and others like her, “impulse buying” is a huge problem, a way of “treating herself” during bouts of college stress. Watching TikTok certainly does not help this habit, either. Her For-You Page, TikTok’s tab of recommended videos, is populated by beauty, skincare, fashion, and even weight-loss product recommendations, which, admittedly, affect Holly heavily.
One of Holly’s latest purchases includes these Korean exfoliating skin cloths. This type of product is often referenced on SkinTok, a subcommunity of the app featuring skincare product tips, reviews, and recommendations. Though SkinTok may be the most cleverly named subgroup, as a whole, TikTok is segmented into many other user factions. Some are political, some appeal to aspect users’ identity or location, and some, like SkinTok, are united through unique consumerist inclinations.
Playing With Identity
But how do these communities form in the first place? The answer is via a complicated recommendation algorithm that considers users’ location, device settings, engagement, keywords, hashtags, and even more to determine to which communities they belong. It’s a neat trick, and all in all, the TikTok algorithm helps users find the content they will (presumably) like best. However, this algorithm and the notion of a For-You page can be quite troubling as it absolves users of the choice in what kinds of content they want to view. Instead, this algorithm has a way of reading user statistics to uncover their racial, gender, or sexual identity, and what TikTok uncovers about its users can determine how they interact with the app.
For many, this algorithm has even uncovered unknown aspects about themselves. Jess Joho for Mashable, Amalie McGowan for Repeller, and many other users came to rethink their sexuality because of the app. More profoundly, TikTok began populating their feed with videos intended for or inspired by the LGBTQ+ community based on their other aesthetic or cultural interests, claiming that “TikTok knew I was bi” or “knew my sexuality” before they did. In this way, the TikTok algorithm both utilizes and reinforces preexisting gender and racial lines of our society.
For example, Daniel Shiffman expresses that he has never been pressured to buy things online, raising an eyebrow at the mention of this phenomenon. Instead, his For-You page is awash with references to anime, gaming and meme culture. “Sometimes there’s mention of some new game,” he tells me, but even then, the pressure to buy is missing. Ultimately, the decision is up to him.
Given the TikTok algorithm, its tendency to classify users into gendered and other categories, and the bombardment of young women’s feed with consumerist content, an interesting image emerges of what it means to be known as a woman. In some capacity, the answer to this question has to do with appearance, the leggings that can reshape your figure, or the skincare routine that will finally make you flawless. It seems that to TikTok, being a woman means buying things.
For Holly, specifically, her online, algorithmic identity as a woman and the buying power it entails means that her feed is overrun with allusions to sexual desirability and the female beauty standard. In addition to the weight-loss inspired videos and product recommendations, she says that her For-You page is “filled with twerking videos” and other media that presupposes an acceptable female silhouette. SkinTok is another example of this kind of insecurity-inspiring content, repeatedly reminding users of how healthy, attractive skin should look, feel, and behave and encouraging them to buy products to achieve this ideal.
However, Rachel Blood is still able to use TikTok differently. At twenty-three, she belongs to an unofficial sub-generation known as “Zillennials,” people born during the transition between the Millennial (born 1981-1996) generation and Generation Z (1997-present) and who embody characteristics of both groups, according to the Pew Research Center. Because of this generational gap, Rachel was reluctant to download TikTok for a long time, but even after doing so, she claims that she is normally “not impressed” by the products or stores she comes across on the app, perhaps because of her unique age.
Back to Business
Rachel is not the first to notice this. According to Dr. Puneet Manchanda and Prashant Rajaram, two marketing professors at the University of Michigan, this age gap is noteworthy. “The audience for TikTok skews much younger than, say, the audience for Instagram.” As a result, traditional marketing tactics are less effective on the app, causing many brands to steer clear of the medium.
Instead, the product recommendations that do exist often depend on “word-of-mouth” marketing. This kind of content can be sponsored or not, but what inspires independent users to promote a product is often their own volition. Both paths comprise what is called “earned media,” wherein product recommendations are independently-spurred but can be motivated through a company’s public relations initiatives.
“Viewers feel that the information is authentic and genuine,” says Manchanda and Rajaram but note that there is still very little information about the world of influencer marketing–much less the kind of colloquial, unsponsored marketing rampant on TikTok. In addition, the pair warns that “most influencers do not provide independent product recommendations.” What may appear to be a genuine referral or review may, in fact, be an attempt to get the attention of a particular brand.
In the case of the Strawberry Dress, Manchanda and Rajaram remark that this trend was a special case, indeed. They claim that this is “an example where the influencer Lirika Matoshi’s post sparked organic discussion about [the dress],” and since there is no “universal formula” to inspire this kind of dialogue, marketers will forever be chasing the high of earned media value. “The simple rule is that marketers go where the ‘eyeballs’ go.”
Is it All an Accident?
From Manchanda and Rajaram’s testimony, it appears that the TikTok consumerist landscape that has been affecting Holly and those like her is largely not the work of formal, corporate marketing after all. Indeed, the inundation of content recommending products, inspiring insecurity, and pressuring users to buy is about as authentic as possible. So where is it coming from?
Since the end of the World War II, Americans have been primed to believe that spending is not only unavoidable but a healthy economic practice. From then on, increasingly extensive marketing campaigns have prolonged and even strengthened American consumerist ideology, and much of this marketing both relies on and perpetuates psychological distress. Not by accident, we believe that the more we spend, own, and have, the happier we will be.
Born into this mindset, the American youth populating TikTok thus become the next iteration of this consumerist culture, ready to buy up whichever viral product comes across their feed.
The Reality
In the end, Holly bought the TikTok leggings.
How did it go? She sent them back the next day. Despite the attention the leggings had received and the thousands of videos posted in their honor, Holly says that ultimately, they were “anticlimactic” at best. With all the hype surrounding the product, this was clearly not the outcome she had expected, but maybe she will think twice before buying into the next TikTok trend. As for the rest of the app’s users, online consumerism, and the endless cycle of buyer’s remorse, there seems to be no end in sight.
Feature photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash.