The statement | What TikTok’s Rise Means for Fashion

follow Debrief wherever you listen to podcasts.

Background:

Instagram’s autonomy over fashion seems to be over. While the meta-owned app still has many users, more and more brands and creators are turning to TikTok as a marketing platform. As TikTok grew into a Gen-Z favorite, fashion and beauty used the app as a testing ground, while doing most of their marketing on Instagram. That’s starting to change — and it’s shaking up the way brands approach their social media channels.

“The demand for content from brands is getting bigger and bigger,” said BoF Advertiser Chantal Fernandez.

Key Insights:

• Just a year ago, Tik Tok wasn’t taken seriously as a marketing platform by fashion brands, who struggled to match their polished content with a loosely edgy approach. Now, it appears to be the place where all brands should be. However, the returns on TikTok’s marketing investment have not been great yet. The app is still very new, with Facebook and Instagram being decades old and having sophisticated advertising platforms.
• For influencers, wannabe influencers, and regular users alike, TikTok is attractive because it creates a relatively level playing field where anyone can go viral at any time. Spontaneous, personality-conveying content is preferred over high-production, over-the-top shows.
• Instagram still plays an important role for influencers and brands. It can serve as a channel to reach older consumers, showcase products, and serve as a secondary website or blog that people refer back to.
• With the rise of TikTok, social media is moving away from being social—and toward acting more like a kind of recommendation machine, where algorithms decide what’s shown to users.

Additional Resources:

• How TikTok conquered fashion: Instagram has many users, but for a growing number of brands and creators, TikTok has replaced the Meta-owned social network as the fashion marketing platform.
• The returns on Tik Tok ads are yet to match the hype.Despite Tik Tok’s growing popularity and lower cost compared to Instagram, brands and experts say the return on ad spend doesn’t match that of established platforms, though that doesn’t mean brands can ignore it either.