Three Lessons for Brands One Year After Doggface Vibed to “Dreams”
1. Virality is unpredictable.
Call it the democratization of celebrity.
People from every background are finding fame and pacing pop culture on TikTok, and no script or studio can predict or manipulate what content goes viral.
A year ago, an Idaho factory worker broke the internet by filming himself skating along a country highway, lip-syncing a classic rock song from 1977 and drinking a bottle of fruit juice.
That probably doesn’t sound like a video with the normal trappings of virality to you – and that’s part of the story.
The social media technology and culture that vaulted @420Doggface208 (Nathan Apodeca) to stardom on September 25, 2020 was far faster, younger, and more dynamic than most people over 21 could imagine.
Take nothing away from Apodeca and other creators – he “made the world smile” in the deep of a pandemic. But his rise also reflects the sea change in media consumption that had been building for years as viral memes evolved from static images, celebrity tweets, and music videos to short videos.
It wasn’t just about how he made us feel. It was how the TikTok algorithm calculated he would make us feel.
Like so many other formerly unknown creators who have found success on the app, Apodeca would still be anonymous if his video wasn’t boosted by TikTok.
The two prominently featured brands in Apodeca’s TikTok (Ocean Spray and Fleetwood Mac) are fortunate that’s not the case. Here’s why.
2. Brand Exposure on TikTok is powerful and inevitable.
Marketers are acutely aware that product exposure within natural video can be the stuff of *dreams* for some – and nightmares for others.
YouTube reviews, Instagram stories, Facebook videos, and Tweets are certainly influential, too. But none can shape the destiny of a brand in just 15 seconds.
While TikTok reports 85 million views of Apodeca’s original video to date, this massively undercounts the overall reach of the video and the cascade of content it triggered.
Reshared, imitated, and discussed millions of times across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, overall impressions of Ocean Spray stemming from the video are in the tens of billions.
Tom Hayes, CEO of Ocean Spray, reported 20 days after the video was published that “we have about 15 billion media impressions now.”
Even if you never saw the TikTok – which was also showcased in a big-budget TV spot – you probably experienced the ripples it created.
“Cranberry and Dreams just hits different.”
If you heard Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams on Spotify, on the radio, at the mall, or anywhere else in the past year, @420Doggface208 did that.
With Mick Fleetwood and other celebrities joining the trend and riding the wave, Apodeca single-handedly resurrected the hit record, making the band more popular on the internet than ever before. Dreams received over 36 million global streams in the two weeks following the TikTok, reaching #1 on the iTunes chart and #6 on Spotify. @420Doggface208 did that.
Ocean Spray saw the same lift to their bottom line.
If Ocean Spray’s Cran-Raspberry juice is on your weekly grocery list, you were probably dismayed in October 2020 to discover an empty shelf and in-store promotions for Ocean Spray. According to Hayes, “There’s an additional draw off the shelf, particularly with cran-raspberry. We have seen overall great sales.” @420Doggface208 did that.
Moreover, if you sold all your OCESP stock on September 29, 2020 (the day it hit its all-time low), you were probably a little frustrated to see shares ascend to an all-time high by October 23, 2020 (see below).
That big spike in October 2020? @420Doggface208 did that.
That spike in search demand for Ocean Spray products? @420Doggface208 did that too.
It’s not an overstatement to say that Doggface did more to shape the reputation and value of Ocean Spray than anyone or anything else in the last decade plus.
Although this particular TikTok fairytale ended well for brand, band, and creator alike, it’s important that the next Ocean Spray get to the conversation a lot faster. Millions of people saw Apodaca’s TikTok before Ocean Spray’s Marketing Team or Fleetwood Mac’s reps.
3. Brands need to monitor TikTok – and they can’t rely on @s and #s.
A year ago, TikTok reported 689 Monthly Active Users (MAU). This week they announced 1 billion MAU, and the sky is the limit.
The stakes are too high to depend on spotting brandprints anecdotally.
What started as a fun-and-games platform for teens to dance on has shrewdly matured into the most influential platform for sharing UGC and reaching young consumers.
It might be 15 seconds of fame. It might be 15 seconds of infamy. But every consumer brand is constantly on the knife’s edge of notoriety on TikTok.
It’s critical for marketers to know who’s talking about, wearing, commending and criticizing their brand in TikTok videos, even when users don’t tag a brand in the post or use a hashtag in the caption.
We're the only TikTok monitoring platform that can scan the content “within" videos to find brandprints like logos, brand names, product labels and more.
Content intelligence we extract includes:
The faster you can discover your brand – and your competitor’s brands – appearing in rising TikTok videos, the sooner you can join organic conversations as they’re unfolding and analyze your market’s presence.
Don’t miss the moment. Contact us to start analyzing your brand exposure on TikTok.