What’s next for TikTok should be at the top of every retailers minds, and today in their 2024 Trend Report they say that in 2024, the TikTok community will ignite a transformative mindset, which they call Creative Bravery.
Top takeaways
If you don’t have time to read the entire report, skip to the last two pages.
- Page 40 is ‘How to Be Braver in 2024’ and gives you three key steps that should be the bedrock of your TikTok activity for 2024 (….actually it’s what you should have been doing in 2023!)
- Page 41 is the TL;DR, yes it’s a long report but TikTok have summed up the key findings in a handy one pager!
Quick Links
What’s Next – Creative Bravery
Fuelled by a blend of curiosity, imagination, vulnerability and courage, brands demonstrating Creative Bravery on TikTok will build deeper community connections. Breaking through on TikTok means shifting from occasional displays of Creative Bravery to infusing it into their daily behaviour and strategies.
Brands that will see most success will regularly pique global curiosities, flip traditional story arcs, and deepen trust with their audiences.
This is just as true for retailers as those who are marketing services. Breaking down ‘Creative Bravery’ entails marketers getting back to what they do best… creatives that engage and entertain, but it also means that they must have backing from the boardroom and the freedom for bravery – essentially loosening the ever present brand guidelines and giving creators the freedom to engage with consumers in ways that would perhaps have been frowned upon for more traditional advertising in the past.
Looking back at 2023
2023 on TikTok was defined by life hacks, throwback tracks and thriving small businesses as the community continued creating, connecting and celebrating authenticity throughout the year. Engaging with that content is an increasingly curious audience, seeking new perspectives, communities and stories. And brands have long been a welcome participant, helping to shape the trends we celebrate every year.
In their fourth annual trend forecast, the TikTok What’s Next Report 2024, TikTok aims to arm marketers with key knowledge around their community’s changing wants and needs in order to shape the year ahead.
2023 has seen an audience of over 1 billion people regularly coming to TikTok to find community, surprise and delight. In an era where storytelling has become predictable, TikTok showcases creativity without a typical beginning, middle or end.
In 2024 we’re going to see the TikTok community build on this in ways we’ve never seen before. Fuelled by a blend of curiosity, imagination, vulnerability and courage – creative bravery will be infused into our daily lives.
– Sofia Hernandez, Global Head of Business Marketing for TikTok
What’s Next – Trend Signals
For this report, TikTok have focused on the most actionable and enduring trends, in the sweet spot of what they call Trend Signals. Trend Signals are defined as content patterns that show emerging behaviours and interests that brands can leverage to inform their longer term content strategy. These Trend Signals can be broken down into the three categories:
- Curiosity Peaked
- Storytelling Unhinged
- Bridging the Trust Gap
Curiosity Peaked
People come to TikTok looking for far more than a single ‘right answer.’ Every curiosity and interest leads to relevant perspectives, uncharted discovery, and IRL action thanks to the perfect blend of discovery and an active mindset. In fact, TikTokers are 1.8x more likely to agree that TikTok introduces them to new topics they didn’t even know they liked.
Beauty trailblazer Clinique embraced the magic of TikTok in a full-funnel campaign that captivated minds and faces by leaning into the power of discovery, creativity, and communities on the platform. Clinique was among the first to tap into TikTok’s dynamic search platform – teaming up with creators to endorse its latest product lines. The brand’s success in driving consideration through search translated to a remarkable 441% increase in conversion rate and a massive 51% increase in click-through rate.
There have never been more options to discover new ideas or things, but it’s also never been more taxing to find relevant answers. For brands, this means creating hyper-relevant, delightful, and useful content that piques every curiosity, even the ones communities didn’t know they had.
Storytelling Unhinged
Ends of stories are starting first. Multiple story arcs can happen at once. Communities are making up fictional celebrities and narratives. Against the backdrop of what’s often felt like an overwhelming reality, TikTokers have embraced a shared community of what’s been dubbed #delulu or delusional comfort. Rooted in fandom culture, #delulu is a blend of fantasy and manifestation – adopting a fake-it-til-you-make-it persona for audiences to tap into, fantasizing about their hopes, dreams or self-defined delusional realities.
From co-created content to ‘staying true to #delulu’, on TikTok, the shift where everyone can have a voice has unleashed creativity for all – where diverse voices, collaborative formats, and subject matters are flipping everything we know about traditional storytelling on its head.
IGG embraced this philosophy when launching its new game, Viking Rise, on TikTok. From TopView to Reach & Frequency (R&F), the brand showcased a variety of “let’s play” creatives, getting gamers excited about the new launch. IGG also rolled out a Branded Mission with a unique “spin the wheel” Branded Effect that invited users to experience what it’s like to unlock certain characters in the game – reaching 400M TikTokers in the process.
It’s the most intriguing narrative structures that guide viewers past the first few seconds and deeper into the story – ads intended to make users curious keep them watching 1.4x longer.
Bridging the Trust Gap
There continues to be a growing trust gap between consumers and brands igniting audiences to seek engagement beyond a one-time sale. They’re also looking for brands to lead positive societal change and transparency. Establishing clear brand trust and values are non-negotiables. On TikTok, brands have an open line of communication with their consumers and community.
Bringing direct lines of communication this to life, Indonesian childcare brand MAKUKU partnered with local TikTok creators in the mother and baby communities to participate in their product launch. These creators took two keywords signalled by a previous hashtag challenge by the brand as the campaign messaging starting point – resulting in a 500% increase in sales and 20% of offline store consumers learning about Makuku from TikTok.
For brands, it’s key to consider each campaign and organic piece of content as an opportunity to share, listen, and learn, building brand trust and values together to generate deeper loyalty on and off-platform. After seeing an ad on TikTok, viewers trust the brand 41% more, are 31% more likely to be loyal to the brand, and are 33% more likely to say the brand is a good fit for who they are as a person (vs. before seeing ads on TikTok). This is driving action IRL, as well as on the platform.
