TikTok challenges have evolved beyond Tide Pods and right into a compelling avenue for brands in search of to create meaningful interactions with social media-savvy consumers.

TikTok trickled into the mainstream in 2019 and has skyrocketed in popularity since, cultivating a short-form video content ecosystem nearly the other of that of its primary predecessor, Instagram.  

On Instagram, which had its heyday through the late 2010s, an attractive brand presence was often one which appeared as elusive and aspirational as possible (think: the cool kids’ table that one desires to, yet despite their best efforts, can’t get a seat at). On TikTok, nonetheless, it’s brands who’re welcoming, witty — in some instances, self-deprecating — and in all instances, relatable, that rack up winning moments.

Simply put, Instagram coolness and TikTok coolness are two very various things.

TikTok, greater than any platform before it, is tasking brands with emulating what consumers already are — reasonably than crafting the ideals consumers aspire toward — without seeming as if they try too hard to achieve this (because that level of perceptible exertion by a brand, especially on the patron’s own turf, can be *Gen Z voice* ew). 

Things move fast on TikTok — literally and figuratively — so this isn’t any easy undertaking. 

Take it from Evan Horowitz, who cofounded creative marketing agency Movers and Shakers in 2016 alongside Geoffrey Goldberg, and has helped brands like E.l.f. Cosmetics, Amazon, Red Bull and others spearhead successful TikTok challenges and campaigns, including launching E.l.f. onto BeReal in August, marking the primary official foray by a brand onto the of-the-moment photo-sharing platform.

“At Movers and Shakers, our North Star is connecting brands and culture, so we’re all the time taking a look at how we are able to make brands more culturally relevant and funky,” said Horowitz, adding that helping brands forge and maintain successful TikTok presences is a process that usually comes with a glaring learning curve. “Being too polished is something we coach our clients on so much.”

One a part of this strategy is the so-called TikTok challenge, which Horowitz stresses “requires quite a lot of decisions which are the other of what you’ll often select with successful social media marketing.”

TikTok challenges have emerged partly as brands’ responses to the phenomenon of organic TikTok virality, which is proving increasingly influential in fueling brand popularity and positive consumer sentiment lately. This is very true in beauty, which dominates the platform. Based on influencer marketing agency, Ubiquitous, 46 of the 100 most viral products on TikTok are beauty products.  

Brands like Olaplex, Dyson and Glow Recipe are amongst people who have reaped the rewards of unsolicited, user-generated TikTok videos showing like to their products. Within the case of the Dyson Airwrap, which Ubiquitous reports is probably the most TikTok-viral beauty product of all time, the hair tool’s meteoric rise occurred without Dyson ever creating an official TikTok page of its own, a testament to the facility of the organic momentum the platform can facilitate. 

Now, corporations are delving into TikTok challenges as a way to boost brand awareness on their very own terms — and it appears to be paying off.

Said Erynn Keefe, vice chairman of selling at Derma U.S., who hosted Eucerin’s #28DaysofEucerin TikTok challenge this past February, “We’ve done challenges before on platforms like Facebook — they’ve never performed like this. There’s something about TikTok, its style and tools and creativity, that just really works.” 

Based on data from Tribe Dynamics, Eucerin’s #28DaysofEucerin challenge, which encouraged users to share their skin and self-care routines, while emphasizing that it takes around 28 days to form a latest habit, generated $21.2 million in earned media value, or EMV, through the month of February. 

For reference, the brand netted a relatively low total of $888,000 EMV on the platform for the month prior. 

“TikTok has created a community that likes to — and may — take part in things,” said Horowitz. “[Brands] have moved away from just talking at the patron, to creating entertaining content, to what we now call participatory entertainment.” 

The Top Five Beauty Brand TikTok Challenges, by Views to Date:

In August 2019, Movers and Shakers launched E.l.f’s “Eyes, Lips, Face” TikTok campaign and contemporaneous hashtag challenge of the identical name, marking considered one of the earliest — and to this present day, most monumental — campaigns to hit the platform. 

The most important draw of the challenge, which became probably the most viral TikTok campaign of its time and even garnered unsolicited participation by celebrities including Reese Witherspoon, Terry Crews and Lizzo, was its corresponding, brand-generated original song, “Eyes. Lips. Face.” 

Written by Grammy-winning producer iLL Wayno, and sung by Holla FyeSixWun, the song took inspiration from Kash Doll’s punchy 2019 single, “Ice Me Out,” and quickly prompted TikTok users besides those that were recruited by the brand to upload videos of their very own to the sound, tagged with the #EyesLipsFace hashtag. 

“We desired to do something fun; TikTok was still in its infancy, and [the platform] was all about song and dance, so we thought, ‘Why not lean into that?’” said Patrick O’Keefe, vice chairman of integrated marketing communications at E.l.f.

Although “Eyes. Lips. Face.” was initially released as a 15-second TikTok sound, the brand partnered with Republic Records to release a full-length version of the song, and even a music video to match. 

Today, the #EyesLipsFace TikTok hashtag has greater than 9.7 billion views, 4 billion of which were generated inside the first 4 months of the challenge’s debut, and “Eyes. Lips. Face.” peaked at number 4 on Spotify’s Global Top 50 Chart. 

Since then, brand-composed songs have grow to be a mainstay component of brand name TikTok challenges, with Olaplex being amongst probably the most recent to release one in partnership with Felix Cartal, an electronic dance music DJ, as a part of its #Olaflex challenge, which took place in August. 

“Music is critical to unlocking success on TikTok. Getting the music right, making it catchy and something that may live to tell the tale its own outside of the challenge could be very essential,” said Charlotte Watson, chief marketing officer at Olaplex. 

For the #Olaflex challenge, Olaplex invited TikTok users to share their hair transformation videos, depicting their unique journeys to healthy hair with the intention to have a good time how far they’ve come. 

The brand established a goal of hitting three billion total views of its #Olaflex hashtag, which it achieved inside 48 hours of launching the challenge.

“We were type of tapping into TikTok’s overarching fondness around nostalgia, in addition to the kind of appetite for transformation that’s so huge on the platform — whether it’s in beauty or in one other space,” continued Watson. 

Based on data from Tribe Dynamics, the #Olaflex challenge ushered in a record month of EMV for Olaplex, which netted $23.3 million total EMV for the month — a 191 percent month-over-month increase — $15.7 million of which was powered by the #Olaflex challenge. 

Being amongst a distinct segment group of beauty brands that amassed user generated content-fueled TikTok notoriety before formally establishing a presence on the platform, Olaplex has leaned into its existing community on the platform since launching on TikTok in April 2020. 

“I think considered one of the important thing successes to our organic strength on the platform is how closely our social and community team are to the audience and the community,” said Watson. “I don’t think you’ll be able to replicate organic momentum. Paid, or encouraged, momentum could be very different; our number-one objective with the challenge was simply to drive awareness on the platform and grow our reach.” 

Horowitz echoed Watson’s sentiment about organic momentum being irreplicable. 

“A whole lot of brands come to Movers and Shakers and so they say, ‘hey, we saw our product go viral on Tiktok,’ or, ‘we saw our competitor’s product go viral on Tiktok — are you able to recreate that for us with a viral challenge?’ And our answer is ‘no,’” he said. 

That’s to not say brand-backed challenges don’t have value, though. 

When done right (which often means incorporating an existing TikTok trend, equivalent to Olaplex adopting a metamorphosis format, or E.l.f. bringing its own take to a success song), TikTok challenges achieve doing what Horowitz believes ought to be their primary purpose: raising brand awareness — not pushing a product. 

“The most effective challenges are those which are concerning the brand itself, or some pillar the brand stands for,” he said. “There are other campaign formats that may drive product lift, but we only recommend TikTok challenges if it’s an upper-funnel campaign about brand awareness and equity, because those make for a cool story line.” 

Two of MAC Cosmetics’ recent TikTok efforts offer each an example of, and an exception to, this rule. 

In January, MAC tapped Cher and Saweetie for its “Challenge Accepted” campaign, which underscored a message of difficult the establishment and defying others’ limiting expectations.

As a part of the campaign, the brand partnered with TikTok in February to launch its #MACChallengeAccepted hashtag challenge.  

For the challenge, the brand enlisted 16 TikTok creators to duet a video of Saweetie’s during which the rapper tosses a MAC product out of the video frame for participants to “catch” of their duet, inviting them to showcase a MAC makeup look of their very own creation. 

“Unlike the normal, product-based collaborations and launches that we’re known for, this was inspired by that more digital-first trend,” said André Branch, senior vice chairman and general manager of MAC North America. “We had creators from different TikTok communities — beauty, gaming, entertainment — jump in, and that helped us engage so many various people across the platform.” 

In March, nonetheless, a product seeding of the brand’s newest MAC Stack Mascara spurred an unplanned, miniature TikTok challenge of sorts when an influencer promoted the product by uploading a video demonstrating the product’s high layerability. 

Because of this, a #MACStack hashtag organically took off, generating $282,500 EMV for the brand in March, and accumulating 59.4 million views to this point. 

“That was not a paid hashtag challenge with TikTok,” said Branch. “Every brand hopes to go viral, but you’ll be able to’t actually matter on that taking place. We all know that product reviews work, and putting the mascara within the hands of people that authentically reviewed it paid off for us.” 

In December 2021, K18 kicked off its first TikTok campaign, the #K18HairFlip challenge, which invited users to point out off their best hair flip for a likelihood to win a Sephora shopping spree and K18 salon service. 

The challenge, for which the brand contracted just over 200 creators and skilled hairstylists with various following sizes, generated $22.8 million of the brand’s total $28.6 million EMV that month, and garnered greater than 11 billion views to this point. 

“With hashtags on Instagram versus hashtags on TikTok, there’s a much greater level of discoverability on TikTok — trends are more often built there,” said Michelle Miller, K18’s senior vice chairman of selling. “On Instagram, you’re following people, influencers and types you already like and have chosen, whereas on TikTok, there’s type of this element of the platform selecting content for you.” 

K18’s strategy ultimately focuses more on cultivating sustained engagement than creating blockbuster moments. 

“The massive campaigns get you, possibly like, eight weeks of momentum,” said Miller, adding that a technique during which the brand constantly engages consumers on the platform is being lively within the comment sections of videos. 

“On TikTok, commenting is such an enormous deal. I feel like before, like on Instagram, you would type of get away with just leaving a heart or leaving an emoji, but on TikTok it’s like, ‘OK, what’s the most effective comment we are able to leave? What’s the neatest comment?’ — people get so excited once they see K18 commenting something witty.”  

Data from Tribe Dynamics backs Miller’s assessment that the momentum spurred by TikTok challenges is short-lived. 

While Eucerin netted $21.2 million EMV in February from its #28DaysofEucerin challenge, the hashtag only generated $147,700 in EMV in March; Olaplex, MAC, K18 and others saw similar spikes and declines in EMV immediately following their respective challenges. 

So, while TikTok challenges done right can actually capture the eye of consumers, they often don’t hold it for long, and are thus best employed as a complement to a brand strategy that comes with types of regular outreach, as well. 

And, as Horowitz points out, challenges that try to emulate organic virality or focus on a particular product are less appetizing to the common TikTok savant.  

“Whenever you’re doing a viral challenge, what you’re attempting to do is get most people to make your ads for you, which they’ll do, but provided that it’s a cool ad and it’s accessible,” said Horowitz. “In case you’re just asking people to showcase your product, one: they probably don’t have it and two: it just feels too very similar to they’re making an ad, so it’s not an inviting challenge that folks are going to need to take part in.”