Madurai: Ishan Gupta, Business Lead – Monetization India, Bytedance (TikTok) presented a keynote on role Decoding TikTok at “Changing Media Landscape in Tamil Nadu 2020” in Madurai. Gupta spoke about the growth of TikTok as a brand.
“TikTok today has broken the barrier for millions of people to be able to create content just by using the smartphone, it actually gives them the canvas to do that and what our mission is to bring joy to people.” setting the context Gupta said.
“Everyone on TikTok actually gets that canvas to paint their story and just beyond popular belief TikTok is not just dance and entertainment. There are a lot of content categories actually emerging on the platform, creators on TikTok are across a diverse pool of audience and across geographies.”
Talking about the reason for the sudden craze of TikTok, Gupta said, “We attribute that to core four principles, the first being creative expression, what the platform essentially does is like I already said it gives you all rather it helps you break the barriers for you to be able to create good quality content just by using your smartphone.”
“The second aspect is of discoverability, so the technology that enables TikTok as a platform actually enables you to be provided to people who are consuming the content or actually are interested in your content. You are not limited just to your limited circle of people who follow you, so you can actually be discovered by people who may be interested in your content but have never heard of you.”
“The third and the fourth are actually community and causes, community is about bringing people together and we truly believe that TikTok is for everyone, not someone specific and today’s generation and all of us sitting here we all want to be associated with a good cause and on TikTok, we have multiple initiatives that we run time and again, that enable content consumers as well as content creators to participate in good cause and that is essentially what makes TikTok so popular,” said Gupta.
Highlighting on how brands are seeing TikTok as a platform to promote Gupta said, “The digital space itself today is a huge clutter, but what are three elements that are going wrong in this clutter, it is the wrong environment, audience and engagement and that is where we see TikTok bringing a huge impact to brands or other let me reverse that and say that brands see TikTok bringing huge impact them.”
“People trust people, so people essentially don’t buy from a brand they buy from a person they trust. Essentially if I am able to win the trust of my consumer, the consumer will purchase from me and that is where the power of co-creation on TikTok actually comes into play.”
“TikTok gives brands the opportunity to use the power of influencers and co-creation and to allow brands to reach their audiences, not by using a one way trusted communication,” said Gupta.
Talking about TikTok’s approach Gupta said, “At TikTok, we have a full-funnel approach starting right from top-funnel moving down to conversion, whether your objective is to raise awareness or to drive brand salience. If you’re already a well-known established brand and if you’re looking to drive relevancy, salience or you’re looking to drive performance campaigns then TikTok then partners with brands across the entire spectrum.”
“I want to emphasize here is that brands actually leverage the fact that they got users to generate content for them, people on TikTok actually take out 15 minutes from their busy schedules to create original content for brands as part of their advertising campaigns and that is the power of co-creation and user-generated content that brands are actually leveraging on the platform,” said Gupta.
Gupta concluded with the concept of how a marketer should actually decide on where he/she should be spending media monies on he highlighted three elements that he truly believes in.
