5 new TikTok trends that brands can follow

Though #Halloween may have been the buzziest hashtag on TikTok this October, racking up 9 billion views and 2 million posts over the past 30 days, plenty of other trends still had room to bubble up across the platform. Last month’s trends largely stemmed from the usual TikTok suspects—a new dance fad, a few sarcastic twists on what had the potential to be heartfelt conversations and a hearty dose of internet slang. Here are five of the biggest trends that have circulated around TikTok over the past few weeks, from a high-energy group dance to Harry Styles’ decade-old “X Factor” audition. If all else fails, marketers can always capitalize on the massive virality of Taylor Swift’s latest album, “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” which broke multiple Spotify records in just the 24 hours following its release. If you missed our most recent round of trends, you can catch up here. Also read: Top 5 brand TikToks to know about right now Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs ‘Benjamins Deli‘ dance TikTok may have evolved beyond the dance trends that dominated the platform in its early days, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely abandoned those choreographic roots. Case in point: one of the buzziest new TikTok trends involves users halfheartedly nodding their heads or swaying back and forth to a mashup of “Deli” by Ice Spice and “It’s All About the Benjamins” by Puff Daddy, then suddenly start dancing wildly when the beat drops. To accompany this abrupt switch in energy, users dim their room lights and instead shine their phones’ flashlights on the dancer as they flail those phones around in the background of the video. Though TikTok user @jritt initially shared the “Benjamins Deli” mashup in late September, it was user @lxurend who popularized the trend in its current form after a video of her and a group of friends dancing to the song went viral. TikTokers have shared more than 430,000 videos using the mashup thus far, many of them featuring users flaunting their Halloween costumes. Several brands and celebrities have already shown off their unrestrained dance moves, including Jimmy Fallon and the band The Roots on the TikTok account for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” and the Duolingo owl in a collab with influencer Hailey Bieber and comedian Brad Stoll. @haleyybaylee @Duolingo @Brad Stoll ♬ Benjamins Deli - JRitt ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ audition While many TikTok trends stem from chart-topping songs or blockbuster movies, others—including this one—originate from niche, seemingly random pieces of media. In this case, the unexpected source is a scene from the 2010 film adaptation of a “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book in which several characters audition for a school play by singing Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” The first three children to audition butcher the song with pitchy voices, but the final auditionee—Greg Heffley, the movie’s main character—stuns the music teacher running the play with his beautiful performance of the song’s chorus. TikTokers are leveraging this scene to comically portray a scenario with three poor or non-ideal choices (each represented by one of the tone-deaf children auditioning) and one option that is clearly the best (represented by Heffley). User @logan44yt, for example, used the clip to show their preferred 3 a.m. activity, while @clearvisiontattoos put a more sarcastic twist on the format and positioned “get[ting] a new tattoo” as a better use of their paycheck than buying groceries or paying bills. For brands, jumping on this trend is fairly simple—you can plug an image or series of images reflecting the brand or its products into a CapCut template that sets the movie clip against a green screen and label each character with on-screen text. That video template has already been used over 400,000 times, including by brands such as the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team, Vita Coco, Northeastern University and even the official TikTok account of the Democratic Party. And, of course, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” got in on it, too. @mercedesamgf1 Wait for it… 😆 #MercedesF1 #Formula1 #W11 #TurnAround #DiaryOfAWimpyKid #W12 #W13 #W14 #Mercedes ♬ original sound - filmagic4ever ‘Start making your Christmas list’ For many teens and young adults, the weeks leading up to the holiday season come with the inevitable request to “start making your Christmas list” so their parents can get a head start on holiday shopping. This trend satirizes that annual occurrence, with TikTok users responding to a text screenshot from “Mom” reading, “Start making your Christmas list,” with a list of bizarre or impossible gift requests. So far, these lists have ranged from wistful (“make Christmas feel like it did when I was a kid again”) to weary (“A mature boyfriend over 6 feet) to nonsensical (“A Big Mac, a large boke [and] a six piece chicken nugget”). The format of these videos is straightforward, with each set to an instrumental version of “Believe” from the movie “The Polar Express” and using just three photos arranged in a carousel post: the text from “Mom,” a stock image of wrapped presents or other holiday-themed imagery and a Christmas list, typically typed in the iPhone’s Notes app. TikTok users have shared more than 76,000 videos using this audio, and views of the hashtag #ChristmasList—which is included in several videos created for the trend—have been rising since mid-October. Brands including Life360, student discount website Unidays and web browser Opera GX have shared their own Christmas lists over the past two weeks, with the third jokingly begging to “leave the Opera GX basement” for the holiday season. ‘What are you gonna do with your ____ degree?’ Speaking of questions that adolescents are regularly asked, the next trend revolves around TikTok users—largely college students or recent graduates—replying to the common query of, “What are you gonna do with your ____ degree?” Their replies overwhelmingly skew sarcastic and humorous, such as user @johannakaka’s response to, “What are you gonna do with your communications degree?” being “talk shit,” and @nothaileywolf’s answer to what she plans to use her chemical engineering degree for being, “make my skincare [products].” Like the Pedro Pascal-Nicolas Cage TikTok trend from earlier this year, these videos are largely set to the chorus of the song “Make Your Own Kind of Music.” TikTokers have featured this audio clip in nearly 95,000 videos over the past few weeks—though, admittedly, not all of the videos using the song are following this trend. A few brands have harnessed the trend for their TikTok content, including the Denver Zoo and the Los Angeles Chargers, the latter of which highlights the NFL team’s 25-year-old quarterback Justin Herbert’s biology degree. For smaller brands, the trend could be a relevant way to briefly share the founder’s unconventional career journey to launch the company, as news-producer-turned-baker Chloe Joy Sexton did for her business BluffCakes. ‘Um, I like, serve’ Though this trend has been making the rounds on TikTok for several months now, it’s recently seen a resurgence in popularity after pop star Olivia Rodrigo included it in a recent video. The trend centers on a brief clip from Harry Styles’ 2010 audition on the TV music competition “The X Factor,” where he responds to judge Simon Cowell’s question of what Styles does as a bakery worker with, “Um, I like, serve.” Because “serve” is also used in internet slang to refer to someone looking attractive, TikTokers have jumped on that dual meaning of Styles’ reply to share videos of themselves “serving” with their outfits or makeup looks set to the audio clip. The clip has been used in over 20,000 videos thus far, while the hashtag #ILikeServe has racked up more than 2 million overall views and 80,000 in the past seven days. A plethora of brands have taken part in the trend since it first emerged in July, including Joe & The Juice, Beis Travel, Gisou and Norse Atlantic Airways. @flynorse One thing about us… we’re gonna serve💅🏻✈️ #flynorse #travel #flightattendant ♬ original sound - Hs love bot 🎶|17

5 new TikTok trends that brands can follow

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