Slim Jim’s engagement with TikTok users, more than any other metric, has been responsible for the brand’s rapid growth on the platform, Weissbrot said. Since uploading its first video to TikTok on Feb. 4, Slim Jim has accumulated its following entirely through organic growth, surpassing TikTok giants like Nike, which has 2.6 million followers, and McDonald’s 2.3 million followers.
“We didn’t just blow right by them from the commentary or followership, but the amount of actions that were driven,” Weissbrot said. “None of [our content] is technically viral—it’s performing at our baseline—but we’re the first brand on TikTok to be a viral commenter. To create a groundswell of people all wanting to see what we have to say and what we have to do, creating content with us and on our behalf.”
Beyond encouraging other users to create videos aimed at capturing Slim Jim’s attention, the brand’s social media team also regularly produces its own content to appeal to its meme-loving community known as the “Long Boi Gang”—a nod to how many users referred to the brand’s meat sticks as “long bois” in Instagram comments, Weissbrot said.
To ensure the brand is producing fresh, relevant content, 180’s video producers focus on timeliness rather than high production quality; in Weissbrot’s words, “The goal is not to be the most crafted, but the most contextually and culturally aware.” Both 180 and Conagra’s social media teams are fully immersed in the TikTok world and will often bounce ideas off of each other in a shared group chat when they encounter a trend on the platform. And, because members of Conagra’s legal team are also members of that chat, these potential videos can be greenlit within just a few hours.
Many of Slim Jim’s videos perpetuate in-jokes and concepts that originated on the brand’s Instagram page, from the “meatric system” that uses the brand’s products to measure different objects, to faux pasta recipes using Slim Jims in video segments called “Slimguine.” Most recently, the brand has played into the “GigaChad” meme and its notion of extreme masculinity and brawniness, with 180’s designers developing a “GigaJim” 3D model that transformed the meat stick into an incredibly muscular golden man. Some of the brand’s memes have even been incorporated into the product itself, such as the community’s “long boi” moniker adorning the packaging for some meat stick varieties.