Gen Z Voices explores the Gen Z perspective on marketing, technology, social media and the future of the ad industry. Submit your essays here.

TikTok has solidified its reputation as a highly effective platform for creator marketing. However, for many brands, activating a successful, on-trend campaign on the platform can still feel like trying to hit a moving target the size of a button.

New trends pop up every day, and existing trends can evolve in a matter of hours. Some trends have worked their way into evergreen status—a safe bet for brands who want to appear natively on the platform while considering the necessity of adequate influencer activation lead-up time.

One of these tried-and-true trends, POV comedy, combines so much of what Gen Z audiences love about TikTok content: personality, humor, and fast-paced, engaging entertainment. So why has this trend sustained popularity for years, and how should brands best use it to target Gen Z via influencer marketing efforts?

Leveraging POV creators

Comedy has always been an effective tool in marketing, so it’s no surprise that the POV trend was realized to be the ideal Trojan horse for brand promotion, uniquely receiving comparable engagement to unsponsored, organic content.

POV creators are adept at slipping brand messaging and product placement into funny posts—often before the viewer notices that the video is an #AD. Audiences are more likely to welcome branded messaging when it’s fed to them with a spoonful of sugar: hilarious one-liners written and performed by the funniest creators on the platform.

With their highly attuned B.S. meters, Gen Z can sniff out an ad in a matter of seconds. So, it tracks that they’re far more likely to give their praise—and their likes—to TikTok ads that they know are sponsored but still consider genuinely creative and entertaining.

Giving credit where credit is due

Building from other creators’ content is integral to the foundation of TikTok as a platform; in fact, the For You page algorithm tends to favor content that incorporates trending audio, cultural topics, features/effects or even dance moves. Therefore, tracing a trend back to the original poster (OP) to give credit where credit is due can be near impossible—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important, especially to Gen Z audiences.

Back in 2020, this problem of TikTok plagiarism reached fever pitch when Jalaiah Harmon, a 14-year-old choreographer from Atlanta, created the viral Renegade dance trend but was quickly obfuscated from the narrative as countless creators copied her moves without giving her credit. Brands began to use the Renegade dance in brand channel content and even paid creators—who had nothing to do with the trend’s inception—to promote their products while dancing the Renegade. Meanwhile, Harmon received neither credit nor coin.

In the wake of this injustice, many Black TikTok creators went on strike, refusing to post original content, which was being increasingly copied by non-Black creators and unfairly receiving more algorithmic play than the OPs.

In 2022, TikTok released a new feature that allows users to credit existing videos within their posts. However, more than a year later, it appears the feature has not been widely adopted. After all, the onus is still on creators to do the work of giving credit, something they can—most of the time—“get away with” not doing.

Things get even muddier when it comes to content like art and comedy. As more and more POV comedy creators enter the chat, similar skits are an inevitability (e.g., “POV: Girl who thinks she’s getting proposed to on Valentine’s Day,” “POV: Mom moves you into college,” “POV: High school theater director on opening night,” etc.). But, when you’re the creator who posted first, it’s easy to feel like your idea was ripped—whether intentionally or accidentally.

Before the internet, comedians on different ends of the country wrote and performed identical jokes all the time, never once knowing of the other comedian’s existence (“How about that airplane food, huh?”).

However, the topic becomes more nuanced when you consider factors specific to TikTok, including compensation; algorithmic biases such as white creators receiving more engagement for the same types of content non-white creators posted months prior; followership (i.e. macro-creators poaching original ideas from creators with small audiences); and sponsorship opportunities (i.e. brands paying creators to create posts “inspired by” the content of a different creator who isn’t getting paid).

So, what are brands to do? Are they supposed to avoid all trend-reactive content, contrary to it being a best practice in appearing authentically on the platform? Should they scour the internet for hours on end to ensure that the creative they recommend to a partnering creator is 100% never-been-done-before original? Should they just give up for fear that Gen Z audiences will “cancel” them for their unethical practices 

The short answer is that there is no definitive answer. The long answer can be found in the constructively critical responses to so many other instances of marketing gone wrong. Even the worst-case scenarios can be avoided (Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner ad, we’re looking at you).

Do more research into the communities, topics and trends you’re tapping into; get a second, third or even 10th opinion; partner with the right people to tell your brand’s story; and, above all, hold respect for the talented, inventive and hysterical creators who make TikTok such a powerful and impactful space for brands to connect with audiences.