Ad Age recently expanded its "Creativity Top 5" series to include roundups of our favorite special-interest campaigns and ideas from brands. This week, we're looking at the latest installment looks at the best TikTok videos posted by brands over the past month.
This month: West Elm Caleb, the Cinncinati Bengals, and “why aren’t you in uniform?”
The TikTok algorithm has an uncanny ability to show us content that nails what’s happening in our lives, including who we’re dating. That's what happened to several women who realized through other TikToks that they had been chatting with or dating the same person: a 25-year-old mustachioed guy named Caleb who claimed to be a designer for the furniture company West Elm. #WestElmCaleb became a trending hashtag, and what started as lamenting the NYC dating scene quickly snowballed into folks doxxing Caleb and contacting West Elm to have him fired.
Some brands joked about the drama, despite the real Caleb not sharing his side of these stories. But Ruggable seemed to have a change of heart, taking down its original TikTok, which said, “These rugs weren’t designed by West Elm Caleb.” But some brands are sticking to their responses, like dating app Keepler, which posted a mockup of an out-of-home ad that read, “Red Flags: 6’4, mustache, furniture designer.”
Workwear brand Carhartt recently announced it would still require all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the Supreme Court ruling against President Biden’s plan to require vaccines or routine COVID testing at companies with more than 100 employees. The requirement sparked outrage from conservatives, who called to boycott the brand. Others have applauded the company, encouraging folks to buy their products.
On TikTok, the hashtags #carharttboycott and #boycottcarhartt generated 7.3 million and 6.4 million views, respectively. Those opposed to the vaccine requirement made videos of themselves cutting off the fabric Carhartt logo square ... but it seemed like most of them were keeping the clothing.
Cincinnati Bengal’s rookie kicker Evan McPherson isn’t lacking in confidence, according to team quarterback Joe Burrow. In a post-game interview, Burrow revealed that McPherson said, “Looks like we’re going to the AFC Championship” before going out to kick the game-winning field goal to beat the Tennessee Titans, sending the Bengals to their first AFC Championship game since January 1989.
The TikTok snippet of Burrow’s interview has racked up 2.4 million views on the Bengal’s TikTok account. McPherson’s jersey is sold out in the Bengal’s team shop.
HBO’s "Euphoria" kicked off its second season at the start of the year and fans took to TikTok to show off how they would dress if they attended the series' high school. Text in the videos often says, “When you’re about to leave for school but forgot you go to Euphoria high.” The trend has become known as the Uniform Challenge. The trend uses the audio No Context Spongebob, which is the "SpongeBob SquarePants" character Squidward saying, “And why aren’t you in uniform?”
Creators start off by wearing normal clothes, then backtracking to re-enter wearing basically clubwear, a nod to the outrageous, dress-code breaking clothing worn by the characters on "Euphoria." The hashtag #whyarentyouinuniform has 104 million views. Fair warning, some of the videos are NSFW.
Arby’s is leaning into #foodtok. The restaurant chain debuted a TikTok challenge around its two new spicy sandwiches released this month—a chicken and brisket version. The sandwiches are supposedly so spicy that orders include a small vanilla shake. The packaging for the sandwiches has a QR code encouraging folks to make a TikTok of themselves finishing the sandwich without taking a sip of shake. The audio for the challenge is sung by Ving Rhames, the voice of the Arby’s commercials. The challenge has been dubbed the #ArbysDiabloDare, and has hit 6.5 billion views.
