Ad Age 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: Microsoft, the Indianapolis Colts, and Scrub Daddy.
We’ve all done it. You walk away from your computer for one minute and your online status changes to “away.” In the work-from-home, hybrid era, this has several employees annoyed at Microsoft Teams’ status icon. One user commented on a Microsoft TikTok that one way to seem “online” was to start a PowerPoint slideshow. But Microsoft had its own solution—a crab.
Microsoft’s TikTok shows one end of a red ribbon being tied around the claw of a toy crab, and the other end around a Microsoft computer mouse. The crab then scurries away, dragging the mouse with it, and thus keeping the Teams status online. The top comment reads, “The fact that this is coming from an official Microsoft account is sending me.” The simple video acknowledging this first-world problem has more than 917,000 views.
Little Caesars usually turns to personified pizza boxes or the brand’s “Stuffedfluencer”—a felt mascot who is supposedly stuffed with cheese—for TikToks (many of which have earned millions of views). But fans seem to be happy with seeing a real person in front of the camera for some of the pizza chain’s latest videos. One TikTok features a social media manager looking at a wall of positive comments for an “ego boost” after someone annoyingly asks to bring back the chain’s pretzel crust pizza, then shutting their computer at a comment asking for free pizza. The TikTok has over 4 million views. Little Caesars recently replaced Pizza Hut as the NFL's pizza sponsor.
Sports teams’ content generally lends itself to good TikToks, as is the case with the Indianapolis Colts. The football team’s mascot, a blue horse named, well, Blue, makes frequent appearances on the team’s TikTok. In a recent video, Blue does the Bucket Challenge (which invovles giant buckets filled with water and arranged beer-pong style) with Colts quarterback Matt Ryan. The video has over 3 million views, with some Atlanta Falcons fans commenting that while they missed Ryan, they were glad to see him having a good time. The TikTok is a great example of showing behind-the-scenes moments. The Colts also had a video of its cheerleaders kicking field goals go viral.
TikTok is often all about audio trends, and it’s nice to see a brand account do one well. A current trending audio by Impetuous_93 goes, “I’m alive! I’m dead. I’m watching TV. I’m looking at you. Fuck you. I’m dead again. I’m up! Run faster than this bitch around the house!” The trend has been especially popular among dog owners, and wives and girlfriends demonstrating their mood swings.
Scrub Daddy did its own version of the trend, adding funny touches like watching Spongebob Squarepants for the “I’m watching TV” line. The easy lean into viral audio has helped the video reach over 6.7 million views.
Thanks to Netflix's “Drive to Survive” Formula 1 teams have gotten a boost on social media. Mercedes-AMG Petronas is known for having a strong social media team that understands and embraces memes and trends. They even recently made a joke, on LinkedIn of all places, about their usual graphic designer being off for the week of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, so someone else tried their hand at it.
The Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team's TikTok has multiple viral videos, but one of Team Principal and CEO Toto Wolff did especially well. The video shows Wolff giving the social media manager a slow-motion fist bump, set to a snippet of audio from the song “The Way I Are” by Timbaland. The seven-second video has more than 10.7 million views. Female fans especially loved the video, with one commenting, “Admin knows their audience."
