The idea for the body wash partly came from listening to social media conversation and identifying that skincare fanatics are covered when it comes to their faces, but not many products have a full-body solution, Dunlop said. The campaign, which launched in February, and linked directly to retailers’ sites, has already led to a million visits to websites where the new body wash is sold, Dunlop added.
The products are sold in stores including Target, Kroger and Dollar General.
AI assistant
TikTok was selling the agencies, publishers and brands in attendance on how they could also partake in trends. One of its major product launches was for an AI assistant that helps find the right trends for brands.
TikTok said the experimental AI assistant would be available this year in a product called TikTok Pulse Custom Lineups. The idea is a brand tells the generative AI chatbot what topics it wants to highlight for a campaign, e.g. luxury travel or community connection. The advertiser types in the topic, say, “New York culture.” The machine then surfaces a lineup of popular videos related to the topic so an advertiser can appear next to those videos, inserting itself into trending moments.
The custom lineup of ads is an extension of TikTok Pulse, which launched two years ago, offering brands some security that they would run next to the top tier of creators on the app. TikTok also has Pulse Premiere, where the ads run next to videos from publishing and media partners including NHL, Condé Nast and NBCUniversal, among others.
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“Now we’re able to have a real conversation, a meaningful conversation, but in order to stand out through all of that content that’s coming at us all the time, I think we as marketers, as media planners, we have a challenge,” Dunlop said. “We need to go from just caring about being visible and being first in the feed to what value we provide. We need to be meaningful so that we earn the right to be first in the moment.”