Mtn Dew, Hyundai, Chipotle and other brands are flooding TikTok for the Super Bowl, making the Chinese-based app the latest social media craze to attract marketers around the advertising event of the year.
The big-name brands are competing for the attention of the musical video app’s young audience in the week leading up to the Big Game and on gameday. Mtn Dew already claims that its campaign has generated 240 million impressions—a staggering number, even if the exact value of a TikTok impression is unclear.
Mtn Dew
Mtn Dew is promoting its Super Bowl commercial that was inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” TikTok users are being encouraged to use a “branded effect” that renders a twin of the person in the video, a nod to the cursed twins in the movie. There’s also a hashtag “BetterThanTheOG,” which ties into the launch of a new version of the soft drink.
“We’re the first CPG brand to create an effect on TikTok,” says Erin Chin, senior director of marketing at Mtn Dew. The special effect acts like a mirror, cloning the person in the video.
Also, since it is TikTok, there is a dancing component. “We had our own track produced, hired a choreographer to help determine what that choreography should look like, and then worked with TikTok to come up with ideas to bring the campaign to life,” Chin says.
Mtn Dew will also advertise on Snapchat with a Sponsored Lens, an augmented reality filter that uses "face-swapping" technology, Chin says.