4 TikTok ban lessons for entertainment marketers

As TikTok faces an April 5 deadline to sell or be banned in the U.S., uncertainty around the app’s future is raising alarm among entertainment marketers. With summer blockbuster season approaching—and streaming fatigue and box office woes already mounting—marketers worry that losing TikTok, even temporarily, could deal a major blow to already fragile campaigns. Read more: TikTok gets aggressive with advertisers as ban deadline looms “Entertainment marketers are among the most worried should TikTok disappear … because they’ve come to over-depend on the tactics that appear to be working on TikTok,” said Ross Martin, president of marketing agency Known. As media companies have made extensive cuts to their workforces to rework legacy structures and reduce costs, “marketing teams are depleted. So it requires them to be smarter and more sophisticated than in other categories. And then you threaten to take away their crutch—TikTok.” Marketers across the media and entertainment category spent about 11% of U.S. social budgets on TikTok in the first quarter, the third highest among social channels behind Meta platforms and YouTube, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. During the quarter, spending on TikTok decreased 3% among entertainment marketers, while investment in Meta’s platforms remained flat and spending on Pinterest, Reddit and X increased. For entertainment marketers, TikTok and Instagram Reels are the two “always-on” platforms built into media plans, said one social media buyer speaking on condition of anonymity. The buyer described spending between the two as neck-and-neck for their entertainment clients. TikTok has built-in utility for entertainment marketers, such as hubs that individual films can launch collecting related user-generated content and featuring ticket sales through the platform. Last year’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” for example, used the hub to highlight a partnership with Fanta tasking TikTok users to find and share each of the beverage’s character-themed labels. And fan edits of content, some seemingly using clips shot in cinema screenings, racked up tens of millions of views for releases such as Disney’s “Inside Out 2.” While TikTok isn’t delivering the highest reach among social platforms for Tubi, according to Nicole Parlapiano, the streamer’s chief marketing officer, it provides irreplicable utility for entertainment marketers in social listening, viral marketing and audience personalization. “I’m not worried about reach—I can pay to reach,” said Parlapiano, discussing what could be lost for entertainment marketers should TikTok go away. “I’m worried about engagement, and I’m worried about how we are going to stay on top of what is breaking that day, and what the platforms are that will build tools for our viewers to make content about the things that they love.” There is no replacement for TikTok While entertainment marketers can replicate some aspects of TikTok on other platforms, “there is not a one-to-one replacement,” said Parlapiano. While YouTube Shorts delivers higher reach for Tubi, TikTok is where the brand is able to connect with its audience and reach new viewers. The platform provides what Parlapiano called the “viral loop” of being able to observe trends developing in real time, give users “bread crumbs” such as sounds or clips from content and then allow them to share it themselves. That path to virality hasn’t manifested on other short-form video platforms, said Parlapiano, adding that Reels may still be a meaningful marketing platform, but trends lag on it as they transfer from TikTok to Reels, which means marketers are too late if they’re seeing a relevant one on Instagram. She added that Reels is more “pay-to-play” than organic in its reach, in that Tubi has seen its marketing work well with its established audience on Reels, but hasn’t seen trends reach beyond its existing followers. To replicate the engagement from TikTok, Parlapiano said the streamer may take a “catch me outside” approach and pivot to experiential marketing instead of another social platform in order to re-establish “that flywheel of people creating content about shows.” Learn the voice and use of other platforms While vertical video assets and creator partnerships may transfer easily between platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, marketers should understand the nuances of each platform’s audience language. This becomes more prominent when looking beyond those platforms, which the TikTok uncertainty should inspire entertainment marketers to do, said Known’s Martin. The January TikTok blackout was “an incredible social experiment” that “just reminds you how little control a marketer has when they’ve invested so much in a platform,” said Martin. Also see: TikTok ban law—everything advertisers need to know The blackout opened entertainment marketers’ eyes to what Martin views as under-utilized social platforms, including Pinterest and Reddit. During the first quarter, investment in Pinterest grew 84% among entertainment marketers and Reddit increased 58%, according to Sensor Tower. The two combined represented 3% of entertainment marketers’ U.S. social spending during the quarter. Martin warned that the two platforms require greater strategic intention than porting spend and assets over in the event of TikTok’s demise. For example, a company promoting a visually compelling series or film by a director with a signature look might create a moodboard or style-inspo content for Pinterest that might appear next to searches from wallpaper to fashion lookbooks. While “a lot can go wrong on Reddit” given its fast-moving conversation, it can also be a way to win over deep fandoms, albeit requiring more precise targeting and predictive capabilities than other platforms, according to Martin. Reddit users “don’t like brands in threads, and if you’re going to be in the thread, they want you to be providing value not pushing,” said Parlapiano, noting that Tubi approaches the platform on an as-trending basis rather than in an always-on capacity. For example, Tubi users took to the platform last month out of anger over the show “Bad Girls Club” being removed from the platform as Tubi worked to renew the license. Although the discussion was initially negative, Tubi posted in the backlash threads: “Our guy Shawn is working on getting it back, but has been slacking so i’m dropping his email here - importantemails@tubi.tv. Do what you want with it, have fun :)” “Part of being great at social is being there for the bad and the good, and being empathetic to your viewers on what they’re going through,” said Parlapiano. “They just wanted to email Shawn and write their paragraphs for how much we were ruining their lives … and then we got [‘Bad Girls Club’] back, and they were happy and felt like there was an outlet.” Parlapiano also said Letterboxd, a platform on which users can track their film consumption, post personally curated collections of titles and write reviews, is an untapped platform for entertainment brands looking to drive title discovery. To combat platform confusion and library browsing fatigue in streaming, “we’re always looking in corners for social validation to say this [movie title] is worth your time.” To map out a TikTok plan B, marketers should be stringently reviewing audience and performance objectives across platforms when evaluating TikTok alternatives, said Courtney Hirose, senior VP of performance management at Horizon Media. The agency recommends its clients prioritize platform diversity not only to protect their marketing in the case of a platform going away, but in order to test audience behavior and reach with specific targets on them in case a quick decision needs to be made. A marketer’s best bet, according to Hirose, is starting at the data and working out from there rather than making bets on which platform TikTok users would flock to in its absence. Invest in branding and owned platform marketing While some entertainment marketers may look to advertise on social platforms to drive performance goals such as theatrical ticket sales or viewership for a single title, growing efforts in brand marketing could have a full-circle impact for those goals as well. As consumers struggle to know when, where or what to watch among the streamers—much less the networks and studios that feed “Friends” to Max or “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” to Peacock—discoverability can suffer as a result, particularly as the future of a powerful source of organic what-to-watch content like TikTok is unknown. Disney, which has taken platform marketing to the Super Bowl and the Olympics to encapsulate its house of brands such as Hulu and ESPN content that has merged into Disney+, has positioned its streamer Disney+ as a landing point for its fandom. And the platform has become a meaningful way of driving title discovery and anticipation alongside social marketing as it teases first looks of upcoming theatrical releases to viewers, said Asad Ayaz, president of marketing for The Walt Disney Studios and Disney+ and chief brand officer for The Walt Disney Company. Fox-owned Tubi has taken a different approach to building user and creator engagement on its streaming platform. Last summer, the streamer launched Stubios, a program to support young content creators in their first Hollywood production ventures, in which Tubi viewers can follow the progress of projects in development and vote on aspects that will inform the final product. Be ready to change The primary reasons marketers choose TikTok among other social platforms is “the engagement and the inspiration to act,” said Jennifer Palacios, head of client strategy at UTA Marketing, adding that the latter is something particularly hard to find elsewhere. As such, brands that have focused on developing relationships with creators may find the transition easier as those partners also work to expand their networks across additional platforms should TikTok go away. While this may work for creators with large followings, TikTok has also given rise to the “micro-influencer,” said Tubi’s Parlapiano. “Any day can be anyone’s day” on TikTok, and that has allowed for more responsive marketing that is inclusive of larger cohorts of creators than other platforms support. However, even if TikTok transfers ownership or is allowed to stay under certain conditions, marketers should continue to monitor behavior on TikTok in case changes to its algorithm or user experience evolve. Behavior could also change as a result of the conversation around TikTok’s future being wrapped in the politics of the Trump administration. While this had become “an albatross” for platforms such as X as it became politicized under Elon Musk’s ownership, that may no longer be the case following Donald Trump’s win in last year’s presidential election, said Known’s Martin. Additionally, Martin noted that the typically quick turnaround of marketing for film and TV releases in the weeks leading up to a premiere generally offers more protection than other brands who may be seen as supporting the politics of a platform. “The beauty of social is that you’re operating with culture, and if you’re successful, you’re in the moment and going with it,” said UTA’s Palacios. “That’s an advantage—that you’re not mired in a plan that could potentially just combust. People in the social space should naturally be ready to pivot.”

4 TikTok ban lessons for entertainment marketers

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