The strategy secret that will see TikTok win

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#1 INTRODUCTION

This week many a LinkedIn ‘guru’ has posted about the latest brand campaign from TikTok. Yet whilst many scramble to give their hot take they too often miss what is going on here. They miss the strategic tools TikTok is applying to unlock exponential growth. Want to know what they are up to? Ok, let’s dive in.

#2 TIKTOK IS TRAPPED

As many of you will know TikTok has undergone exponential growth of late. It has grown faster than any other social network and has already surpassed some legacy players.

Yet despite this growth, TikTok faces a problem. They are locked into one audience and have struggled to expand beyond it. Simply TikTok tends to be used by younger generations and struggles to appeal to older ones. And because any social network is only as valuable as its network effects, this limits the commercial potential of the brand. Yet TikTok has been smart in how they have begun to address this issue. They haven’t rushed to the strategic solution. They have, instead, taken the time to define better problems and in turn unlock better opportunities. Let me explain more below.

Members of the STRATLABS™ community will know that any strategy will only ever be as good as the problems you define. Specifically, problems that go beyond the obvious and unlock new opportunities. This is exactly what TikTok has done. They dug deeper & realized that the real issue TikTok faced was that culturally the platform was seen as mostly childish. It was seen as a place where teens did dance-offs and shared silly memes. Addressing this issue was the real opportunity and one, that if resolved, would unlock growth with a wider audience.

#3 REPOSITION VIA CULTURE

To reposition the brand TikTok realized it needed to look to culture once again. It needed to understand what people were talking about online and around the brand. Understanding this revealed a surprising cultural truth. As people became increasingly distrusting of Google’s algorithm they were increasingly turning to new platforms, such as TikTok, as the primary search engine. 

Understanding this enabled them to reposition their brand from a place of silly dance-offs to a new kind of search engine. A place where new things can be discovered and exciting things happen. And this is in fact, as you can see, the strategy behind their new creative campaign below.

COMMUNITY SHOUT OUT

Want to get a shout and a follow from my 20k LinkedIn audience next week? Well, every week one reader has the chance to win a shout-out from me on Linkedin. All they have to do is the following:

• Share this week’s newsletter on Linkedin.

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This week's shout went out to brilliant Lara Mulday who is also a member of our STRATLABS community. Thank you legend 🙏.

CONCLUSION

This week we learned a couple of things. First the importance of defining better problems that unlock opportunities. Second, the power of cultural truths. Ones that can unlock new paths forward and help brands to reposition themself.

Wait a minute I hear you ask? How do you find better problems and cultural truths? How do you use them to write a killer brand or creative strategy? Well if you want to know everything we have learned working with the world’s most famous brands and creatively awarded agencies then simply head over to STRATLABS™ page to find out more.  

Who is STRATLBS for? Well, three types of people…

With STRATLABS™ you can pay monthly or as a one-off. Either way, you will get lifetime access to all the material, future content, and our growing community where you can ask us any strategy questions. One final note the course can be paid for via your company so it is fully expensable or if you work for a bigger company ask your boss about the annual training budget, because that could pay for it too 😀 .

Anyway, we would love to see you over in the STRATLABS™ community, and thanks so much for reading the newsletter. I spend my weekends writing them.

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Ps we have decided to launch the full course earlier. All modules will now be going live next week!

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Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

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Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant