Foreword
Woah, woah, woah no it’s not just your morning vision, LINK Chains got a little bit of a makeover. TikTok has evolved significantly over the last year or so and with that have come new categories of trends. Two years ago we saw almost exclusively dance trends. A year ago we began to really dive head first into text format based trends. Now this year the world of TikTok has exploded leading to filter based trends, interactive viral action based trends, and so many more. So this week and moving forward we organizing the trends by the general genre that they fit into along with adding more details like images to heighten your viewership of our trendy, dare I say dashing, newsletter. We’re excited to open this new chapter and provide hopefully more insightful and intricate analysis of what TikTok is offering on a weekly basis. So, as per usual, join us as we explore through the trends and popular culture that surround the app every week, and how you can utilize it to best engage with your audience!
Attitudes & Themes on the Platform this Week
One of the big things we saw this week was the re-emergence of interactive trends in the prominence of the platform. Especially with summer just kicking off, kids and teens alike have much more time to mess around and chill with their friends. During these times TikTok actually acts as a form of interaction where friends can work together to create videos. It’s not only entertaining on the back end but for many of the trends it is incredibly fun to simply make TikToks. These type of trends bring people together on a large or small scale but regardless of the type, they tend to produce the most authentic and fun videos; something deeply rooted in success of content on the platform. As summer is set to continue we expect to see more interactive trends and styles appearing on the platform.
Audio Based Trends
Now you may be asking yourself, aren’t almost all trends audio based trends? And to that I would tell you yes, yes they are. That being said what we mean by audio based trends specifically are trends that pertain to specific lyrics or wording within sound. This is when the action or meaning behind the trend is correlated with the lines spoken. This week we’ve got a few fun ones so let’s jump in.
Can’t love you more than my hometown
42.7k videos on the sound
This trend stems from Morgan Wallen’s new song More Than my Hometown in which he has a specific line saying that he can’t love a girl more than he loves his hometown. Morgan is from a respectable hometown so there isn’t any issue with that statement but many girls on the platform have began to joke about how awful it would be if a man from a bland hometown said he couldn’t love you more than his hometown. Usually they’re inputing their own hometown but regardless it’s a hilarious little clip from every user that is a little bit self deprecating at the same time.
Brand application: Companies should position themselves as the girl in this scenario and customers as the man where they would feel sarcastically disrespected if the customer said they didn’t love the brand as much as a basic hometown.
Examples:
Interactive Trends
This should be somewhat self explanatory but interactive trends are trends that involve users interacting with others to create videos. Often the hilarity or interest generated by working with loved ones or peers creates incredible laughs or simply fun times. Most importantly though, authenticity shows through with interactive trends as most often they are truly authentic. This week we’ve got three big ones so let’s jump in.
Summer pool trend
29.1k videos on the sound
As we dive back into summer (no pun intended), you may remember that last year a smaller trend came to popularity where users would act as if they were doing a selected set of actions when jumping into the pool. This year it has already started to come back into prominence and although the trend only has about thirty thousand videos right now, kids are just getting out of school for summer so we expect this to grow a ton in the coming weeks. This trend is unique in the sense that it has become somewhat of a fun activity more than anything. If you check below, yours truly is actually doing the “spidey” and when my friends and I created the video we had an extremely fun time. It took about an hour but it was filled with great laughs and interactions generated by us trying to create the video itself. Essentially it acted as our activity for the day and with that social circles are encouraged more and more to jump into trends (no pun intended… again). Friend groups loved this trend last summer and we expect the same theme to continue this year.
Brand Application: This is much more of a trend for regular users but that means if a brand team were to buy into this and replicate the video or even have mascots participating in the trend, users would appreciate the dedication that much more and likely blow the video up.
Examples:
Riz
79.5k videos on the sound
You likely haven’t heard of the term riz and that’s for good reason. The TikTok definition of it hasn’t even found its way onto urban dictionary but we’re going to dive into it today. Essentially the term refers to being incredibly smooth and having an attractive force that allows one to bring others to them with the slightest movements. Translated: a person that has game and attracts others with ease. Basically it’s an ability where others want to be around you so without much of an effort one can get those people to do whatever they want. In the world of TikTok this week users are testing out their unspoken riz with their friends or general people in their life. Most videos are sarcastic in the sense that they really aren’t trying, but many have had hilarious outcomes like students being able to get their teacher to follow them out of the classroom with a simple hand movement. Users are having a great time interacting with peers doing this and we have a feeling that while it may not be in this trend format specifically, the idea of riz will persist on TikTok for a while.
Brand Application: Here companies will want to test out their riz on customers in the real world. If the brand is not public facing having employees testing their riz with coworkers is great in the office but for those who are public facing, testing it out with real customers will provide the most authentic and hilarious videos to consume.
Examples:
Mom: “Don’t forget to…”
379.3k videos on the sound - audio shared with another trend so not as large on its own
Moms are the absolute best at reminding us what we have to do, but sometimes kids are even more creative with figuring out loopholes to get out of it. In this trend users are interpreting their mom’s or close peer’s texts asking them to complete a task with slang and other lingo such that they complete the entirely wrong task. This is a great example of a play on words which have started to become a little more prevalent on the platform in recent weeks. Whether it’s “flipping off” the lights before bed or “cooking” the steaks, users are having a great time sarcastically interpreting actions in the wrong way.
Brand application: Brands will want to incorporate play on words that involve their brand specifically into this trend. Videos can be phrased from a perspective of managers or bosses sending an employee an action they need to complete and the employee sarcastically interprets that incorrectly.
Examples:
Challenge Trends
Trends that fall under the challenge based category are often the ones that become the most viral. If you remember from previous years things like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge or earlier this year on TikTok the Milk Crate Challenge are great examples. In all honesty, TikTok challenges tend to walk the think line between okay and not okay, more specifically what is safe and unsafe. This week is highlighted by what users are calling the “Sprite Challenge”
Sprite Challenge
516.2m views on the hashtag
For the trend, users are attempting to drink an entire bottle of sprite without burping; something that is extraordinarily hard to do. It’ unclear how safe this is but nonetheless users are taking the challenge on with open arms. Most are failing horrendously but some are succeeding and viewers not knowing the outcome generates a lot of interest for the videos. More so, the videos become hilarious because regardless of the user’s challenge success, everybody lets out a massive burp at the end which is always good for a cheap laugh. Sprite was not actually involved with generating this campaign so their brand team is probably loving this whilst their legal team is probably hating it. Regardless, users are having a super fun time trying it out.
Brand application: Most brands will likely want to avoid this trend due to the fact that it already utilizes a prominent brand being sprite. Carbonated drink competitors may want to replicate the challenge with their own drink to gain some quick views but for this most part we suggest staying away from this one.
Examples:
Simple Format Trends
This section is a little bit of a catch all for trends that are somewhat nonspecific. They happen on a weekly basis, but with these one generally finds that the trend has a simple audio behind it and creators will utilize a text format on screen to showcase a message. Often these trends tend to be based upon a relatability factor where users will talk about an experience from their own life with extremely relatable undertones that other users can get a good self deprecating laugh at. This week we’ve got two of them so check them out below!
Read the room, Bitmoji
162.5k videos on the sound
Communication online is often hard and equally as often there can be tough topics to breach via text or snapchat messages. With this trend users are joking about how their digital personas, and in some cases more specifically their snapchat bitmoji’s don’t have the greatest reaction to the message at hand. If you are unfamiliar, when you open a snapchat, it shows your bitmoji (graphic character) peaking it’s head into the message area. Often the bitmojis have grinning smiles and look extremely happy, but if a message is a tough one, the dichotomy of emotion between reality and the bitmoji is vast. Users are replicating this occurrence with their own personal experiences of tough messages received. This is yet another example of self deprecating trends taking a hold via users’ personal experiences.
Brand application: Brands can use the audio to represent situation with out without snapchat, where the forward facing attitude they show towards their customers is positive when in all reality the customer is being terrible to them or has caused some sort of major issue.
Examples:
Idealizing
84.6k videos on the sound
With past failed relationships, people often tend to idealize the situations they left in the past as they were somewhat addicted to that person. This TikTok trend is a representation of users’s own down bad experience where they are missing a person from their past who they thought were their soulmate, but actually treated them poorly. This is yet another example of the self deprecation so prevalent on the platform as users are exposing some decently personal experiences at the expense of themselves for comedy.
Brand application: Brands will want to joke here about past partnerships or deals they had which they had to get rid of. They should idealize the situation but then reiterate why it was such a poor circumstance.
Examples:
Bonus Case Study
Regardless of the content that your curated for you page shows you on TikTok, you have likely over the past few weeks seen clips from a man named Emory Andrew Tate. Now Tate is a four times kick boxing world champion and has been very successful because of this but this is besides the point today. Tate is trying to grow his content brand currently and he has a really interesting mentorship model for what I like to call his disciples. Specifically, Tate’s disciples all create and operate fan accounts that post content from all of Tate’s podcasts and other clips, trying to grow hype around him on TikTok. If the accounts are able to surpass a certain amount of followers, the disciple gets a percentage stake in Tate’s other content earnings for themselves. Yes this is basically a social media pyramid scheme but the way it is structured is technically legal and as of right now is operating quite successfully. Currently there are hundreds of accounts that posts clips for Tate and then to take it a step further they actually interact with the other fan accounts to provide immediate engagement. The web network they have structured is generating viral video after viral video and while this may be a very sketchy way of growing, Andrew Tate is reaping the benefits and his brand is growing exponentially because of this power from TikTok.
Time Capsule - Prior Week Trends Still Growing
#1 Mesh filter
472.3k videos on the sound - Filter Based Trend
Filters continue to dominate as the easiest ways for users to engage with trends on TikTok and it is showing with how frequently they are blowing up. This most recent viral filter allows users to mesh two scenes together with this fragmented transition effect. It’s something you’ll want to check out through the examples below but essentially it allows users to transition from a scene with nothing in it, to a surprise figure or object. Creators are utilizing this to act as if they are grabbing one thing or completing an action but when the beat changes the filter cuts to them grabbing something much more devilish. Whether it goes from turning a water bottle cap to turning a grinder or any other scenario, users are having a ton of fun with this one and we highly encourage you to check out examples for the visual understanding.
Applicability:
Brands will want to use this filter to act as if they are completing daily menial tasks which transitions to a person instead grabbing their product.
#2 Fourth wall break
130.4k videos on the sound - Movement based trend
Sometimes even I as a generation Z native struggle to explicate the deep intricacies or rather the dull stupidities of some trends on TikTok. This is one of them. At the start of the video a user is often dancing or doing another simply in place activity. However when the beat drops it cuts to them doing the same thing from a different angle, but the users act as if the fourth wall has been broken between them and creating this TikTok. Effectively they act as if they are sucked into the TikTok and it’s odd when they are investigated from a different angle doing it. I don’t know if TikTok users have been reading too much 1984 but this one is a super odd trend with a ton of underlying nuance that we love to see.
Applicability:
Brands will want to replicate the format but potentially try to emphasize the fourth wall break even further by showing them at work creating TikToks.