Now that TikTok is under fire, brands that rely on it are worried

Amid the debate in Washington over whether TikTok should be banned if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell it, one group is watching with particular interest: the many brands – especially in the beauty, skin care, fashion, and health and wellness industries – they used the video app to increase their turnover.

Youthforia, a makeup brand with over 185,000 followers on TikTok, is considering moving more marketing to other platforms, such as YouTube and Instagram. Underlinings, from popular brand Nailboo, planned to launch a product with TikTok at a major retailer in August and is now wondering whether it should change course. And BeautyStat, which sells skincare products on TikTok Shop, can’t even fathom the idea of ​​the platform’s disappearance.

TikTok is “just too big, especially in the beauty industry and in certain sectors, I think, to go away,” said Yaso Murray, BeautyStat’s chief marketing officer.

Companies and creators have known for years that TikTok could be in danger. But those fears seem more real now that the House of Representatives has passed a bill that would ban TikTok in the United States unless its owner, ByteDance, sells it. (Since that vote last week, the bill’s progress in the Senate has slowed.)

Some lawmakers in Washington believe TikTok is a platform for Chinese government espionage. Parents worry it will rot their children’s brains. But many companies – big and small – credit TikTok and its group of influencers for bringing their products to potential customers, especially young ones.

Retailers, whether Sephora, Walmart, Target or Amazon, have also been big beneficiaries of TikTok, says Razvan Romanescu, CEO and co-founder of Underlinings and 10PM Curfew, a company that connects content creators with brands.

“When something goes viral on TikTok, they sell out,” Romanescu said. “So I feel like the whole ecosystem is powered by the discoverability that TikTok provided.”

For some brands, TikTok has become an integral part of marketing strategy and revenue growth. This is partly because the short videos are easily digestible for consumers and partly because marketing on the platform is relatively cheap for smaller brands. TikTok Shop, which launched last year and allows shoppers to purchase products directly through the app, has become especially popular among beauty and fashion brands.

“Before Covid, the beauty category was quite flat and growing maybe a few percentage points per year,” says Anna Mayo, vice president of beauty and personal care at research firm NIQ. But during the pandemic, as consumers had more time on their hands and Zoom calls became more popular, TikTok’s beauty and skincare videos exploded.

“Since then it has been all about growth in the beauty industry and it has not slowed down,” Ms Mayo said. “TikTok is a major driver of that growth.”

New products or clothing can be promoted by individuals who, unlike movie stars or models, feel more recognizable to viewers. The short how-to videos can show you how to best mix and match spring sweaters and jeans, or how to apply toner, serums, moisturizers and sunscreen in a morning skincare routine. Some people say they’re more likely to go to TikTok than Google for shopping.

“The first video was a makeup tutorial, showing how to flawlessly cover acne with three products,” says Mikayla Nogueira, a 25-year-old influencer who started making TikTok videos four years ago. “You can learn a new skill in just 60 seconds.”

That was when Ms. Nogueira found herself with time on her hands after her university halted classes and Ulta Beauty, where she worked, closed its stores because of the pandemic. Today, she has 15.5 million followers on TikTok and regularly collaborates with beauty and skincare brands.

While larger companies can spend marketing dollars on various sites, TikTok offers a more affordable advertising channel than platforms like Google and Meta, which own Instagram.

“For a direct-to-consumer company like ours, the platform is very unique,” ​​says Nadya Okamoto, who started posting TikTok videos about her company’s organic menstrual products, August, in the summer of 2021.

First, TikTok’s “For You” feed continually puts August’s videos in front of new consumers, rather than those who have chosen to follow the brand on other social media platforms like Instagram. Second, the platform allows Ms. Okamoto to be an internal lead content creator.

“Other brands spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising every month, and we spend virtually nothing,” she said.

When asked about a possible TikTok ban, Fiona Co Chan, the CEO and co-founder of Youthforia, said: “I don’t know if anything could fill the gap in the same way.”

TikTok allows Frida to talk about her baby and postpartum products in ways that other advertising and social media platforms might consider taboo, says Chelsea Hirschhorn, the company’s founder. The brand was a relative latecomer as an active user of the app – posts increased about a year ago – but has around 123,000 followers and several videos have gone viral.

Still, Ms. Hirschhorn said, there are legitimate concerns about TikTok disappearing or changing in some way, and Frida isn’t overly reliant on the app. It has figured out how to advertise both in traditional forums (it is now sold in 4,000 Walmart stores in the United States) and in more creative ways (it sponsored Jason Kelce’s pregnant wife, Kylie, at the Super Bowl when his Philadelphia Eagles played in the game). last year).

“I think it is really important that brands have a robust, robust marketing plan across a variety of media channels, both traditional and emerging, to meet any future challenge,” said Ms. Hirschhorn.

While some companies are working on contingency plans for new products, others are watching and hoping that lawmakers won’t ban the platform.

At BeautyStat, Ms. Murray said she was “trying not to get too alarmed by everything that was going on because I think a lot of brands would suddenly experience a big gap in their sales.” She added: “It would be very damaging.”