Glossy+ members stay ahead of the rapidly evolving fashion and beauty industries with access to exclusive content, reports, and guides. In the Glossy guide to TikTok, we examine the strategies of fashion and beauty brands that have found success on the platform — from what content trends they’re tapping, to what influencers they’re hiring, to how they’ve updated their content strategies to fit TikTok — where grassroots, user-generated videos are the name of the game. To read the full report, click here to become a Glossy+ member.
In June, British heritage brand Burberry became one of the first luxury labels to run both paid and organic campaigns on TikTok across the U.S. and the U.K. A month later, the company, now under the creative direction of Riccardo Tisci and under the business direction of CEO Marco Gobbetti, recorded a 4% increase in sales for the quarter ending at the end of June. The success was due in part to new strategies, including redesigning Burberry’s logo and closing 10% of stores worldwide — but it was also a result of the brand’s willingness to experiment on social media channels beyond Instagram.
“The monogram collection resonated strongly with consumers, particularly with Chinese millennials,” Julie Brown, Burberry’s chief financial and operating officer, revealed in the company’s Q1 trading update. “We supported its launch with high-impact activations. This was highly successful in driving brand heat, reaching 120 million consumers globally.”
According to the Business of Fashion, Burberry’s #TBChallenge on TikTok, which, in celebration of the new TB monogram (standing for the brand’s founder, Thomas Burberry), encouraged users to recreate the logo with their hands, generated 30,000 videos and earned 57 million views in just one week. The campaign featured Gigi Hadid and offered participants access to special Burberry effects.
Though TikTok isn’t delivering the same type of sales results as other platforms (on WeChat, a pair of black B Series gloves sold out in just 20 minutes, for example), it is working to increase the brand’s visibility in a market with immense spending power and also building and educating a growing fanbase.
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“The [launch] of the new monogram was the perfect opportunity for us to engage with a broad group of creators, from digital artists to influencers on Instagram to our broader community on TikTok,” a Burberry spokesperson said. ‘This is part of our broader strategy to engage with consumers in the spaces where they want to engage with our brand, and it plays into our social ambition of building a brand that our community can belong to and co-create with.” [Burberry declined to elaborate on the details of its wider social marketing strategy.]
By leveraging popular TikTok influencers like Simmy Landa, whose #TBChallenge video has nearly 10,000 likes, Burberry was able to hit 1 billion impressions with the campaign.
While TikTok isn’t likely to replace Instagram any time soon, the platform’s scale and reach continues to be attractive to brands looking to drive revenue and grow their customer base. And hashtag challenges like Burberry’s offer a new, more seamless way for brands to integrate and connect with shoppers, without the content feeling overly branded.
