#SavorTheFlavor – TikTok Marketing with Food Influencers

#SavorTheFlavor – TikTok Marketing with Food Influencers


TikTok is a short-form video-based social media platform where users can create quick videos set to popular music snippets. The app has accumulated over 500 million active monthly users globally, giving fierce competition to other video platforms like YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram.


These staggering numbers have caused many influencers to create an account on TikTok and build a presence there as well. In light of this migration, brands are beginning to realize the value of TikTok as an advertising platform and connecting with the audience through TikTok creators.


#SavorTheFlavor: Collaborating with Food Influencers


Despite the large active user base, TikTok still hasn’t evolved as an advertising platform but it is getting there slowly. As brands look to utilize influencer marketing on the platform, TikTok itself is utilizing the strategy to generate brand awareness and increase the number of downloads. TikTok partnered with food and cooking influencers popular on both platforms to execute a creative campaign on Instagram.


The campaign had 2 primary objectives, first, drive awareness about TikTok by introducing the platform’s unique format and community to the influencers’ audience. Second, encourage more downloads of the app through the promotion of #SavorTheFlavor contest. Using Instagram as the platform, TikTok collaborated with the following six macro and mid-tier influencers:


  • Devour Power
  • Preppy Kitchen
  • Food With Michel
  • Cheat Day Eats
  • Chelsey White
  • Succulent Bite

Strategy


Challenges are extremely popular on TikTok as seen by the results from Jimmy Fallon’s #TumbleweedChallenge, #SharpieChallenge and #InMyFeelings Challenge. TikTok chose a similar route to attract food lovers to their platform by partnering with food and cooking influencers on Instagram with the #SavorTheFlavor Challenge.


In the challenge, people had to download TikTok, create food videos with #SavorTheFlavor and the winning video would win an all-expenses paid trip to New York City’s Restaurant Week. This challenge encouraged a lot of downloads and introduced the format and the community on the TikTok platform.


Food influencers created time cut videos of food preparations, set to music which is the kind of content generally found on TikTok. The creators asked their followers to participate in the challenge while asking them to download the app, use #SavorTheFlavor and tag @tiktok in the caption. Some videos were made on the TikTok platform, bearing the app’s logo and the creator’s username while others were shared to the account. One of the key things to note is that the creators declared the paid partnership with TikTok using Instagram’s Paid Partnership tag and some used hashtags like #ad to do the same.


Results


Preppy Kitchen


The Preppy Kitchen is the food blog of John Kanell, a food blogger. Kanell’s video was shot on the TikTok app. His caption promoted the contest and the app in a conversational manner. The video accumulated 400K+ views, close to 16K likes and almost 200 comments.


Food with Michel


Food enthusiast and blogger Michel Phiphak of Food with Michel gave away the Thai Tea Monster Milkshake from Cafe 86 in an Instagram “Paid Partnership” post promoting the challenge and the TikTok app in the caption. He tagged TikTok, Cafe 86 and a few friends, inviting them to participate and help spread the word. The post amassed more than 100K views, 5700+ likes and 40 comments.


Chelsey White


Chelsey White (IG: @chelsweets) is a self-proclaimed “cake content creator”. In her caption, she invited food lovers to participate in the challenge and download TikTok. She used Instagram’s “Paid Promotion” tag and #ad in the caption. She tagged the TikTok Instagram account and other food influencers in the caption. The post accrued more than 200K views, over 8.5K likes and 32 comments.


Key Takeaways


  • In total, the #SavorTheFlavor challenge targeted over 3 million Instagram users, accumulating over 1 million views, 40K likes and 400 comments. We can learn a lot of things from this campaign like:
  • Leveraging the continuing and growing popularity of challenges on TikTok as a means of promotions
  • Combining contest & challenges with influencer marketing results in excellent engagement
  • The promotion of TikTok videos on Instagram is a great example of the benefits of cross-posting and repurposing content across multiple platforms