TIKTOK STRATEGY 

Forging Disruptive Legitimacy*

TikTok is a puzzling and rapidly evolving world. Its distinct humor and cultural nuances often baffle outsiders.

Approximately 79% of Gen Z get their comedy from TikTok. (Source) Studies show that older generations often have difficulty understanding Gen Z's humor, which is deeply influenced by internet culture, rapid trends, and layered irony, sometimes even leading to confusion or misinterpretation of content (Source).

This audience associates social media with truth. As a matter of fact, 74% of Gen Z users prefer TikTok to Google as their main search engine tool (Source). They expect content that mirrors their own lives, problems that sound familiar, and humour that matches their own (including punchlines often lost on older generations). Traditional marketing approaches simply don't resonate anymore.

So let's talk about my Disruptive Legitimacy Framework and how I helped Garnier UK navigate these challenges. 

*This page only covers my 'disruptive' content. For a complete view of my social content work, please refer to SOCIAL CONTENT and ADS & E-COMMERCE.

Why Rebellion is the New Black

The beauty & skincare space thrives on trust, and simply looking good isn't enough anymore. Today's consumers are savvy and looking for genuine experiences and daring moves, not airbrushed perfection and safe branded content. Being real builds immense credibility, and there's nothing more real than being pretty and rebellious. 

When I joined Founders Makers in 2023, the agency's existing social video collaborations for Garnier UK were out of sync with our meta-ironic reality. The kind of content that blended into the background rather than standing out. A daredevil like myself was needed to help a global brand like Garnier truly fit into TikTok's dynamic and often bewildering micro-universe. 

Modern Challenges: The Authenticity Perception Gap

The agency established two broad content pillars: Entertainment and Education. While these provided a general framework, I found it insufficient for guiding the monthly ideation and production of dozens of creative assets. It didn't tackle what is to me the main challenge for brands on TikTok: achieving authenticity.

Brands must overcome a Gate of the Real, a sort of Turing Test for social media authenticity. Studies show that there is a severe perception gap between brands and consumers's notions of authenticity:

► 92% of marketers believe their content resonates as authentic, but:

► More than 50% of consumers believe the majority of brands fail to achieve authenticity in their content, and

► 20% of consumers have unfollowed brands for seeming inauthentic (Source)

This authenticity, or what I call Feed Cred, is crucial. Creating and sharing isn't enough - how do you make it real? 

My Disruptive Legitimacy Framework (or: earning Feed Cred)

To approach the challenge of the authenticity perception gap, I started by setting myself a set of foundational constraints and guidelines:

► Creating content that looked or felt achievable within CapCut or TikTok's native tools (even if more intricately produced)

► Embracing the inherent limitations of phone cameras, such as lower dynamic range (definitely hard on a camera nerd's pride)

► Replicating amateur or entry-level shooting setups (i.e videos that look lit, ring lights, imperfect keying on green screens, etc)

► Rather than always placing product at the forefront, including products contextually within the mundane

► Adding personality to products, thus giving them more immediate meaning than their label and USPs

► Pushing boundaries, and creating edgy, rebellious content that matched our Gen Z/Milennial audience's lack of trust in overly branded content

People enjoy watching other people - real stories, real people, real content. 70% of the time, consumers can distinguish between consumer-created content and brand-created content. (Source)  To be real, we needed core values, and a framework with which to link them and earn feed cred.

So I established three new core values: spontaneity, irreverence, irony.

Spontaneity: Seizing the Moment

TikTok is rapid-fire quick and unforgivable. Timing is everything. Trends emerge and fade within days or even hours. 37% of users rely on TikTok to keep up with trends and cultural moments (Source), and brands that quickly capitalise on popular content can significantly boost visibility and engagement (Source).

Thankfully, it is perhaps the social platform least interested in the conventional standards of quality. Green screens look most authentic when rough rather than pixel-perfect, and white borders on images that should be entirely transparent fit right in. Combined with its fast-paced nature, this means that brands should prioritise ideation, and stress less about production and post-production.

My strategy embraced this through controversial means: producing videos without storyboarding or pitching the ideas to the client first. If I saw a trend at 9:00, it meant that by 10:00 I'd be shooting a TikTok, and by 11:00 our accounts team would be e-mailing the unexpected asset to the client. 

► If the client like the spontaneous asset, they posted it

►  If not, we scrapped the asset altogether

This agile, albeit unconventional approach allowed us to jump on trends and cultural conversations quickly, which is vital for engagement. I call this kind of content Algorithm Food, and you can read about how it changed the conventional 'Hero-Hub-Help' Model on my SOCIAL CONTENT page.

Irreverence: The Good, the Bad & The Wacky

Content that turns heads equals loyal, curious and engaged followings. My primary goal was to have our audience entertained and surprised, then asking one particular question: “How did such a big brand have the guts to post something as wacky as this?"

This meant avoiding the entirely brand-safe concepts that often come across as the creative equivalent of corporate office small talk by the water fountain. Real recognises real, and therefore users recognise others users, even behind brand accounts. Often in the comment sections of the most daring or relatable content, you’ll see comments like “someone give the marketing team a raise.” 

You need your audience to believe the humans behind your brand account have a substantial say in its personality, rather than marketers with serious faces and their inanimate pie charts. 40% of TikTok users feel that brands showcasing personality are more relevant (Source). 

Month after month, I pitched increasingly 'wackier' videos to Garnier UK. And I'm proud to say they loved them.

Irony & Why It's Okay to be a Kid Again

My approach to humour on TikTok is deeply rooted in my comprehensive knowledge of internet meme history - an unique tool I bring to the table.

Memes, at their core, offer a return to a more playful, unfiltered mode of communication. They make us feel like kids again, by combining text and visual input, rather than forcing a separation. Think of the childhood drawings your parents displayed on the fridge: a natural blend of visuals and text - an illustration of your family on a sunny day, and everyone's names above their heads.

This blend of expression is natural to us, but as we mature, we're often told to choose in order to be 'serious' artists or professionals. You're either a visual artist or a writer - if you do both, then you're making comic books, and those are for children, right? You either show, or you tell - if you do both, you're an advertiser, not an artist, right? Think about it: do we not perceive reading a book as inherently 'smarter' than reading a magazine?

Memes reject that. Funny images combined with funny captions. Simple. Juvenile. Fun.

Decoding the Philosophy of Modern Memes (or: why TikTok is hard to grasp)

Modern memes are highly fluid, evolving rapidly and often subverting convention or logical expectation. The meme-savvy among us will remember how in the late 2010s, a simple "🅱️" was considered hilarious - and there's a good chance it could become funny again.

TikTok is fascinating, because it has dissolved the invisible boundaries that once segmented internet humor and user communities. Meta-irony is everywhere today. Social content producers who fail to grasp these changes to our social ecosystem cannot deliver the authentic Gen Z content that truly sticks. This is why some brands resort to archaic motifs and cause their target audience to cringe rather than laugh. If your agency proposes to incorporate Drakeposting in your content today, you should reconsider your partnership.

This subject is far more complex from a semiotics perspective than you'd initially think.  We could delve into how different types of irony can subvert narrative and structure, thus fundamentally affecting how memes look or act. But for now, let's stick to the basics - after all, if I explained everything here, you wouldn't need CRUCIBLE35.

To understand TikTok humour, it's vital to understand the concept of 'layers of irony' and, more specifically, Meta-Irony. Naturally, I made a chart:

Bringing Meta-Irony to Skincare

By combining spontaneity, irreverence and irony, we can pass through the Gate of the real, and achieve social legitimacy through a disruptive presentantion - Disruptive Legitimacy.

But how do tie it all together? How did this framework help me create hundreds of TikToks for Garnier UK? How did these core values fit into the world of beauty & skincare? Well, if you've watched the body of work on this page, you've seen exactly how:

► The intrinsically carefree nature of a skincare routine contrasts perfectly with the absurdism of Meta-Irony.

Especially when the absurd element in the room is not fully acknowledged. The presumed 'shallowness' of skincare can be embraced in stories where characters are unable to recognise the dangers or priorities around them, simply because they're so dedicated to caring for their skin.

While being robbed at gunpoint, should your main concern be fixing your messy make-up? Most likely not, but wouldn't you be surprised if a global skincare brand posted a TikTok depicting such an absurd situation, with an apparent lack of product USPs? Would it not make you ask yourself “how did such a big brand have the guts to post something as wacky as this?"  Would you not be tempted to leave a comment?

We can make our audience of ‘skincare addicts’ feel seen, while seemingly concealing our true meaning:

► Is being obsessed with skincare good or bad?

► Should you be apologetic for your obsession or embrace it with pride?

► Skincare minimalism or spending an entire paycheck on skincare and laughing away the concerns?

What is the truth? The truth is irrelevant - the questions and confusion are our allies. The statements make us laugh, whether or not they are sincere. 

It's a bold, and equally risky strategy. There's room for error, and if "I don't get it" comments are a nuisance to your community manager, you might need something safer. But one thing I know for certain:

Thanks to this approach regardless of your age, on Garnier's TikTok, we can be all kids again.

Real Laughs, Tangible Results

Beyond building trust and sparking laughter (informal yet important KPIs on their own), this approach delivered tangible results:

► +18% follower growth between 08/23 - 04/24

► +3879% engagement increase between 08/23 - 04/24

►  An average 4% engagement rate between 12/24 - 02/25

►  As many as +32,000 new followers between 03/25 - 04/25

► +11,000% engagement increase between 03/25 - 04/25

► Garnier consistently led on reach & comment engagement compared to competitors Nivea UK & Neutrogena

This level of impact for a global brand is proof that my disruptive TikTok approaches hit the mark.

Disruption that Sets New Benchmarks

I'm also proud to have created Garnier UK’s top-performing organic (non-promoted) TikTok of all time.

This comical video exploded with:

► Over 300,000 views within its first 24 hours

► Currently sitting at 1,000,000+ total views & 77,000+ likes

► Over 99% of total views and likes for April (month of publishing)

► 8.7% engagement rate (94% above average), with an impressive 2550+ comments

► Average watch time of 7.7 seconds

► Generated 2,565 new followers

► Accounts for 37% of all shares, 15% of all comments, and 6% of all likes of Garnier UK's entire account 

This video set a standard to be overcome by future Garnier UK TikToks.

Ready to Forge your own Disruptive Content?

If you're looking to transform your brand's TikTok with disruptive videos that genuinely resonate and perform, I'm here to help you. Let's disrupt your industry.

kelvin@crucible35.com