The purpose of this paper is to help readers to understand the influence the social media app Tiktok now has on what’s trending in the fashion community. I will be arguing that in order for fashion companies targeted at Gen Z women to be relevant, they must have somewhat of a Tiktok presence relating to the stream of communities and social media. I will be discussing the works of Wellman and Abidin amongst others to support my argument as well as discussing concepts such as the networked individual and different marketing strategies companies should be implementing.

In a world of the networked individual (Wellman, 2018), it is harder to capture the attention of a consumer than ever. Gone are the days of print magazines for women to see what the latest fashion labels are pumping out on the runway, and then charging through came Web 2.0. No longer do young women have the patience, time or money to be buying magazines when they can see the latest looks straight from their screens. According to Fillmore’s (2015) study, daily internet usage does lead to shorter attention span meaning it is harder than ever for companies to be grabbing the attention of consumers to buy their products

With the introduction of Web 2.0 came the introduction of social media. First came emails, even before Web 2.0 in 1971 when Ray Thompson wanted a way for to leave messages for his colleagues but not having to use the same computer (Email Marketing, 2021). This was one of the first uses of the internet in connecting people over distance and from this idea sparked so many others in the creation of social media.

The creation of emails was just the beginning of the networked individual. With the introduction of new technologies, people have changed their habits in the consumption of information and the way they maintain relationships with one another. As Wellman (2018) states “the introduction of new technologies introduces transformations in how people form and maintain relationships as well as how they gain access to information and support.” With the introduction of new technologies came platforms helping people to develop networks in multiple contexts not before possible in traditional communities before the introduction of the internet, and over time, the social platform Tiktok has emerged and grown to be one of the largest shared media platforms.

Tiktok is a video sharing app allowing creators to make 60 second or less videos of any topic. It stemmed from the 2015 popular app Musical.ly allowing users to lip-sync to various audios. Musical.ly was then purchased from Chinese tech company ByteDance and was rebranded to Tiktok. The social media platform quickly grew in popularity due to celebrity endorsements, localised content as well as the ease of creating and viewing videos (Geyser, 2021).  Unlike other social media platforms, Tiktok is based around 2 different feeds, the ‘For You Page’ and the ‘Following’ page. The For You page is based around an algorithm feeding consumers content that the algorithm thinks they will like based on what the user has liked previously whereas the following feed is where the user curates their own feed by following creators.

According to Omnicore (2022), 57% of Tiktok users were female and 43% of Tiktok users were aged between 18 and 24 making Gen Z females the dominant audience of the platform. This audience is a key market that fashion companies are looking to gain in the consumption of their product making Tiktok a key platform that these companies need to be utilizing.

Influencer marketing

Tiktok can be utilised by these brands in many different ways including influencer marketing. Influencer culture has been around forever with magazines telling us what the latest celebrities are wearing and TV hosts telling us what to buy, but a new breed of influencer has risen with the birth of social media- in particular Tiktok. Tiktok’s specific algorithm gives everyone equal opportunity to gain fame and popularity on the platform as opposed to celebrities that gained fame and popularity off drama and magazine tabloids. This personalised kind of influencer allows users to feel more of a connection to these “celebrities” as the influencers themselves are everyday people just like the users. This creates a bond of trust between the creator and follower making the follower more inclined to trust the judgment of the creator and making it easier to sell products.

According to Leung and Palmatier company spending on influencer marketing is predicted to have reached $13.8 billion USD in 2021. Companies have been utilising the trust that consumers have in the creators they follow by partnering with influencers to sell people their product. These influencers use their persona and the intimacy of their platforms to mask the transactional use of Tiktok to sell products gaining profit for both the influencer and company. A success story that can come from this is creator Sopha Dopha and the blue Glassons corset.  

Sophia Beg, known as Sopha Dopha is a 18 year old Australian influencer from NSW. She has grown in popularity over the past year with almost a million followers mostly for her style and flawless appearance. In early 2020 she posted a Tiktok in a blue corset from Australian brand Glassons and her fame started to peak. All anyone in the fashion community wanted was that corset and traffic to the Glassons website peaked with teen girls scrambling to get their hands on the corset. It quickly went out of stock and there was an outroar when the clothing item eventually got restocked earlier than said on the websites with many girls missing out. Other fashion companies quickly realised how much of an influence Sophia has on the Australian fashion community and she quickly became one of the biggest fashion influencers in Australia. This example shows the impact that influencer marketing makes on a company’s success in the fashion community.

However, the term influencer is broad and within there is a spectrum measured by the following of a person. According to Isyanto (2020) there are 4 different kinds of influencers: Mega influencer with the number of followers over 1 million, macro influencers range of followers who owned between 100,000 to 1 million, micro influencers with the number of followers ranging from 1000 to 100,000 and nano influencers with bellow 1000 followers.

Companies are starting to utilise the micro-influencer to create a more intertwined connection to the consumer as according to Mou, J. B. (2020), “It has been observed that compared to user generated content, sponsored content have more negative influence on the brand image.” With mega influencers content being more curated and refined as compared to micro-influencers content which is more relatable to the everyday individual which is the majority of viewers.

Tiktok Marketing

With the digitization of the world, fashion brands have quickly had to adapt their marketing strategies to keep up with the fast-paced everchanging trends and strong competitors. Tiktok has been a new tool for companies to distribute and expand their owned, paid and earned media with their target consumers.

Earned media:

Earned media, otherwise known as word of mouth media, is media in which a company has gained from the sharing of others (users). Tiktok’s basis is an abundance of creative content based around sharing information with other users making Tiktok an ideal platform for companies to gain earned media easily.

Paid Media:

Paid media is media that a company will pay for consumers to see. This could be done through influencer marketing, as spoken about previously, or paid advertising. Paid advertising can be a successful way for fashion companies to quickly gain attention on Tiktok as the advertisements are hidden amongst a user’s feed. An example of success in paid advertising on Tiktok is the fashion company Shekou.

Shekou is a New Zealand based women’s fashion company that gained popularity through Tiktok paid advertising. They started as a small brand in 2019 and now have over 1.3 million Tiktok followers. Tiktok’s paid advertising utilises accessibility to ecommerce sites where users can tap on link at the bottom of a paid advertisement video leading straight to the company’s website, helping companies quickly gain traction on their websites leading to potential sales.

Owned media:

Owned media are platforms that a company have paid for and are run by the workers of that company. In the traditional sense, this was media such as websites and blogs but with the vast array of media platforms now available to consumers now, marketers must spread themselves across more to keep up with competitors. As Sophie Freeman, fashion and beauty director at social media and influencer marketing organisation Fanbytes states,“If fashion brands aren’t already on Tiktok, then they are trying to get on it and work out how to do so. Tiktok has brought about a new way of creating and communicating to the customer, in a way that brings a brand’s persona to life.” This exemplifies the importance that Tiktok now has on influencing its consumers to purchase and how Tiktok is now an essential owned media platform that fashion retailers and companies need to utalise to connect with their consumer. Now major fashion companies such as Vouge and Louis Vuitton are creating Tiktok accounts to keep relevant in the public eye, with Louis Vuitton even broadcasting a virtual fashion show on Tiktok exclusively.

It is important for companies to utilise all 3 different media types as they are interlinked with one another. For example, paid media can create earned media by brand partnerships with influencers (paid media) where the influencer shares product with their audience in which a user could share with more users creating earned media.

Fashion community:

Tiktok is a platform that utilises online virtual community, tailoring each user’s feed specifically to their likes and interests. “A virtual community is known as a group of people who share common interests, are in most cases distant apart from each other but interact with each other virtually.” (Mou, J. B, 2020) The fashion community is a large group of consumers from around the world with an interest in fashion. There are many different subgroups in the fashion community with different people having different styles but one thing they have in common is that influencers are the key opinion leaders of these groups and members of these fashion groups look to them to see what’s trending.

The fashion community however expects its key opinion leaders to adhere to certain value and expects products that adhere to certain standards and reflect specific values. For example, sustainable and quality products are key qualities that consumers appreciate in product and if influencers are promoting brands that produce subpar product, made in unethical factories they may lose followers as their followers’ values do not align with the persona they are portraying. There are even accounts such as @madeline_pendleten that check the stainability of companies and whether people should be supporting those said companies or rejecting them for endorsing damaging traits. An example of where a company has been shunned is recently the fashion brand White Fox recently got into trouble for copying designs from small businesses and influencers that worked with the brand got slammed for endorsing a large company that steals designs from small businesses. A result of this is the company lost a lot of its loyal customers and influencers cut ties with the company to protect their own reputation.

Companies make use of word of mouth within the fashion community with users creating a variety of different creative videos from “Zara haul- what I kept and chucked” and “Styling my new Gucci Hat” where creators show viewers what they have purchased and if they like it or not. This style of video is popular amongst the fashion community as it is displaying new clothes to consumer that they may not have seen before or not have seen styled in a certain way before making them more inclined to buy it if the creator is styling well. Viewers dictate what is stylish/trending or not based on the number of views, likes, comments, and shares a post has. This trend has led to the “Tiktok made me buy it” frenzy where people admit that they were influenced into buying something they saw in a Tiktok video. Company’s try partner with as many key opinion leaders as possible to try and get as much content seen by consumers as possible.

The digitization of marketing has led to retail companies essential need to be utilising social media platform Tiktok. It is a platform that allows companies to distribute their 3 different kinds of media easily and effectively and is the platform where the audience of fashion companies targeted at Gen Z women are sharing information. It is more impartment than ever for these companies to be jumping onto Tiktok to grow their consumer catalogue.

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