Making TikTok content for brands is the hot new gig
Companies are turning to college students and other young people to help them navigate popular platform
When Mary Clare Lacke, a 20-year-old student at the University of Missouri, interned at Claire’s in the summer, one of her tasks was to help the teen accessories company with its nascent TikTok account. It didn’t take long for her to produce a hit — though it wasn’t one that the retailer saw coming.
In an 11-second video, Lacke riffed off a pranking trend inspired by Kris Jenner to promote a style of the retailer’s earrings.
“My team was just like, ‘We’re not 100% sure what this is, but go for it,’ ” Lacke said. “And then it became the most successful video that the account has seen.” The video generated 1.5 million views and 20,000 new followers for the company’s TikTok account.
Now, Lacke is one of four new TikTok “college creators” working as interns for the brand during the school year, churning out fresh videos every week that they often star in themselves. Claire’s is keen to hire even more student creators.
Making TikTok content for brands is the hot new gig. As the social media platform continues to explode in popularity, brands are hiring college students and other young people — sometimes with pay and sometimes with college credits — to help them navigate the app, which can confuse newcomers with its trending voice snippets and song clips, unique vernacular and endless videos. Job sites have recently been peppered with listings for “TikTok content creator interns,” who are being asked to make and appear in videos promoting tropical ice cream, sunflower seeds, bubble tea, malls and more.
The hope is to connect with young people and even what some marketers call “Generation Zalpha” — combining the generations born after the mid-1990s with those born in 2010 and beyond — and ultimately drive sales.
Whole Foods and luggage company Travel Pro recently posted job ads for interns to help them build their presence on TikTok. A marketing agency in Dallas has been seeking a student to be its “chief TikTok officer” during the summer to help its clients with the app. And the Rosedale Center, a mall in Roseville, Minn., just hired two TikTok creator interns after successfully introducing the role last year.
Kristin Patrick, Claire’s chief marketing officer, who popularized the term “Generation Zalpha” to describe the retailer’s target audience, said the success of Lacke’s video prompted its creator program.
“It really helped us realize the importance of having college students engaged with the Claire’s brand and sort of be the face of the brand, especially on TikTok,” she said. “They’re the ones really using the app every day and really understanding what resonates.”
Marketers have long turned to young people to help them navigate new social platforms. But their efforts around TikTok are unique partly because interns are becoming the face of those brands. The companies are keen to figure out an app that beat Instagram and Snapchat to become the most frequently used social media channel by 12- to 17-yearolds, according to a Forrester Research survey last year. And in the past couple of years, some brands like Duolingo and Hasbro’s Nerf have hired people in Generation Z as full-time employees to take charge of their TikTok accounts, but they are not the norm.
“If you think about the number of brands with a really strong TikTok presence, it’s less than a handful, compared to brands with a strong Instagram presence, which is literally everyone,” said Mae Karwowski, CEO of influencer firm Obviously. “Video is so much harder for brands to do, and then the direct face nature of TikTok doesn’t fit into their current models.
“It makes a lot of sense to hire people that are young and get it,” she added.
The Rosedale Center, the mall in Minnesota, recently received more than 50 applicants for its TikTok creator internship program, which has produced content showing students promoting Auntie Anne’s pretzels and new stores. Few malls have seized on TikTok, so “it was a great way to set us apart and fish where the fish are,” said Molly King, Rosedale’s marketing manager.
King, 53, said she believed people all of ages could make popular TikTok content, but it was useful to work with students because the mall is trying to attract Gen Z shoppers.