Tik Tok and Influencer Culture - Amuse Bouche #8

Hello, this is Amuse Bouche and I'm Bridget. Welcome. Here you're gonna get just a little bit of Bridget before our weekly release of Dinner Plus Drinks on Sunday. This week we're talking TikTok. Don't worry. We're also gonna talk a little bit about social media through the ages, but stick with me to hear what I have to say. Alright, I'm gonna date myself a little bit here. Uh, but if you've been a loyal listener, you already know my age. And also I don't care if you know my age because age is just a number. Um, but I remember when Facebook was a thing that you could only have when you had a college email address. Let me know if you remember that as well. Hello at dinnerplusdrinks.com. I would love to know if I'm the only one out there. But I remember sitting in one of my college apartments, like scrolling on this kind of brand new thing. At least that's my memory of it. I could be way off with the ages. But I remember then when my parents could get a Facebook account and I was like, oh, all worried about it, right? I don't know why, but then I remember hearing about, oh, take down your picture of you with a beer. No employer is gonna want to see that. Okay, I remember all of this. Then somewhere like Instagram came around, blah blah blah, fast forward, right? But now we're in the age of TikTok, and I'm probably I don't even know. Am I wrong there? I feel like TikTok's everywhere. And my generation, people around my age, I feel like are in this weird in-between. Like, should we be on TikTok? Should we just lurk and not actually create anything? I don't know. But this past week, I think I came up with my answer when I ran across a New York Times article. A New York Times article covering a TikTok trend, which I just think is fascinating. Um, they're covering the trend, it was hashtag BamaRush. So it was RushTalk, which you may have seen. All of this, I immediately knew what it was about, but I had to read the article to be like, what does the New York Times have to say about this? So basically, the article was covering sorority rush videos on TikTok. So, like I said, called Rush Talk, right? They were covering sorority rush at the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa. So the long and short of it is that these college freshmen, these ladies, girls, I don't know, I'm sounding old, whatever we want to call them, college freshmen, are um had they have various recruitment events, and each event has a different dress code. So they're basically just sharing outfit of the day videos on TikTok. So that's nothing new. That definitely exists on Instagram. Um, Facebook, when it first came out, you know, I'm sure we just had photos and people would comment and say, hey, where's that shirt from? But videos weren't, you know, as important um whenever Facebook first came out, a million years ago, it feels like. But they're sharing, hey, this dress is from Sheehan, and these shoes are from Sam Edelman, and this jewelry is my roommate's, and these um bracelets are from Kendra Scott. And then they they go on and on to say, okay, thanks so much, bye bye, thanks for watching. These girls were interviewed, and like, why do you think people are interested? And they're like, I don't know, I don't know why anyone's paying attention, but it's great. So I can't blame them, right? These videos are getting millions of views, and the brands they're talking about are benefiting. So the New York Times article reports that Kendra Scott, which is a jewelry line, has reported an increase in web traffic from the 18 to 24 demographic, which makes sense, right? That starts at college age. So I think about this a lot because I work in the marketing social media world, uh, both at Lake Shaneba Country Meets and as a consultant for another client. So paying attention to trends in social media and marketing is very important to my everyday. Um, it's I think about it all the time because social media never goes away. Um, it's often a topic of conversation actually with my friends and specifically one friend, uh, she and I talk about it a lot where she doesn't necessarily, I won't say like agree, but agree, I guess. She she has a different feeling about this like bubble. She explains that like I feel like we're living in this vacuum where everyone is just like recycling ideas and content. And she's not wrong, but it's working. So we're all cons, you know, we're consumer nation, right? We we're just consuming all of these things, so it's working. So people on TikTok, Instagram, whatever influencer you might want to say, um are taking advantage of it because businesses are paying attention. So honestly, they've just come up with a different way to market their product. So I think it's fascinating. Um, I I'll take a quick aside to say that I highly recommend listening to the podcast Under the Influence for an even better look at this. I I was listening to it while I was running. It's just I think it's an eight-part series, and it is fascinating. I just I learned so much from it, and so I'll put that in the show notes, but you should pay attention to it. It is really very fascinating. Anyway, back to TikTok. So you may remember if you listened to Dinner Plus Drinks long ago, I uh promised a Lucy TikTok uh called All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go. Uh, it never happened. I tried, but only kind of, um, to like, hey, I'm gonna dress my kid up. It was based on the fact that um it was coronavirus and I had all these cute clothes for my then one-year-old, and she had nowhere to go. So I was like, well, I'll just dress her up and do those schnazzy videos where people snap and their outfit changes. I can't believe what I just said. It made me sound 90. But you know, it never happened, okay? Um, also recently I got invited to a party for my 20-something cousins. Um, and it's a it's their friends, but also the parents are gonna be there. And I was like, no, guys, we're not going to a house party. Like, we're way too old for that. And they're like, oh no, no, no, my parents will be there. Okay, great. So it has a theme of anything but the cup or anything but a cup. And to me, honestly, that reminds me of like this weird porno trend that was going around at one point that I'm not gonna talk any further about. But one of my cousins who invited us to the party, she sent me a TikTok to explain the theme of the party. And I never felt so old. Like in the text change, she's like, here you go, in case you're wondering. I'm like, okay, cool. Um, and a lot of my friends and people my age, I would say, uh, you know, we use Instagram stories more, um, definitely more than TikTok, I would generalize, at least my friend group. But so many of my friends are sharing TikToks to their Instagram stories, and for whatever reason, it drives me up a wall. I love them, I watch them, but I'm like, man, keep your social media channel on your social media channel. I think they all have a um their own benefit. Like, I think Facebook has a strong suit. I don't like when people share Instagram stories to their Facebook stories. Like, create separate content, those are different audiences. So that's that was just an aside, but um anyway, I just want to say I'm old and I simultaneously love and hate TikTok, but I love the way that smart brands are using these influencers and vice versa, that influencers are marketing themselves. Um there's a page on Instagram called Girl Gangs with a Z, like, and then a whole bunch of numbers, like 7338 or something. I just discovered her. She hates on influencers, like she just calls them out on everything, which is ironic because actually she has kind of become an influencer. Um, I I don't know her that like I don't know her at all, obviously. Um I have just started following her, but she stresses me out. Uh, but I'll I'll put it in the show notes. And she calls out influencers on what she sees as all the fake things they do. So I I like I know when I'm being influenced, I know when I'm being sold at, and then I know when like you can tell that things are fake. And so I it always leads me to one, worry about my children and wonder like, what the hell are they gonna get targeted with? Like, and are they gonna be smart enough to know the difference um between like, hey, this is good marketing and it's okay if you're consciously buying this product and you know you got marketed, or is this like subliminal advertising? I can't watch a TV show or a movie and notice product placement and not be like, that's the most obvious can of Coke on the desk. Obviously, Coke paid for that. Like, do you to me I would argue that that was one of the original forms of influencing? I mean, it is. It was before social media was a big thing. So, again, in that Under the Influence podcast, um, I think it was in the second episode, they talk about Lucille Ball from I Love Lucy, and I I'm fairly confident it was Huggy's Diapers. And she, they basically they were like, she is the OG influencer. She was the first person who showcased a product in her show that then influenced people, subliminally, subliminally or not, to go buy that product. And by the way, we use Huggy's diapers, so I don't know, and my daughter's name is Lucille, just saying. Um, but the whole business of it is fascinating. There's some really interesting um information out there about it. I just thought I would brush the surface and I'll put a link both to the New York Times article that talks about Rush Talk, which I got suckered into watching some of it and was like, I can't, I just feel dumber. I can't anymore. So I'll put the New York Times article with the Rush Talk. I will share um the podcast that I talked about under the influence. Give it a listen. So, so good. And then also I'll put up Girl Gangs, who's an Instagram account that hates on influencers, because I like to share both sides of things and let you make your own opinion. But then when you've done all of this, I would love to hear your input on it. So here on Amoose Boosh, we're still using the Dinner Plus Drinks Information um networks, if you will. So write, write me at hello at dinnerplusdrinks.com, or you can always comment on social media as well. Um, thanks so much for listening. Stay tuned for an awesome Dinner Plus Drinks this week. We're switching things up a bit and it is good. Have an awesome weekend. We will talk to you next week.