Issue #83 - Xiaomi on TikTok

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Welcome to Good TikTok Creative!

We are Simon Andrews and Anthony McGuire, two people who have been working in marketing, advertising, and media for decades.

Find Simon and Anthony on Twitter.

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TikTok Case Study #83 = Xiaomi on TikTok

Simon’s Take:

This is a new TikTok campaign for Xiaomi that goes back to basics. It’s built around the hashtag #liveforthechallenge and is all about getting TikTokers to dance, with a clever effect rewarding the dancers more vigorous moves.

Xiaomi have used this hashtag before (it has 42.8 billion views) when they launched the Redmi Note 1.0 and for the 11 series they revived the concept but added this clever lens that scores each dance routine. The highest scores win surprise gifts but you are encouraged to follow Xiaomi to see the messages if you win.

This use of paid activity to build the profile is a neat way of making the most of organic - and with Xiaomi having 1.8m followers and 8.9m likes it is paying off; Apple has just 1.2m followers and 4.5m likes.

The use of the second hashtag #redminote11series is more questionable - it has 263m views but does it confuse?

Judging by the ad tags on some of the videos Xiaomi have quite a few TikTok creators involved - for example; @Laurensnipzhalil with 690k followers and 17m likes, @Lia.Lewis with 3.4m followers and 27m likes, @AubreyFisher with 2.1m followers and 16m likes.

I think the ability to find the creators that are the right match for both the brand and the campaign is the key skill on TikTok. Xiaomi have invested in top view ads but I imagine the creators will drive significant reach.

Overall the campaign eschews the cool that last week’s Tate Modern and the America Theatre captured. The graphics and art direction are a little retro looking but remind us that TikTok is truly mass market, rather than niche and trendy.

And Xiaomi seeks to be a mass market brand too - this is a good effort from them.

Anthony’s Take:

Xiaomi is launching their Redmi Note 11 Series with a hashtag challenge #LiveForTheChallenge. Go to the challenge page and you’ll see there have been over forty billion views—though as Simon said, the hashtag has been used previously. Reading through the challenge details, you are told that you’ll get a chance to win surprise gifts the more ‘lights you hit’ in this AR filter you dance around in.

I pay close attention to details and a few things about this confuse me. When you click the ‘learn more’ button on the challenge page, you are surprisingly directed to the official Xiaomi TikTok page. Usually we have seen brands use the ‘learn more’ button to allow people to click off to a micro-site explaining a campaign in more detail. Therefore, it’s a bit confusing to understand how exactly the contest works and the exact prizes. You have to click the ‘Join the fun and WIN! 😎’ red text to find the terms & conditions, which includes prizes like several Xiaomi smartphones.

These might seem like minor mistakes, but they add unnecessary friction to the user experience.

Although the challenge itself is cool, to me it seems pretty difficult for the average person to do. It reminds me of the Dance Dance Revolution arcade game and the animation is a bit kitschy, but that is fairly on-brand for TikTok. However, most of the creators are doing fairly complex dances and activities. Without a blindingly clear value proposition of winning phones, this challenge doesn’t provide enough incentive for a general TikTok audience beyond dancers. And for a mass market phone, this seems like a miscalculation from Xiaomi’s marketing team.

While I’m sure these ads are reaching a lot of people, if you scroll down on the challenge page you don’t see too many submissions of people joining the challenge. To be fair, I’m sure achieving mass reach makes this campaign successful enough for the Xiaomi team.

The Xiaomi TikTok profile itself has some good high quality creative. While the pinned videos at the top of the profile could just as easily be ads for Apple or Samsung products, they are visually beautiful and done well. While Xiaomi’s TikTok strategy could do with some improvements, they are clearly trying and only their internal metrics will be able to determine their success. The #LiveForTheChallenge campaign is driving mass reach and while the contest doesn’t seem to have many entrants so far, the company will surely achieve an increase in brand awareness.

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