How Catch Mastered The Art Of Trend Hopping On TikTok

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“In Australia, no-one really ‘owns’ TikTok as a business. Internationally there are quite a few brands that stand out on the platform, but here, it’s undecided who’s leading on the platform. With this comes a great opportunity, as it means it’s anyone’s game,” said Jenna Topolansky (pictured), digital marketing specialist at e-commerce retailer Catch.com.au.

Catch is well known for its spectacular variety of online retail deals, but its marketing minds recently faced a challenge. How could they create an awareness campaign for TikTok that piggybacks off current trends, when trends often move at the speed of light?

“Our campaign needed to promote our end of financial year sale. For this one we wanted to use TikTok to secure mass reach across our core audience of 18-to-54s.

“However, we know TikTok is trend focused, and it’s constantly changing and adapting. So we had to ensure we weren’t making the campaign creative too far in advance,” explained Topolansky.

For the Catch team, it was a matter of moving quickly to observe trending videos, audio and hashtags. They had to tap into what was drawing eyeballs on TikTok in order to resonate with their target audience during the sale.

@catch.com.au

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♬ Heartbroken 2022 – T2 & ARPA

“We made the creative on a very ad hoc basis, leaning into audio grabs and things that were currently trending on the platform. We then split the campaign up into two different ad sets. One to target interest-based people, and the other aimed at interaction retargeting,” she said.

The first trend Catch latched onto was an audio grab called ‘top three cheeses’. Its ads were filmed through the app and used Catch staff to create a more authentic feel for the platform.

“We used three or four different short videos to make up the one ad – and we made a distinct call out in each video. One of them, for example, drew attention to a 50 per cent off beauty sale.

“It used that ‘top three cheeses’ audio trend to illustrate the sale that we had, with the familiar style getting people engaged,” she said.

According to Topolansky, the advantage of trending content for brands is capturing attention from users who want to see what your take on the current viral sensation.

Catch’s second ad used a trending ‘dinging’ sound that mimics a notification.

“Some people were really engaged, while others didn’t respond to it as much. But we had lots of comments from people telling us what the sound reminded them of. And it showed the different ways people related to the campaign via their own experiences,” she said.

Topolansky also observed that connecting with trends doesn’t always require flawless accuracy. Putting your own spin on what’s already out there can have surprising results.

Say cheese!

For Catch, TikTok offered mass reach and levels of engagement unobtainable on any other social media platform.

“TikTok is such a fast-growing platform and there isn’t anything else out there like it currently. It’s got an untapped audience that you really can’t get on other channels and the time people spend on the platform in one session is just crazy,” Topolansky said.

This engagement certainly worked for Catch, with its End of Financial Year campaign far surpassing expectations in terms of generating awareness.

“For this campaign we were hoping to get around an 8 per cent ad recall result and we actually got 10.5 per cent. So people really did remember our ads and engage with them,” she said.

When running campaigns across TikTok, the organic, native and authentic style is key when getting audiences to see the ad as something that fits in with what they want to watch, Topolanksy explained.

“The ‘top three cheeses’ ad was funny and engaging. It drove our highest click-through rate and the most traffic to the website. Along with the trending audio it also had a really good call to action,” said Topolansky.

@catch.com.au

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♬ original sound – mi <3

For Catch, the campaign proved the efficacy of the platform.

“In terms of brand awareness and getting our brand out there, the results were higher than we were expecting to see. It shows we can have a strong brand presence on TikTok if we continue to invest in the platform,” Topolansky said.

An impressive Catch

Catch’s TikTok campaign was the first one created with a mass target audience in mind. For Topolansky, the finished product came with a few useful lessons.

“Having to make the creative so close to the campaign can be challenging, because you can’t plan too far in advance. You really have to see what’s trending, what people are engaging with, and make sure that you can react quickly to film something that’s going to be relevant,” she said.

The solution was collaboration between the team and platform, and Topolansky says keeping her finger on the pulse and creating videos that were highly relevant worked well overall.

“Thanks to the engagement we got, for future campaigns we may go with a slightly higher intent objective such as traffic to drive more people to the website. And while awareness was our goal here, we did have more people staying on the platform and our site,” she explained.

Now Topolansky and her team are looking for more ways to continue this success past their end of financial year sale.

“We’ve recently had TikTok run a brand study for us. From there we’ll gain results and learnings we can take into future campaigns.

“We are constantly trying new things, and we have several more brand campaigns launching across TikTok. Now for us it’s about finding out who we are as a brand, and how to utilise the constantly evolving opportunities that we’re seeing across TikTok,” Topolansky concluded.

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