As early as seven years ago, BECS (Global Brand E-Commerce Summit) put forward the concept of "from 'waiting for the wind' to 'making the wind'", telling the brand e-commerce industry that instead of waiting for the next gust of wind, it is better to become a "wind maker" and lead the trend. Today, this trend not only applies to brand e-commerce, but also provides start-ups from all walks of life with ideas to quickly build market awareness at the beginning stage.
"Creating style" not only means innovation in products and services, but also means a deeper connection with the target audience in terms of culture, sense of value, lifestyle, etc.
However, it is not easy to successfully "create a climate" in overseas markets, and the main challenges come from the cultural and development differences between different regions. Each country and region has unique values, habits and social backgrounds, and brands need to have cross-cultural understanding to ensure that every aspect of the process, from product development to marketing and promotion, can be adapted to local needs and cultures, and is accepted, recognized and loved by users.
For example, if a brand wants to "create a style" in the European market, one of the more ingenious ways is to combine TikTok's popular local dancechallenge (dance challenge) to release a dance related to the brand IP** to encourage players to imitate; But if the brand wants to "make a splash" in the Brazilian market, then Tenten Orir (Laughing Challenge) combined with TikTok may be more effective, as Brazilian social culture places more emphasis on humor and entertainment.
So, how can brands find a breakthrough and become a trendsetter when they go overseas?
The first step in going overseas is to deeply understand the needs of local consumers, cater to or create a lifestyle that is in line with local culture, find the right positioning for the brand in the new market, and create an image that is easy to be accepted and disseminated. However, achieving this goal is not an easy task, because there are differences in culture, habits and aesthetics in different regions, which requires brands to accurately grasp product design, marketing strategies and brand image building. At the same time, cultural communication is not static, and as the times evolve, brands also need to maintain sensitivity to local cultural dynamics and flexibly adjust their strategies.
When Metoo, a cutting-edge oral care brand in China, entered the Indonesian market, it was faced with the problem of how to "break into the local market". Indonesia, as a country dominated by Islamic culture, attaches great importance to Ramadan. During this period, Indonesians fast and pray, do not eat during the day, and keep their whole body clean. Many people need to take a shower twice a day and clean their mouth several times, especially young people, who can easily lead to bad breath problems if they don't eat for a day. As a result, during Ramadan, there was a small spike in demand for oral care, and Metoo cleverly seized the moment.
Metoo not only relies on Ramadan as an important node, but also through an in-depth understanding of local culture and consumer behavior, it found that although the Indonesian mouthwash market seems to be mature and saturated, it is actually a single product category, mainly spicy and alcohol-containing flavors, and consumers have limited choices. Therefore, Metoo has chosen to provide a fresh and sweet taste and healthy probiotic ingredients to provide Indonesian consumers with a variety of options to meet their potential needs.
However, in the context of the Indonesian mouthwash market being "carved" by major international brands, METOO realized that it was difficult to stand out from the competition by relying solely on product strength. In order to better stay grounded in the local community, Metoo decided to find a partner to move forward with. So,Metoo and TikTok for Business launched the MetooSmile Challenge during Ramadan to enhance brand messaging with custom stickersWith the interaction and sharing between users on the TikTok platform, the brand message spread more quickly, achieving more than 20 billion ** in a very short period of time. Moreover, from the third day of the product's launch, many influencers spontaneously brought the goods, and a week later, the product rushed to the top three of TikTok's FMCG list, allowing Metoo to achieve "fame and fortune" in one fell swoop.
The success of MeToo in the Indonesian market is not only due to product innovation, but more importantly, to deliver a new way of life. Through TikTok, Metoo has subtly integrated its products into Indonesian culture and the Ramadan festivities, breaking the monolithic image of traditional mouthwashes and creating a unique brand experience for users. And when Indonesian users follow this trend on TikTok, they have also subtly become loyal users of the brand.
In the process of going overseas to "create style", brands need to comprehensively consider two aspects: current business and long-term benefits. By "creating wind", the brand can indeed gain the current voice and quickly occupy market share. However, brands should also be aware that creating wind is a means, not an end in itself. From a long-term point of view, "creating wind" needs to serve more in-depth brand building and sales conversion. Therefore, in the process of "creating wind", brands also need to form a virtuous circle of the whole link through the combination of quality and efficiency.
This is evidenced by the practice of the hair removal device brand ulike in the North American market.
After understanding, ulike found that the common hair removal methods in North America, such as wax removal and knife scraping, have many inconvenient and pain-causing problems, and there are huge business opportunities in the market. However, Ulike did not rush to achieve success, but chose to open up the whole link process from planting grass to pulling weeds first, so as to provide potential consumers with a more comfortable, complete and smooth shopping experience. At the suggestion of TikTok for Business,At the initial stage, ulike began to build enterprise accounts and TikTok shops in order to better undertake content assets and traffic conversion. After the completion of the infrastructure, Ulike began to start slowly, using the usual talent planting materials with Spark Ads ad style, so that the ad traffic is presented in a way that is closer to the original content, depicting a new lifestyle for consumers and achieving "style".
In the process of advertising, ulike uses the marketing capabilities of the TikTok platform to target and reach the brand's high-potential users, gradually establish a deeper connection with them, and provide strong support for later sales conversion.
Soon, ULike's GMV increased by 1,200,000%+ and ROAS increased by 15,000%+ quarter-on-quarter, achieving explosive growth in sales performance. At the same time, the brand continues to accumulate and analyze sales data, gain an in-depth understanding of user behavior and market feedback, and provide strong support for optimizing marketing strategies and forming a virtuous circle of product and efficiency synergy.
From the case of ulike, it can be found that it is not difficult to operate from "creating wind" to integrating product efficiency and marketing, the key is whether it can gain insight into local needs and contact and interact with the target audience in a more acceptable way through content marketing; Coupled with the use of appropriate platform tools and products, we will deeply explore the traffic brought by "wind building" by means of advertising and trailer conversion, and continue to further promote brand building to comprehensively enhance the influence and competitiveness of the brand.
In fact, this experience is not only true for consumer brands, but also for content companies such as games. For example, when "Tales of the Dragon Country" was first tested in the Korean market, it was observed that Korean users had gradually developed the habit of watching games on TikTok, so they invited game vertical experts to live broadcast the new game, and used the TikTok conversion component to guide conversion**, and the activation rate of final** users was as high as 66%.
It is certain that if brands can make good use of the rich tools and products provided by the TikTok platform, they will not only be able to lead the trend in the "wind creation" stage, but also achieve the integration of product, efficiency and sales in the future, and achieve lasting business value.
Going to sea to "create wind" requires the right time, place and people. For brands, if they can't be the initiator of trends, learning to take advantage of them is also a smart strategy. Similarly, in the case of TikTok, the "trend maker", hot trends such as Newfinds and TikTok Taughtme are constantly emerging on the platform, providing users with a space to continuously discover new inspiration and promote the consumption of different products and services.
By associating with these topics, brands can leverage the platform's massive user base to quickly increase their visibility and even gain "spillover value" from it, spreading it across the wider social** and offline communities, further consolidating the brand's position in the market.
In order to expand the audience, the smart light strip brand Govee cleverly used the popular emoji trend on TikTok when promoting its new curtain lights products, and organically integrated the emoji elements with the values of its own brand, so that potential audiences could deepen their understanding of the brand in the process of interacting with the stickers, form an effective connection, and achieve crowd breaking.
It is worth noting that brands can not only take advantage of the existing hot topics on the platform, but also make full use of the rich resources of channels such as TikTok, including Pingjia IP, talents, and even amateur KOCs. These resources have a wide range of influence, and working with them can not only improve the popularity of online brands, but also achieve profound value output, build deeper trust relationships among users, and ultimately drive consumption decisions.
When entering a new market, Insta360, a panoramic action camera brand, also fully encouraged and guided users to create and share UGC based on its insight into the usage scenarios and usage habits of overseas consumers, which quickly set off a large number of hot topics in the category.
In 2021, a Japanese KOL caused a social sensation, he held the Insta360 panoramic camera in his mouth and filmed himself running, which unexpectedly produced a very interesting "Attack on Titan" effect. The idea quickly became popular on social media, triggering a scramble from users to imitate it. Insta360 was keenly aware of this market hotspot and launched a "NoseMode" campaign on TikTok to encourage users to use the camera in a creative way, featuring fun "bite" elements.
With the help of the TikTok platform to tap the explosion point and create the natural advantages of popularity, the event successfully attracted more users to join the ranks of creation. Under the creative and interesting topics, dozens of **volume exceeded one million** soon emerged, and insta360's category education about panoramic action cameras has also become more popular.
It can be seen that there are many ways for brands to "borrow", not only by borrowing existing hot topics, but also by cooperating with platform IPs, celebrities, and talents, and by mobilizing the power of UGC to start brand topics. Either way, TikTok, as a short-form entertainment platform with global influence, can provide brands with a wide range of cross-end influences and help form a deep connection between brands and users.
Conclusion
The brand going overseas is not only the output of products, but also a process of in-depth demand mining and satisfaction, and cultural exchange. By innovating in product design, marketing content, and more, brands are able to differentiate themselves in the marketplace, provide consumers with new and unique experiences, and even bring new lifestyles to create deeper and lasting inner connections.
But it also needs to be emphasized that"Creating wind" is not an end in itself. Brands should aim to build a sustainable brand presence and earn long-term consumer trust, rather than just meeting short-term market trends. In addition, in order to undertake the potential energy brought by "wind creation", brands also need to build an integrated product efficiency synergy mechanism, so that brands and users can form a closer community, promote users to participate more in the communication of brand value, and form a positive feedback cycle. This cycle will further strengthen the brand's position in the local market and allow the brand to stay agile in the face of evolving cultural trends and achieve steady growth through continuous tuning.
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