Joseph Altuzarra doesn’t consider himself very good at social media.
The designer has been posting on Instagram for years, but said he tends to put a lot of thought into what he shares. Lately, he’s been fascinated by TikTok, known for its addictive short-form videos and tight-knit youth communities of hyper-specific enthusiasts. Altuzarra was just a viewer on the platform until June, when the private chef who cooked for his family during summers in the Hamptons went super-viral on the platform. He was amazed at how quickly the chef, Meredith Hayden, saw her audience grow and how uncomfortable her videos were. She encouraged him to try it himself.
“There was no, ‘Oh, you have to post [at] this time if you want optimal visibility,’” said Altuzarra. Because the app’s way of displaying videos to viewers is, to some extent, random, he felt “a lot less pressure for things to perform or be good.” Plus, he loved being part of the platform.
“I find it much more compelling, creatively, than Instagram,” he said.
Altuzarra is one of the millions of users lured by TikTok in recent years. TikTok ranked as the most downloaded app in the world in 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, according to data from Sensor Tower, a firm that tracks app data. And TikTok users are spending more time on it every year. But the app still trails rivals like Instagram and Facebook in total audience, ranking fifth globally in terms of monthly active users, according to Data.ai. TikTok is expected to capture only a third of the influencer marketing dollars brands will spend on Instagram this year, though it has overtaken Facebook and is on track to take the No. 2 by YouTube by 2024, according to Insider Intelligence.
For much of TikTok’s growth, the fashion and beauty communities treated the platform as a place for experimentation as they built their online marketing campaigns around Instagram. Not longer. Meta’s recent promises to highlight more videos and recommended content on Facebook and Instagram feeds show how much TikTok has disrupted the social media landscape. And as many users grapple with changes from the apps they grew up with, brands and influencers are rethinking where to focus their efforts.
“TikTok is where trends start for us,” said Stacey McCormick, senior vice president of marketing for Aerie, American Eagle’s sister activewear and intimate brand.
Influencers who built their careers through carefully filtered Instagram posts are also embracing the new reality.
“If we look at it from a business perspective, and just the economy and the eye, I just don’t see how a creator can go on just posting on [Instagram] feed,” said Vanessa Flaherty, president of influencer agency Digital Brand Architects (DBA). “It’s kind of a dying breed at this point.”
Before the start of the pandemic, Instagram was the dominant fashion and beauty platform, replacing print magazines as the primary source of trends and personalities driving the industry.
But if Instagram is the end of magazines, TikTok is television. Compared to TikTok’s silly, chaotic, personality-driven videos (and a clear sense of what viewers want to see next), Instagram is striking some users as overly commercial and artificial. For many people, Instagram just isn’t as fun as it used to be.
“TikTok became successful because it is everything that Instagram is not,” said Bryan Gray Yambao, in a WhatsApp message. Also known as Bryanboy, the famous fashion and style blogger who rose to fame on TikTok by parodying the lavish lifestyle he used to promote more diligently on Instagram.
Instagram is trying to adapt to the TikTok-ification of the internet, along with a further decline in online ad spending. In July, parent company Meta reported its first decline in revenue since going public. Meta’s stated plans to show Facebook and Instagram users more content recommended by accounts they don’t follow, especially video content, is seen as a direct response to TikTok’s popularity. But frustrated users and influencers say they’re missing posts from friends and celebrities they chose to follow.
Meta executives say Instagram and Facebook can balance their original functions as social networks while also becoming discovery platforms. However, user backlash reached such a high volume last week that CEO Adam Mosseri released a video statement explaining the strategy changes. The company later said it would “temporarily reduce the number of recommendations you see in your feed so we can improve the quality of your experience,” according to a spokesperson. But the overall strategy remains the same.
Instagram’s shifting strategy creates a dilemma for fashion brands. Instagram is still where most customers are and where companies have the most experience turning marketing spend into brand awareness and sales. But user frustrations with the app’s algorithm raise questions about its future relevance. Meanwhile, TikTok’s influence is growing at a rapid pace. The app is much more than just viral dances.
“TikTok is like a fusion reactor of innovation and ideas from which many cultural trends are emerging,” said Brian Vaughn, partner at Shadow. The creative marketing and communications agency has worked with brands such as Aerie, Express and elf Cosmetics.
And TikTok is no longer just a destination for teenagers.
“Millennials — they may not necessarily be the ones doing a ton of creation, but they’re consuming content,” he said.
Aimee Song is one of those millennials. The perennial fashion influencer, who launched a clothing line in 2019 and is represented by DBA, has been online long enough to remember MySpace and Xanga. She now has more than 6 million followers on Instagram and another 84,000 on TikTok. The songstress is still getting used to posting on TikTok, where she mixes fashion show footage with silly videos of her family. She is surprised by the new people she has met on TikTok, including a 61-year-old former fashion executive, Gym Tan.
“I would never have discovered it on Instagram,” Song said. “It’s just her offering of how to dress in a non-lewd way.”
Meanwhile on Instagram, Song is posting more videos to increase her chances of appearing in followers’ feeds.
“Honestly, it didn’t come super-naturally, it was more like, OK, I have to do it because if you don’t get on the program, then you’re going to fall behind,” she said.
While Instagram is under threat, it is by no means obsolete. By the end of 2021, CNBC had reportedly amassed more than 2 billion monthly active users worldwide (Meta does not regularly release Instagram user numbers). And TikTok’s Chinese ownership could complicate its future in the US as tensions between the two countries worsen.
For many brands, Instagram is still seen as a better place to drive actual sales, while TikTok is better for brand awareness. (While specific items can go viral on TikTok and sell, predicting or engineering that kind of response is tricky.) Instagram has been building and improving its in-app purchases functionality for years, though TikTok aims to catch up. The app is testing different in-app purchase products outside the US.
“People always say Instagram is taking a page out of TikTok’s playbook, but I think TikTok is probably doing the same thing in terms of shopping and commerce on their platform,” Flaherty said.
Instagram is also a high-priority channel for many brands that hire influencers like Song to create sponsored content, especially in the luxury and designer category. Her audience there is more likely to be older and have the ability to drop a few hundred dollars on a designer bag. Her TikTok audience, on the other hand, often has very little knowledge or interest in fashion, she said.
Aerie’s McCormick said the brand thinks of its Instagram account as a curated brand billboard. Consumers who are ready to buy from the brand are often directed to its Instagram account before its website, she said. On TikTok, where users are less likely to search for brand content, Aerie’s strategy is to build as much awareness as possible by hiring creatives and running ads that reach broad audiences.
“If you want to take a message and send it to as many people as possible, you can do that [TikTok]McCormick said.
Vaughn agreed that the “aesthetically driven content” that Instagram is known for is still valuable for brands.
“It also has a place in the marketing funnel,” he said.
Emily Oberg, a former influencer who started her clothing line Sporty & Rich from an Instagram humor board, has no interest in filming “videos of herself doing things” for TikTok. The accounts she follows still appear on her Instagram feed.
“I am very happy to limit my use of all social channels and will limit it more and more as I get older,” she said in an e-mail. “It feels good and I don’t want to participate in where the content is going.”
