Big thanks to the Nutrition Business Journal for interviewing our Founder and President, Mary Bigham for its October 2021 “Branding & Marketing” issue. In the article, Mary discusses how food brands are using TikTok to connect with new audiences.
Mary Bigham, founder and CEO of Dish Works culinary content agency, recently gave us a live laptop tour of her busy studio in Pennsylvania, where nutritionists, chefs, videographers, art directors and editors were creating mouthwatering visuals for brands.
We wandered virtually into a test kitchen filled with the staccato chop-chop-chop of knives on cutting boards and then moved to a table-top set where bakers were prepping a keto-friendly cake. Cameras zoomed in on ingredients and working hands.
Many of these shoots will end up on social media platforms, and not just Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. They are heading for that unpredictable, hard-to-describe TikTok universe.
“Our clients started asking specifically for TikTok content at the beginning of 2021,” explained Bigham, whose clients’ products include supplements, nut milks, natural sweeteners and CBD products. “A year before, maybe only 10% of our clients asked for it. Today, 70% want TikTok videos.”
What a difference a year makes.
The pandemic rapidly changed the social media landscape. People stuck at home turned to their devices for information, entertainment and community, creating the perfect conditions for a relative newcomer, TikTok, to gain a vast audience.
As of July, TikTok had racked up 3 billion downloads, according to the app metrics firm Sensor Tower.
With 689 million active users globally, TikTok could pose one of the biggest opportunities for marketers—if they could just figure out how to leverage it. Today’s adopters advise brands still on the fence to embrace the unknown, the weird, the trendy, the dance challenges, the lip-sync mashups.
Don’t dismiss the platform, they say, because it’s here to stay.
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Read the full article in the October 2021 issue of Nutrition Business Journal