Upgrading the MENA Market: TikTok's What's Next Report Reveals Key Strategies for Brands
TikTok, has released its fourth annual trend forecast, the TikTok What's Next Report 2024, outlining key insights and strategies for marketers to navigate the landscape of the platform. The report introduces the concept of Creative Bravery as the guiding mindset for the TikTok community in 2024, urging brands to embrace a blend of curiosity, imagination, vulnerability, and courage for deeper connections within the community.
Shadi Kandil, General Manager, Global Business Solutions, Middle East, Turkey, Africa, Central and South Asia, TikTok, highlighted the platform's role in redefining traditional storytelling and boosting creativity. He emphasised the vast opportunities for brands to engage with relevant audiences by embracing creative bravery and building deeper community connections.
The report identifies three key Trend Signals, categorised as follows:
Curiosity Peaked: Users on TikTok are seeking more than a single 'right answer,' actively exploring various perspectives and uncharted discoveries. The report reveals that TikTok users in KSA are 1.3 times more likely to agree that the platform introduces them to new topics they didn't know they liked. Brands are encouraged to create hyper-relevant, delightful, and useful content that piques every curiosity, even those communities didn't know they had.
Storytelling Unhinged: TikTok communities are embracing multiple story arcs happening simultaneously, making up fictional celebrities and narratives. Rooted in fandom culture, the #delulu trend combines fantasy and manifestation, allowing users to tap into delusional comfort. Brands are advised to focus on intriguing narrative structures that captivate viewers beyond the initial seconds, with TikTok ads in the UAE and KSA proven to keep users watching 1.4 times longer.
Bridging the Trust Gap: As the trust gap between consumers and brands widens, TikTok users are seeking engagement beyond one-time sales, desiring positive societal change and transparency. The platform provides an open line of communication between brands and their consumers. Brands are urged to consider each campaign and organic piece of content as an opportunity to build brand trust and values, with viewers in KSA showing increased trust (24 percent), loyalty (42 percent), and alignment with the brand's identity (33 percent) after seeing ads on TikTok.
The report is supported by data from the Global TikTok Marketing Science team, gathered through third-party commissioned research studies utilising mixed methods approaches. The insights, focused on studies from 2022 and 2023, aim to guide marketers in navigating the trends shaping 2023 and 2024.
