During the height of the pandemic, TikTok went from a Gen Z viral dance app, to the premiere social platform of the moment, far outpacing the growth of Instagram and Facebook. But as consumers were migrating to TikTok en masse, the majority of brands were fumbling with the transition. Suddenly, there was a whole new set of rules for content creation. Where other platforms favored polish and aspiration, TikTok prized authenticity and entertainment — and marketers were struggling to navigate. If TikTok could help brands feel safe, confident, and inspired, they would invest more marketing dollars in reaching audiences on TikTok. So, together we created GroupHug, a B2B channel to do just that.

Once we understood the mindset of marketers during the rise of TikTok, we knew we needed to build a single, credible destination where they could learn how to reach their audiences effectively on the platform. And what if that destination could be genuinely fun and entertaining, tapping into marketers’ own consumer habits of scrolling the platform for content they love? Thus, GroupHug was born, a TikTok channel built on careful curation of content designed for marketers, including infotainment analyses of brand accounts that are killing it on TikTok, interviews with successful social media managers from DuoLingo and other brands, AMAs with agency marketers, and day-in-the-life stories from independent creators.

The strategy started with a core belief about TikTok, that it is the best way to learn something new. That fact presented the perfect opportunity to help brand marketers. They needed to learn the ins and outs of TikTok.

Our audience was every CMO, brand marketer, agency team, and social media manager trying to understand how to break through with their consumers the way Duolingo did on TikTok.

The first step was to jump into two kinds of research. 1) We researched all of the best case studies to help brands understand what truly succeeds on TikTok. 2) We researched all the best TikTokers for telling those stories in their infotainment style.

We formulated an infotainment approach to the content, like creating a TV channel with regular programing over the course of six months, resulting in over 60 videos and over 3.5 million views.

GroupHug's superpower was careful curation. Working with the platform’s top creators, we featured a range of content from brands that were killing it on TikTok—interviews with social media managers, AMAs with agency marketers, and day-in-the-life stories from creators. Marketers could hear directly from native creators what works on the platform— the most powerful way to learn.

We posted three videos to the GroupHug account per week for five months and scaled the platform with consistent posting. We stayed highly active in the comments to cultivate conversation with the follower community and discuss what works for brands on TikTok.

At first, videos got a couple hundred views, but quickly the strategy started paying off. View counts jumped to the tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. We started gaining two to three thousand followers per week. Eventually, the PinkPanthress video case reached almost 1M views and several others reached 500,000.

This was not your typical B2B play. We created more than 60 videos and the GroupHug channel racked up 32,000 followers in a matter of weeks. The campaign received more than 3.5 million views.

We interviewed some of the top social media managers, like Zaria Parvez of Duolingo.

Infotainment TikToker @cultureunfiltered reached 800,000 video views walking the audience through the steps sponge maker Scrub Daddy took to break through; more than 320,000 people stopped by to learn Doja Cat’s secret to creating the best brand collabs; and more than 300,000 were interested in how Bobbi Brown's new makeup brand took off on the platform. Our PinkPanthress video racked up nearly 1 million views.

By the end of the campaign, we had many more brands coming to GroupHug to see how they could be involved.