Brief:

• Mucinex cough medicine is promoting its newest product, Mucinex Nightshift, with its second dance challenge on social video app TikTok. The brand recruited Stephen "tWitch" Boss and Allison Holker, the husband-and-wife team who appeared on "So You Think You Can Dance," to choreograph a "zombie dance" that shows how Mucinex aids cold and flu symptoms, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
• To participate in the branded hashtag challenge, TikTok users must record themselves doing their version of the dance and caption the video with the #BeatTheZombieFunk hashtag. Mucinex is offering cash prizes and VIP experiences as part of the campaign, per its announcement.
• Mucinex also set up a BeatTheZombieFunk.com microsite for people to take the zombie dance challenge, which started yesterday and runs through Feb. 27, per the announcement. The #BeatTheZombieFunk hashtag generated nearly 565 million views as of press time.

Insight:

Mucinex's branded hashtag challenge is its second effort in the past few months to engage Generation Z consumers on TikTok, which was downloaded an estimated 738 million times last year. Dance challenges have proven to be popular on the mobile platform, which provides user-friendly tools to quickly record videos with graphics and a professional soundtrack. Mucinex is bringing celebrity appeal to its campaign with the "zombie dance" created by Boss and Holker, who urge TikTok users to participate by creating their own videos.

The challenge follows Mucinex's Halloween-themed #TooSickToBeSick challenge, which generated 984 million views over the past few months. For that effort, Mucinex encouraged people to share their before-and-after looks as they got into Halloween costumes. Mucinex hired several TikTok influencers to create suggested styles for people to use in their videos.

Brands like Mucinex are putting more effort into their TikTok campaigns and improving their production quality with the help of creative agencies and influencers. For example, Sony this month debuted on TikTok with a slickly produced video it described as the "most epic TikTok ever made" to promote the movie sequel "Bad Boys for Life." TikTok has also been incorporated into the 143-year-old Westminster Kennel Club's marketing mix, which also includes social media influencers.

The NFL generated 2.2 billion views with its #superbowlliv challenge that urged football fans to share their team spirit during Super Bowl weekend earlier this month. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Hyundai, PepsiCo's Doritos and Mtn Dew and Intuit's TurboTax also ran campaigns on TikTok during the Super Bowl to reach the app's mostly Gen Z audience.