NYX's #BrowFitness challenge exceeds 705M views on TikTok

Brief:

NYX Professional Makeup is urging TikTok users to join its #BrowFitness challenge by creating videos that show a workout routine for putting on eyebrow makeup, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer. The L'Oréal-owned brand's challenge started on June 22 and has racked up more than 705 million views of videos using the #BrowFitness hashtag in two days.
NYX enlisted influencers including @BrentRivera (29.4 million followers), @DemiBagby (11.8 million), @CristianDennis (4.1 million) and @official_janina (2.8 million) in the challenge. Each influencer follows the workout steps specified in the campaign's official soundtrack while demonstrating how to use NYX's eyebrow makeup.
The makeup brand also is promoting the challenge with a banner that appears in TikTok's Discover section that shows a carousel of trending hashtags. The challenge follows NYX's campaign for its Butter Gloss lip gloss that started in March and has since generated almost 11 billion views of videos using the #ButterGlossPop hashtag.

Insight:

NYX's challenge on TikTok is off to a strong start with hundreds of millions of views for videos with the #BrowFitness hashtag, though anyone can use the hashtag to generate views of unrelated videos. The campaign shows the importance of enlisting influencers with millions of followers for hashtag challenges, considering that NYX's official account on TikTok has less than 22,000 followers.

Branded hashtag challenges like NYX's are a key way to generate publicity on TikTok and boost engagement with consumers. TikTok's algorithms are designed to promote discovery of a variety of content, not just videos from accounts that people follow, as it explained last week in a blog post about how its For You feed works. Hashtag challenges urge people to participate in the creative process of making videos, while also extending the reach of campaigns among a wider audience. NYX competitor E.l.f. Cosmetics has also found success on TikTok, returning to the platform for COVID-19 awareness and new original songs.

NYX's TikTok campaigns are a sign of how the cosmetics brand is ramping up its digital presence to reach younger consumers who are heavy users of social media, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. With Pride events being canceled this month because of the health crisis, NYX hosted the first virtual Pride march on photo-sharing app Instagram. To join the march, Instagram users can post selfies decorated with NYX's "Proud Allies" filter and use the #proudalliesforall hashtag.

TikTok on Thursday will formally present its platform at the NewFronts, the Interactive Advertising Bureau's yearly series of presentations from digital media companies, which will be a chance for marketers to learn more about its audience and future plans. TikTok is reportedly developing new ad formats and is looking to expand into more live broadcasts and educational content as the social video app diversifies away from the dance and music videos. As part of its effort to grow advertising revenue and expand worldwide, TikTok last month hired Kevin Mayer, former head of Disney's recently launched video streaming service, as its new CEO.

TikTok has enormous marketing potential after setting records with 315 million downloads worldwide in Q1, according to Sensor Tower estimates. The app has been downloaded more than 2 billion times from the App Store and Google Play since it was launched outside of China in 2017, and became available in the U.S. the following year after parent company ByteDance completed its takeover of music video app Musical.ly. In the U.S., TikTok's user base jumped 56% to 28.8 million from October 2019 to March 2020, according to Comscore data cited by eMarketer.