WTF is the Lox Club?
How a brand was able to find their niche at the intersection of TikTok ads and meme culture.
ICYMI: We kicked off last week’s issue highlighting the key differences between a brand’s organic presence on TikTok vs Instagram, featuring Hero Cosmetics as a prime example of what this strategy looks like in the wild.
📆 This week, we’ll be:
Investigating how Lox Club got such a massive budget to spend on TikTok ads
Sharing content & audio trends you should be using to inspire your next video
Highlighting key learnings that can be applied directly to you brand’s strategy
❤️ Lox Club: where bagels and cream cheese go to find love.
If you’ve spent more than 15 min on your FYP in the past few weeks and fit into the demo of a typical dating app user (so, everyone), you’ve likely come across a video (or 5) mentioning the Lox Club.
But with only 1258 followers and 2 videos posted on their TikTok account, how is the members-only Jewish dating app getting so much airtime? Well, a healthy paid ads and creator budget will do the trick.
Let’s examine two key elements of this strategy:
1️⃣ Broad Targeting 🎯
While the Lox Club’s ad copy speaks directly to a Jewish audience, the decision to go broad with targeting serves as a clever brand marketing play. As one can imagine, the comments section of the ads are full of non-Jewish viewers wondering why the Lox Club videos showed up, and keep showing up, on their FYP. This creates an opportunity for the brand to respond directly, letting viewers know the app is for everyone– not just Jews.
While this strategy may appear contradictory, the Lox Club has been able to create a stronger identity as “the Jewish dating app that shows ads to non-Jews who can also join” than they would have if they attempted to communicate the app as “being a dating app for Jews… oh and for everyone else too!” in one confusing TikTok.
Whether intentional or not, the strategy has effectively turned the app & their ads into a meme, which the Lox Club can now leverage for future ad content. (I.e. parody videos speaking more directly to non-Jewish audiences, inviting them to join the app)
2️⃣ Creator Partnerships 🤝
Another contributor to this “everyone is talking about it!” effect is the sheer volume of creators the Lox Club appears to work with. Not only are TikTok users seeing the app promoted multiple times, they’re seeing it mentioned by a variety of faces.
And with more creators, comes more content. A consistent influx of assets allows the Lox Club to experiment with different styles of ad creative without the added lift of in-house production. If the cost of exposure in addition to content rights is not within budget, outsourcing content creation through a specialized agency (like yours truly @SLOPE!) is another great method to achieve this same level of efficiency.
By then running Spark Ads via these creator’s accounts, ad content blends more seamlessly into the FYP vs ads coming from the Lox Club brand account alone.
🎵 Trending Sounds 🎵
Using trending sounds is key to growing on TikTok. Sounds help increase your chance for virality as well as increasing your video’s average watch time. Every week, we’ll round up a couple trending sounds that we think you should pay attention to, and how you can use them in your content.
#ThePhoto / My Photo Challenge
What this sound is: Falling into the thirst trap category, this hashtag and its accompanying sound give creators the opportunity to show off a jaw-dropping transformation. First, by recording a few seconds of themselves “before,” and then revealing an image of themselves “after” where they look hot af 🔥 (aka, #ThePhoto)
How your brand can use it: Brands can use this trend to post a product glow-up (ie, your product looking ordinary or unfinished, followed up by an absolute fire product shot), or to show a lackluster competitor as the before, and your brand’s upgrade as the after!
“Umm…yeah”
What this sound is: A voiceover of a woman reluctantly saying yes, this sound is a chance for accounts to use text overlay to propose a relatable scenario where you’d want to say no out of principal, but undoubtedly will be saying yes, like when your sister asks to borrow the shirt she already wears more often than you do, or when your bff asks if you want to go get something sweet after already eating a big meal.
How your brand can use it: Brands can use this sound to present a scenario highlighting how people can't get enough of their product. For example, by showing someone being asked if they already ran out of a product meant to last weeks or months in a super short period of time, or if they stocked up on an overwhelming amount of it by purchasing every single SKU available.
Main Takeaways:
TikTok makes it possible for any brand’s app or product to become a cultural phenomenon, and further disproves the marketing misconception that you need to dilute your brand’s messaging in order to appeal to a larger audience.
The comments section can be the best source of inspiration. Spend 15-20 minutes per day sifting through your own, competitor’s, and the creators you’ve worked with’s videos for commonalities and key gaps of knowledge that can be incorporated into your paid media strategy.
Start allocating a portion of your budget to working with TikTok influencers or an outsourced team of creators in order expedite the ability for your brand to test new angles and audiences without slowing down the internal team.
If you like what you see, please share with a friend!