The big mascara sale of 2020 kicked off with a video from a little-known TikTok creator named Jess. He’s in what appears to be his bedroom, trying on Maybelline’s Lash Sensational Sky High Mascara. The video looks like a spontaneous review of a product, raw and unpolished; he even accidentally smears makeup all over his eyelid. But his tabs look awesome, and soon other TikTokers will be trying it too.
Today, videos with the #skyhighmascara hashtag have over 650 million views on the platform. Many of the videos that other users have made feature that original TikTok of Jess. And despite what it sounds like, she wasn’t some random person reviewing a random product. Jess was one of hundreds of creators who were paid for content by the company.
“It’s often really letting them have the product, making sure they know the key features and benefits of it, and then you have to let the creator showcase the product in a way that their fans resonate with. said Tina Liu, Maybelline’s chief marketing officer.
Trends on TikTok and Instagram come and go. There are viral dances, challenges, and product reviews. When a certain type of curling iron, cleaning product, or condiment catches on, the brands and companies that make and sell those items have a limited amount of time to capitalize on the short attention spans of social media users.
Like many brands, Maybelline has spent more on social media marketing each year, which means more and more of what you see on TikTok or Instagram aren’t spontaneous trends, but intentional advertising.
“A lot of times we think of it as luck or chance,” said Jonah Berger, a Wharton marketing professor. “We think we have to catch lightning in a bottle. You know, some companies are lucky and some are not.”
Sure, TikTok marketing looks different than TV ads and magazine spreads. But Berger said his raw look is part of what makes him so attractive. Virality also depends on whether the content feels useful, the product is accessible, and the video is easy for other users to copy.
“Suddenly, you are now part of an ongoing discussion that is happening online. And so in a lot of cases, once something gets a little bit of traction, other people are doing their own riff on it,” she said.
Virality is hard to plan for, even if you’re a big company like Maybelline. Her mascara campaign exceeded expectations; you could say that sales were sky high. Within the first few months, the product sold out four times at beauty chain Ulta.
“We were meeting almost every day at that time just to try to find solutions,” Liu said of the supply chain crisis. Solutions included changing some of its manufacturing lines to make more mascara. And luckily for Maybelline, it makes its mascara in the US, so the product didn’t get stuck on a cargo ship in the middle of the ocean.
But sometimes, virality just isn’t catchable, like that moment in 2021 when, for some reason, everyone on TikTok was baking feta.
“It was a feta surprise,” said Benoit Breal, owner of Saxelby Cheesemongers, a wholesaler that supplies about 80 stores and restaurants in New York City. “Suddenly we get a lot of requests for feta cheese in the middle of winter.”
Feta is typically popular during the warmer months when people put it in fresh salads with cucumbers and tomatoes. For Breal, the demand was mysteriously 10 times higher than it usually is. He was confused.
“And you know, it takes a few days until we were able to understand what was going on, and we missed most of it,” he said.
Breal eventually saw the trend in the news, but when he coordinated additional orders with his suppliers, he missed out on an entire week of the feta craze. A couple of weeks later, she was done.
Unfortunately, Breal said, that is the nature of their business. Social media trends can expire as quickly as some of the cheese you sell.
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