Evolving The TikTok As A Business Brand

Over the last five years, TikTok as a platform has become a global cultural phenomenon, and with that its advertising proposition has also evolved. To reflect that ability to help brands deeply engage and entertain audiences, a new brand platform has been created by Gravity Road - ‘Watch it. Love it. Want it.’

The marketing team no longer felt that the simple line “Make Ads. Make TikToks” did enough to capture the community engagement the platform offers, prompting the decision to refresh the positioning this year.

“Over time, we’ve seen that behaviour play out every day on TikTok. People come here to watch what captures their attention, love the creators and communities that inspire them, and ultimately want the ideas, products, and experiences they discover. Our new positioning, ‘Watch it. Love it. Want it.’ captures that journey from discovery to real-world action,” says Sofia Hernandez, global head of marketing and partnerships, TikTok.

Following a three-way pitch, BrandTech Group won the brief to develop a new positioning that captured the full TikTok ecosystem, showing how advertisers can move from discovery to conversion in a playful, engaging way.

It aims to break down how users connect with the content on the platform and where brands can play within those conversations, featuring more than 1 billion daily users worldwide.

“With TikTok Shop and the full functionality of the platform, TikTok is now going out to market and formally articulating something it has been saying for a while — and that every advertiser already knows: that something unique happens on TikTok,” says Mark Eaves, co-founder of Gravity Road. “It can generate interest in a brand and then turn that very quickly into some form of sales action in a way that isn’t seen anywhere else.”

Various brands have set up a presence on TikTok Shop, including Rare Beauty, Fenty Beauty, PacSun, and Crocs, while also using it as an engagement platform to develop interest and awareness.

“There's been no shortage of people understanding the power of engagement on TikTok, but actually thinking about it in a full funnel way as a total solution for marketing, that's the next phase,” adds Eaves.

The TikTok ambition

Over recent years, TikTok has become a discovery platform for businesses that have been able to then build on that awareness and drive sales through creator content and recommendations. This has been proven true across sectors such as restaurants, beauty, travel, and for small businesses too, leading to real world actions that are reflected through ‘Watch it. Love it. Want It’.

To enable that, TikTok has developed creative tools that help brands develop content people want to watch from creators. These include AI-powered solutions that help businesses to optimise performance and measure impact of their storytelling in real time and monitor results.

The platform claims that in the last year, searches have grown by more than 40 per cent in the last year, with one in four users beginning to search within 30 seconds of opening the app. This offers a new go-to solution for marketers and agencies to prioritise across their media plans.

“In 2026, it's less of a funnel. It's more of a loop,” outlines Eaves of consumer search habits and their loyalty to particular platforms. “These things people travel between engagement and consideration into action in simultaneous moments and then back again.”

The platform also acts as a call to action for advertisers while helping marketers to understand user behaviour through TikTok and how it drives engagement and love for businesses – a paramount element of the Gravity Road team’s solution. It is also demonstrating that the digital platforms and structures brands have become used to when allocating their budgets have become outdated.

“It's a call to the industry to perhaps think in slightly more nuanced, integrated, and less siloed ways to make the most out of consumers… When you're in an environment where you can discover something and instantly act on it - whether that be booking tickets for it or ordering it, or any commercial action - these things are happening in compressed ways. And so, it's a call to more progressive approach to marketing based on how audiences behave,” Eaves explains.

TikTok is expected to activate the new platform at major business events around the world over the coming months.