Though TikTok faces an uncertain future in the U.S., that’s not stopping it from rolling out new products. This week it launched a new platform designed for brands and SMBs to build and customize interactive lenses (or effects, as TikTok calls them). These can include things like virtual product try-ons.
Known as Branded Effects, it enables marketers to build interactive TikTok clips, usually involving their products. Obvious examples are things like makeup, sunglasses, and hair color, while other creative activations can be things like mini-games that steer a vehicle through dance moves or head movements.
All the above builds on TikTok’s Effect House, which launched last year. This is its creator platform for AR effects that anyone can build. Like Snap’s Lens Studio, the idea is to offer a tool that stimulates lens creation, which in turn fuels user engagement. That leads to the real endgame: brand advertisers.
And that’s where Branded Effects come in. It brings effects creation capability directly to brands. If this sounds familiar, it comes just one week after Snap did something similar. As we examined, Snap’s new ARES is a SaaS-based tool that packages up Lens Studio in a way that’s tuned for marketers.
Key Considerations
Like Snap’s ARES, TikTok’s Branded Effects is meant to ease friction for brands and SMBs to build interactive lenses in their marketing mix. And that underlying goal shows in several of the program’s features. It’s all about helping businesses get over fears of new technology and marketing formats.
To that end, Branded Effects leads with several components that help marketers get started in the effect creation process. That includes templates, tutorials, and documentation about how to create various types of effects. We’re talking interactive elements like textures, materials, lighting, and shadows.
These are key considerations when building branded lenses and effects, given that they often involve displaying a company’s products in multi-dimensional ways. As we examined recently around 3D product try-ons for cars and food, realistic renderings (e.g., food “craveability”) are the name of the game.
The ability to achieve this realism is also important for SMB buy-in. If they don’t see their products’ physical attributes represented in virtual try-ons, it could be an adoption impediment. This is especially true of fashion items or high-ticket items (again, cars), which is why Snap recently launched ray tracing.
Speaking of verticals, TikTok names a wide range of businesses that can benefit from Branded Effects, including personal care, beauty, CPG, entertainment, and retail. Products that utilize the front-facing camera are particularly applicable, due to the virality and user appeal around selfie videos.
Creative Legwork
Another notable selling point for Branded Effects is that it offers marketers the option of being matched with developers to fulfill the creative legwork. Snap has done something similar in the past where it acts as a matchmaker between brands and creators. Both sides win in being able to tap into a marketplace.
Beyond onboarding tools and developer resources, Branded Effects boast other components meant to appeal to marketers. For example, several of its effect formats can activate calls-to-action so that they’re not only demonstrative but actionable. This feeds the hunger for shoppability in social commerce.
Similarly, analytics are offered so that marketers can realize ROI in their forays into interactive effects. TikTok knows that many marketers are data-driven and it wants to help them form a business case and justify the investment. In fact, 3D try-ons generally outperform other formats, due to their interactivity.
That business case will be needed to move the needle for SMB adoption. Meanwhile, helping them take that first leap is the name of the game. And that’s all about reducing friction and making the technology less intimidating. We’ll continue to see TikTok, Snap and others draw from that playbook.
