TikTok & Shopify Partnership: Bosses should fire agencies and stubborn senior marketing employees who scoff at TikTok. They are wrong.

Much of the media industry is living in the past. People talk about ad-revenue and the # of ads you can insert into programs like TV shows and movies, but the bigger disruption is going to come from social streaming and marketing.

TikTok’s partnership with Shopify is likely to be successful and will enable creators to monetize their content more easily. People talk about “breaking into traditional media” like it is a thing that is wanted or needed now-a-days. I disagree. It often appears fake and consumers today value more genuine interaction.

Things like typos that some marketing boss at your company would care about so much 10 years ago, matter very little now. I tend to find too many marketing teams focus on getting every little piece of content 10000% right that they end up spending way too much time and money for limited return. If they were more willing to take risks, act like human beings who do indeed make mistakes and errors in their content, and just churn out a lot of high quality, uber-targeted specific content, then they will realize better results.

“But what if I make a typo?” My response: Who cares? You literally shouldn’t care. Just create and be human. The game is about content and microtargeting.

Brands who are NOT investing in things like TikTok are out of touch. I don’t care how many years of marketing experience the VP or CMO of some big marketing corporation has. I think they are stupid if they dismiss these strategies. You don’t need an MBA and 15 years of experience to recognize this. In fact, that MBA might actually be a hindrance to marketing teams that need to adjust quickly. Marketing teams should hire fewer MBAs and more tech people. MBAs to keep the books in check and tech people to rapidly adjust content creation and delivery strategies. Any “senior” marketing “leaders” who think they know better on this are jokes. They are just acting stubborn if they think things like TikTok will diminish their brand or it’s only a thing for GenZers.

If I hired a marketing agency and they did not include TikTok in their SOW proposal, I would likely stop consideration IMMEDIATELY. It tells me either they don’t get it or that they don’t listen to their younger staff who likely are recommending it internally. The former tells me they are incompetent and the latter tells me they are arrogant. Neither is appealing.