On the eve of my 26th birthday, I was sure of at least one thing: TikTok is probably a net positive. That, or it’s the harbinger of something positive.
“Ten things I wish I knew in my 20s,” one video blared, the distinctly robotic narration floating in and out like elevator music.
Heads swiveled. There it was: my phone, a literal beacon of light.
“First, stop watching ‘A Day in My Life’ videos,” the TikTok began, a human voice eclipsing the robot narrator’s. “We’re all just performing for the camera.”
I was vacationing with friends in Utah, surrounded by regional fast food and government-owned farmland and the kinds of canyons that convert non-believers. On the cusp of another year around the sun, I had traveled thousands of miles away from New York City—not only to see beautiful things, but to hear them, too.
My phone droned on. “Do what you really want: the hard things, the pipe dreams, the things that take years. The time will pass anyway.”
There’s a reason repackaged self-help language works—especially on a platform like TikTok. I—and millions of others—need to hear things as they are, from humans who look and sound like humans. I want to be spoken to directly, from one screen to another. I want to watch middle-aged women and charming farmers babble on in alternation—not corporate, product-centered content that feels unskippable, even when it isn’t.
That return to the self—the human within ourselves and others—sets the most resonant content apart. Galvanize, our guide to humanized copywriting and content, explores four key communication themes:
- Audience: Which brands are creating connections and making people feel seen?
- Messaging: What points of view break past defenses to create resonance?
- Style: Which voices express the most magnetic personalities?
- Innovation: How are brands using the written word to stand out from the pack?
In our last three Galvanize posts, we examined the audience, messaging, and style themes. Now, let’s take a look at our fourth and final theme: innovation.
Screen time pays off
Innovation comes with its attendant buzzwords: how many cutting-edge and state-of-the-art offerings are even possible? Have we hit a ceiling for breakthroughs?
Still, I think there’s more to it. What does innovation do in the context of language? How does it reimagine what words mean, or how the world might respond to them?
Back to scrolling. Your TikTok feed is brilliantly crafted—or computed, to put it more precisely—by a startlingly good algorithm. Within minutes, ballet enthusiasts find themselves thumbing through BalletTok (that is, #ballettok), while droves of committed foodies dive headfirst into online-chef-meets-it-girls (far less niche than other rabbit holes).
As for myself, I get a healthy dose of TherapyJeff, a real-life therapist and an even realer online self-help guru. He’s friendly, soft-spoken, and decidedly wise, his page a deluge of neatly framed thumbnail text superimposed on a grid of faces (all his own).
“Three ways to calm yourself down when you’re hiding in the bathroom during the holidays,” one thumbnail reads. Interesting enough.
“One,” he begins. “Turn on the faucet, and let your hands glide under the cold water to lower your body temperature.” He leans forward, cups and extends his hands outwards.
“This is my kind of therapy,” someone in the comments remarks.
What if TherapyJeff were a brand? The thing is, he is—and an innovative one at that. I’m not even talking about his Linktree, replete with brand partner links, his Breakup Thriving Guide (and accompanying live classes), and a link to pre-order Big Dating Energy (his new book). TherapyJeff himself is a brand, his slightly irreverent smile punctuating nearly three million feeds. His followers know what to expect: he’s a familiar and welcome sight, a human before the brand. (This is how we perceive him, at least.) And, well, he’s a refreshing departure from self-serious, jargon-y resources that probably inspire a number of armchair diagnoses.
Welcome to the future, repackaged as the past
From my personal notes, some time ago: TikTok seems visceral, not intellectual; relatable, not flashy (or if it’s flashy, it’s aspirational); and human, not corporate. This was a few years ago, after I swore I wouldn’t make an account. (Clearly, I did anyway.)
A few days ago, I stumbled upon an eye-catching tweet: “Instagram Reels and TikToks have perfectly reproduced teen girl magazines,” @pangmeli writes. “[Thousands of] hair styling ideas, workouts that promise miraculous results … melodramatic stories … [guides to being] more desirable to men, [and] mainstream conceptions of glamour (“old money”).”
That’s the thing: successful online creators—particularly those on TikTok and Reels—have that it factor. And audiences, of course, crave it. That’s the ethos of the long-eulogized teen magazine: here’s what’s cool, and here’s what isn’t. This time, though, your idols are the ones serving up the hair and workout ideas: you can be like them; you’re hearing the secrets straight from the source.
The innovation behind it all? The successful crowd isn’t a zoomer-specific coterie—after all, many of the app’s most popular creators are older (see: TherapyJeff). Regardless of who they are, successful creators face the same challenges: they have a few minutes to say something interesting, to be distinctly human and amorphously product-like at the same time. They have to sell a fleeting parasocial presence—a friend-as-a-service or a sage-as-a-service or an all-in-one interior design expert who dabbles in point-of-view ASMR. Perhaps most importantly, they have to make it look easy—and luckily, sometimes it is.
Elevate your brand with the right push
Innovation means a lot of things. When it comes to your brand, that might mean exploring controversy, or imbuing your image with the past or the future. Along the way, even the most established brands can learn a thing or two from TikTok: sometimes, innovation is complex; other times, it’s surprisingly simple.
On our Utah trip, we had to drive a few hundred miles inland from Nevada. To entertain ourselves, we played a simple game of numbers.
“How many trees are there in the state of Utah?” My friend asked.
The car echoed with guesses. We combed through Google for the official answer—and then, on a whim, I opened TikTok.
“Let’s plant this tree together,” the video’s narrator shouted. A local gardener, just miles from the interstate.
We watched it, of course. Nearly eight billion trees, plus one.
Looking to infuse innovation into your brand? Let’s do it together.
While you’re at it, download Galvanize.
