How Netflix and Paramount Reach Gen Z on TikTok: ‘You’ve Got to Sprinkle a Little Chaos on It’

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor TikTok can add jet fuel to entertainment marketers’ messages — but they have to learn how to speak the language of the platform to effectively harness the creativity of its creators.

That was one of the key takeaways from the Variety/TikTok Culture Catalysts Dinner, held in West Hollywood on Sept. 20. Paramount Pictures’ approach with its TikTok campaign for blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” — 2022’s top-grossing movie at the box office so far — was to introduce the nearly 40-year-old flyboy franchise to Gen Z, said Danielle De Palma, EVP of global marketing for the studio.

With TikTok, its biggest goal was to reach “younger audiences that didn’t have that same emotional, nostalgic connection to the film that so many of the older audiences did,” De Palma said. “At every major marketing beat … it was really listening and learning to what that younger audience wanted from the film,” she said. “And of course the incredible aerial action and Tom Cruise was always at the top in what was most compelling, but what we really saw was that younger people wanted to see themselves on screen, and they wanted to see more of the new recruits.” Khartoon Weiss, TikTok’s global head of agency and accounts, noted that videos with the #TopGunMode hashtag on TikTok have more than 13 billion views — exceeding the Earth’s population. “That is massive,” she said. “That is fandom at its finest.

That is literally repeat usage behavior, watching, engagement.” Film marketing is constantly evolving, especially in the digital realm, said De Palma. “But I do think we’ve seen a pretty seismic shift with the proliferation of TikTok over the last couple of years,” she noted. “I think it’s changing the way that we’re