TikTok and Cost Cuts at Cannes
I'm at the bustling Cannes Lions advertising festival in the south of France, where the sun is strong and the rosé is flowing. The mood feels buoyant, even as the advertising world has pulled back on spending and tech companies reel from bruising mass layoffs.
Some attendees are sharing Airbnbs with colleagues or staying far from the venue to cut down on costs. But tech companies still have a big presence: Spotify, Pinterest and Meta Platforms were among the companies that took over the famous Croisette Beach, featuring lounges with plenty of branding for social media posts and space for scenic meetings.
TikTok wasn’t on the beach, but it set up shop close by at the swanky, five-star Carlton hotel. It offered booths for filming TikTok videos, while tips emblazoned on large cutouts encouraged attendees to use sounds and incorporate trends and editing tools, such as those offered by CapCut, an app owned by TikTok’s parent ByteDance. It also brought a slew of executives.
Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, noted it’s been a “challenging” 12 months for the advertising industry, citing the macroeconomic environment. “Everybody has felt it,” he said at a press briefing Monday.
“There’s a real focus on how do we make our marketing budgets work harder. How do we do more with less as an organization and as an industry?” He doesn’t see that changing in the near term.
TikTok’s advertising sales still pale beside internet giants like Meta.
But the short-form video app’s presence at Cannes, and what its executives say, are notable because the app’s rise in popularity has set off a seismic shift among social media apps and how people consume content.
Even for TikTok, audience growth is a problem.
For the last year, TikTok and ByteDance have been wrestling with how to revive U.S. growth on the app, as The Information reported earlier this year. One way is to attract older users.
Kate Jhaveri, TikTok’s global head of marketing, said the app sees an opportunity “for more people to be on TikTok.”
Neither Chandlee or Jhaveri addressed the biggest threat to U.S. growth, a potential U.S. ban.
Four years ago, Chandlee said, the handful of TikTok executives who attended Cannes were just trying to get meetings and explain why brands should care about the fledgling app. That’s no longer the case. On Monday, TikTok announced a partnership with Unilever, to create content around #CleanTok, a popular hashtag on the platform that highlights cleaning tips.
“We’ve very much shifted from why to how,” Chandlee said.
Catching Up with Emma Chamberlain
Emma Chamberlain, the 22-year-old megastar that started her career on YouTube six years ago, spoke on a panel with Spotify on Monday about building her brand. She signed an exclusive deal with Spotify for her podcast “Anything Goes,” which went into effect earlier this year. After the panel, I interviewed Chamberlain. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Kaya Yurieff: You started as a YouTuber, but you’ve expanded in all these ways, including building your coffee brand, Chamberlain Coffee. What do the future of creators’ careers look like?
Emma Chamberlain: It’s so impossible to predict, that you can’t even look around, in a way. You actually have to look inward. My one piece of advice is every individual does have something unique to offer. That’s why every individual can be a creator if they want. The problem is we can see something succeeding in the creator economy and say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna do that, so that I can succeed.’ And that’s exactly what you can’t do. You have to bring something new … Don’t underestimate your own unique voice. That is your only superpower in this industry.
KY: Podcasting has become super popular, but also super crowded. How do you stand out?
EC: I started podcasting when it wasn’t the hot thing, especially for young people. I started because I love talking. That’s one of the things I have to offer – being able to talk for a long time and not get tired. It’s always just been speaking from my own interests. Like, what am I truly interested in? Speaking from a place of organic emotion, that just resonates. People I think look at a podcast and they say, ‘I can just sit here and talk about whatever,’ and sort of just be all over the place and it's fine. That might work for some, but the best podcasts do have a level of thought that goes into it before. You can’t just turn on the microphone and start talking about whatever. Being tactful about what you’re talking about and being thoughtful, that’s what sets it apart.
KY: What’s on your wish list when it comes to podcasting features?
EC: What would be so incredible is some sort of explore page. A whole page where it’s just like all these different options. It could be episodes recommended for you. With other platforms, you’re constantly sort of being fed new things. Like [Spotify’s] Daily Mix playlist, but for podcast episodes.
KY: What are your future career goals?
EC: The podcast is so great because it’s such a blank canvas. It can become anything I want. That’s why I named the show “Anything Goes” so that I could literally do whatever I want at any given moment. The podcast is gonna be something that remains a part of my career for the foreseeable future.
With coffee or even just growing brands in general, that’s something that I’ve grown a new passion for. Who knows if there’s another brand. We have too many ideas.
KY: Do you want Chamberlain Coffee to be like Starbucks?
EC: No. I don’t have a coffee brand that exists now that’s like ‘I want to do that.’ That brand doesn’t exist. For me, it’s remaining a premium product that feels elevated and the quality is there. I think a lot of times when it goes too big, the quality just gets destroyed, right? And that’s something I don’t want to do. I think being premium, but also being incredibly accessible to whoever wants to experience that. So it’s like finding that balance where it’s widespread enough that anyone can get their hands on it if they want to, but preserving the quality is important to me.
What else is going on in Cannes…
Snap partnered with Disney to take over art gallery La Malmaison, which features various rooms themed to Disney movies, including the upcoming animated musical “Wish” and “Elemental,” released on Friday, which is set in a city where fire, water, land and air residents live together. Attendees scan QR codes to open the Snapchat app and see augmented reality effects overlay on the exhibit around them.