Anatomy of a Viral Video: Kylie Brakeman
Breaking down the individual elements of Kylie's recent TikTok hit.
Today I’m introducing a new recurring segment, Anatomy of a Viral Video.
I’ll be highlighting a few exemplary social media posts each month that serve as excuses to rant and rave about all things digital marketing strategy.
Selected posts will come from a mix of my clients, celebrities, brands, people I’m genuinely a fan of, and complete strangers who do a great job at marketing themselves, consciously or not.
So without moises alou, let’s put a magnifying glass on:
Kylie Brakeman – 2024 Trend Predictions
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Quick Stats (at time of writing):
972K Views, 136.5K Likes, 2,576 Comments, 7,472 Shares, 9,752 Saves
Like PCT: 14% | Comment PCT: 0.3% | Share PCT: 0.8% | Save PCT: 1.0%
In other words, 1 in every 7 TikTok users who were exposed to this video pressed “Like”, and 1 in every 100 people pressed “Save”. That is insanely high.
Any Like PCT > 8% is considered good in my book, same goes for Share PCT > 0.5%.
But the metric I’m most excited by? 78 other videos have used Kylie’s original sound to underscore their own TikToks:
Here’s one from Erika Dwyer, a fashion girlie whose real interpretations of the fake styles earned 3x as many views with even higher engagement than Kylie’s OG video:
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Here’s another TikTok from @parkslopedilf , who not only has a top ten username on the app, but did not get nearly enough love for his takes on Kylie’s looks:
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The sound also caught the ear of Gunnar Deatherage, a former Project Runway designer, who “Stitched” the video to earnestly create an “Evil Denim” look:
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I highly recommend taking some time to browse the sound, and watch a few of the videos. Not only the ones from big time influencers, but DIY fashion bloggers and everyday TikTokers. Do you see how happy they are to be participating? This is fundamentally the game of the app. It’s all one big inside joke that everyone is “in” on.
Most marketing consultants would advise “creators” to hop on trending audio that they come across on their FYP, or add trending hashtags to their video caption.
Not me.
I want your videos to be the trending sound used by other “creators”. Only instead of a Doja Cat song, it's “Bewildered Mailman” and “Normcore Pagliacci”. This is your word-of-mouth. People you don’t know indirectly doing your advertising for you.
Another thing I’d like to call out: this video was exactly 1 minute and 1 second long. This is no accident, and suggests Kylie participates in the Creativity Program Beta.
Not to be confused with the TikTok Creator Fund (which was discontinued last Fall), the Creativity Program Beta offers far more generous payouts for its participants. It directly incentivizes popular creators to post longer videos on the platform.
Here are the eligibility requirements and video requirements, in TikTok’s own words:
Creativity Program Beta Eligibility Requirements
To be eligible to collect rewards in the program, you must:
Have a U.S.-based account
Be at least 18 years old
Have at least 10,000 followers
Have at least 100,000 video views in the last 30 days
Video Requirements under the Creativity Program Beta
To collect rewards under the Creativity Program Beta, videos must meet the following requirements:
Be at least one minute long.
Uploaded after joining the Creativity Program Beta.
Have at least 1,000 qualified For You feed views. Video views from the same account will be calculated only once for one video.
Video views must be longer than 5 seconds.
Views on videos that are reported by others as “Not interested” are not counted.
Must be original and high-quality content that is filmed, designed, and produced entirely by yourself.
Does not include advertisements, disinformation or misleading information, paid promotions, sponsored content, or videos linked to a Series.
Adheres to the Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, and Copyright Policy.
Many creators are skeptical of any standardized payments from TikTok. They fear joining it will suppress their view count, because TikTok doesn’t want to pay creators.
I find this line of reasoning absurd. Of course a global platform with a billion monthly active users is happy to dole out extra chips to top creators, so that they continue placing more bets at the high roller table.
While I did find the “view suppression” to be somewhat true on a client’s account that was in the Creativity Program Beta for a few months, I finally joined it myself in December on my personal page, @zucktok.
Here is the amount of money I made from one video I posted in December where I recorded my TV and called Indiana Pacers PG Tyrese Haliburton a stat padder:
A few things to call out:
Qualified views (365.4K) are significantly lower than the video’s total views, which currently sits at 2.3 million views at the time of writing this.
RPM means “Revenue per mille”, or per 1,000 viewers. It constantly fluctuates. When I first noticed it on January 22nd, it was at $0.81. Not yet sure why.
All of this to say, if Kylie is in the Creativity Program Beta, my back-of-the-envelope math indicates she’s made ~$450-550 so far.
Not bad for a video that probably took 1-2 hours to record and upload.
A few ways Kylie could have increased reach (and in turn, payout)
Location: Kylie chose Brooklyn, which has 840K+ uses. Not only was it actually where she filmed it, but it’s not too oversaturated, and aligns with the video.
Hashtags: #eclecticgrandpa (1,227 uses) #fyp (5.4 billion uses)
These were clearly used ironically. If we re-examine the aforementioned Erika Dwyer video, she included the following hashtags: #2024aesthetic #aestheticoutfits #fashion #eclecticgrandpa #personalstyle #2024trends
Some of these hashtags have tens of thousands of uses. Erika also used #eclecticgrandpa to ensure it reached the audience of the original video.
One more thing to note here: Erika’s caption was “Tag yourself, I’m so evil denim 😈👖”. It sounds silly, but this likely increased the number of comments. If Kylie had typed in this exact caption, it would still feel aligned with her parody, but likely yield higher engagement.
Sound Name: “Kylie has trend predictions - Kylie Brakeman”
I would have included my full name or handle so that the 0.01% of people who checked the sound name know who to follow for more similar humor.
Text Hook: “2024 trend predictions” black text, white background
I probably would have gone with something like:
Longtime readers know I have an affinity a for red background with all-caps white text.
It’s also the template Matt Rife uses on every single stand-up comedy clip he posts:
But more on him next time :)
David Zucker is a digital marketing consultant based in New York City. A former analyst at TikTok, his unique, data-driven approach has catapulted the growth of his clients’ audiences all over the world. He also happens to have oculocutaneous albinism, a rare genetic disorder which renders him legally blind. This condition offers him a unique perspective on digital marketing strategy, especially with respect to accessibility. To schedule a consult, click here.