e.l.f. Cosmetics (2019): an original song as the brief
e.l.f. Cosmetics launched a six-day challenge on October 4, 2019, built around an original 15-second song called Eyes.Lips.Face., with $250 of products as the prize, according to Modash. Modash describes it as the first time a brand used original music for a TikTok campaign.
Gymshark (2019): a 66-day goal challenge
Gymshark launched its 66 Days: Change Your Life challenge at the start of 2019, asking users to set a personal goal to reach by March 8, and offering a year of merchandise as the prize, according to Modash. Six athlete creators with a combined 19.8 million followers promoted the #Gymshark66 hashtag, which Modash reports passed 45.5 million views.
Kroger (2019): the shoppable challenge
Kroger became the first brand globally to run a shoppable hashtag challenge on TikTok in 2019, according to Modash. The #TransformUrDorm challenge used four Gen Z creators, drew 806 million views and 304,000 video submissions, and, per an internal brand study Modash cites, cut the share of young shoppers who saw Kroger as only a grocery store by 9 percent.
Aerie (2020): a sponsored challenge during lockdown
Aerie opened a TikTok account on April 14, 2020 and launched a sponsored #AerieRealPositivity challenge the next day, with Charli D'Amelio posting the first video, Glossy reported. In two weeks the challenge drew 6,600 videos, more than 1.3 billion views and 17,400 followers, and Adweek reported an average 855 percent rise in site traffic.
The agency's Shorty Awards entry reports 2.1 billion views and more than 562,100 video creations by January 2021.
Beats by Dre (2020): four colours and a fan-made music video
Beats launched #BeatsDaisyChallenge in July 2020 as its first TikTok campaign, with singer Ashnikko setting a weekly colour challenge tied to the four Powerbeats Pro colours, according to its Cannes Lions entry. The entry reports 2.2 million user-made videos in the first three weeks.
The agencies' Shorty Awards entry reports more than 1 billion views in the first five days and 7.1 billion by the end, 391 percent above the goal. The two entries report different view totals.
Which brands made the account itself the campaign?
Five brands made the TikTok account itself the campaign by giving it a recurring format or a consistent voice.
The Washington Post (2019): a newsroom with a face
The Washington Post launched a TikTok account in May 2019, two months after video producer Dave Jorgenson pitched the idea, and the bio read We are a newsroom, WRAL reported. By late 2019 the account had more than 120 videos, 220,000 followers and 7.5 million likes.
Press Gazette counted 1.6 million followers in August 2023. Jorgenson told FIPP that some commenters said they disliked the Post but liked his account, which he described as a gain in trust.
Crumbl (2021): the Sunday flavor reveal
Crumbl posts its weekly flavor lineup every Sunday, and its first TikTok video above one million views came in February 2021, Good Morning America reported. Crumbl used Spark Ads with a goal of one million followers, reached it, raised the goal to two million and reached that too, and had passed three million followers by November 12, 2021, according to TikTok for Business.
Fast Company reports that Crumbl's revenue rose from $53 million in 2020 to $1 billion by 2022, and that the brand has since faced a backlash and weaker sales, a reminder that a format can wear out.
Ryanair (2022): the airline that roasts itself
Ryanair's TikTok account had 1.5 million followers and 42.2 million likes in 2022, making it the biggest airline on the platform, Travel Weekly reported. Michael Corcoran, Ryanair's head of social media, said the success came from losing the corporate tone of voice.
The Social Minds podcast's description of its August 2022 interview with Corcoran says the brand earned 111 million organic impressions in a month through low-fi TikTok memes and reactive posts.
Scrub Daddy (2022): the sponge with an edge
Scrub Daddy CEO Aaron Krause told the Philadelphia Inquirer in April 2022 that the brand's edgier TikTok presence had produced demonstrable sales growth, the month it ran a mascot crossover video with Duolingo. The Inquirer later reported that the account reached 1 million followers in February 2022 and that the #scrubdaddy hashtag had 3 billion views by April 2023.
Duolingo (2020 to 2025): the owl with a personality
Zaria Parvez joined Duolingo in 2020 as its sole social media coordinator, and the brand's TikTok followers grew from 50,000 to 16 million in a little over four years, The Drum reported in February 2025. The campaign in which Duolingo killed its owl mascot, Duo, went from concept to execution in six days and began with an app icon showing X's over Duo's eyes.
Brand24's January 2026 review counts 16.3 million TikTok followers and says Duolingo later announced the death was faked.
Which campaigns turned a creator moment into sales?
Nine campaigns between 2019 and 2024 turned a creator's video, order, trend or collaboration into sales, streams or a sell-out.
Lil Nas X (2019): a song built for the meme
Lil Nas X released Old Town Road independently on December 3, 2018, and it went viral as the Yeehaw Challenge meme on TikTok before he signed to Columbia Records in March 2019, Mixdown reported. The song debuted at number 19 on the Hot Country chart the week of March 16 before Billboard removed it, the Associated Press reported, and Mixdown reports it spent 17 weeks at number one, passing the previous record.
Ocean Spray (2020): a skateboard, a song and a truck
On September 25, 2020, Nathan Apodaca, an Idaho potato warehouse worker, posted a video of himself skateboarding, drinking Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice and lip-syncing Fleetwood Mac's Dreams. By November the video had passed 69.2 million views, CNBC reported.
Ocean Spray gave Apodaca a cranberry-red pickup truck stocked with juice on October 6, and its chief executive, Tom Hayes, posted his own skateboard version, the Boston Globe reported. Hayes told Yahoo Finance the company could not yet say whether juice sales would rise, though retailers reported additional draw off the shelf.
Dunkin' (2020): a creator's order becomes a menu item
Dunkin' launched The Charli on September 2, 2020, a cold brew with whole milk and three pumps of caramel swirl named after TikTok creator Charli D'Amelio, whose usual order it was. BBDO New York, Dunkin's agency, reported that cold brew units rose 20 percent on launch day and 45 percent the next day, and that daily app downloads rose 57 percent against the previous 90-day average.
Drayton Martin, Dunkin's vice president of brand stewardship, said the chain sold hundreds of thousands of the drinks in the first five days, Tubefilter reported. EPR covers the creator's wider business in its D'Amelio family profile.
Fenty Beauty (2020): a house full of creators
Fenty Beauty opened a collab house in 2020 with five TikTok makeup creators, and Modash reports the #FentyBeautyHouse hashtag passed 10 million views within three weeks while the brand's TikTok audience grew 1,180 percent in a week, according to Modash. Modash also notes the creators did not label their posts as paid, which brands now treat as a risk under FTC disclosure rules.
Barnes & Noble (2022): merchandising BookTok
Barnes & Noble put BookTok tables or shelves in nearly all of its stores after director of books Shannon DeVito saw sales upticks, NBC News reported, and later teamed with TikTok on a #BookTokChallenge summer reading campaign.
Publishers Weekly reported that print adult fiction rose 8.5 percent in 2022, the only category to grow, and that BookTok authors tracked by BookScan sold about 47 million copies, though the effect was easing by mid-2023.
Sol de Janeiro (2023): an organic fragrance trend
Sol de Janeiro CEO Heela Yang said over 90 percent of the brand's 2023 growth came from organic social, and parent company L'Occitane reported a 174 percent sales rise to $454 million in the six months to September 30, Glossy reported. TIME reported that its fragrance mists drew 850 million TikTok views and that the brand worked with more than 6,000 influencers that year.
McDonald's (2023): the Grimace Shake
McDonald's launched the Grimace Birthday Meal on June 12, 2023, and TikTok users turned the purple shake into a viral trend that Fortune reported reached 2.9 billion views and helped lift second-quarter U.S. sales by more than 10 percent. McDonald's social media director Guillaume Huin denied the company planted the trend, according to the same report.
Stanley (2023): a cup that matched the outfit
Terence Reilly, a former Crocs marketing chief, became Stanley's president in 2020 and pushed the Quencher tumbler into new colors and brand collaborations, Salon reported. Stanley's revenue rose from $73 million in 2019 to $94 million in 2020, $194 million in 2021 and $402 million in 2022, and 2023 sales were projected to top $750 million, CNBC reported.
A red Starbucks collaboration was resold on eBay for hundreds of dollars the day it launched, and Stanley has sold more than 10 million Quenchers, according to CNBC. Reilly said TikTok fit-check videos often show the cup before the outfit.
Dubai chocolate (2024): one video, one scarce bar
Fix Dessert Chocolatier, a Dubai shop founded by Sarah Hamouda, sold a pistachio and pastry bar that stayed local until TikTok food creator Maria Vehera posted a video of herself eating one in her car, which CNN reported had passed 56 million views by June 2024. Vehera posted the video in late 2023, according to WFTV.
CNN reported that the 200-gram bars retailed for $20 and sold only through Deliveroo, with sales going live at 5 p.m. daily, and that the shortage produced imitations. Lindt released a limited pistachio bar in December 2024, and Trader Joe's followed with its own, WFTV reported.
Which campaigns built a larger launch around TikTok?
Four campaigns between 2024 and 2025 built a larger cultural or retail moment around TikTok, from a Super Bowl ad to a toy company's livestream sales.
CeraVe (2024): a fake conspiracy on TikTok
L'Oréal's CeraVe and agency Ogilvy PR ran a four-week campaign before the brand's first Super Bowl ad in February 2024, in which creators suggested actor Michael Cera had developed the brand, according to its Cannes Lions entry. In the second phase, dermatologist TikTokers refuted the claim, and the Super Bowl spot resolved the joke.
The entry reports 1.44 billion paid media impressions, 798 million video views and CeraVe's best week of moisturizer sales in the brand's history. Glossy reported that Google search traffic for CeraVe rose 2,000 percent during the campaign.
Charli XCX (2024): brat summer
Charli XCX released the album brat on June 7, 2024, after a May TikTok livestream from a lime-green wall in Brooklyn, and a dance to the song Apple created by TikTok user Kelley Heyer reached more than 1.7 million uses of the sound, according to The MBJ. Brands including Kate Spade, ColourPop and Flannels adopted the colour, The Branded Moment reported.
Atlantic Records won the Artist Marketing Campaign award at the Music Week Awards, and the album was the biggest by a UK act in 2024 with 395,598 sales, Music Week reported.
Gap (2025): Better in Denim
Gap launched its Better in Denim film with girl group KATSEYE on August 19, 2025, and BrandVM reports it was seeded to nearly 400 creators and reached 20 million views in three days. The Drum's awards case study reports 400 million views in two weeks, a number one TikTok search ranking, 529,000 net new TikTok followers in under a month and a 7 percent rise in comparable sales, according to The Drum.
Pop Mart (2025): Labubu on TikTok Shop
Pop Mart's TikTok Shop sales in the United States reached $4.8 million in April 2025, up 89 percent from March, and about 85 percent of June sales came from livestreams run by a small group of creators, Modern Retail reported from Charm.io data. Pop Mart's first-half 2025 revenue rose 204 percent to 13.88 billion yuan, about $1.93 billion, Robb Report reported. EPR covers TikTok Shop's retail role in its TikTok Shop beauty report.
Which four tactics repeat across the 25 campaigns?
Four tactics repeat across the 25 campaigns: the branded challenge, the account as campaign, the creator moment and the larger launch built on TikTok. The table groups each campaign by the tactic the brand controlled most directly.
| Tactic | What the brand controlled | Campaigns on this list | Main risk |
|---|
| Branded challenge | The prompt, the reward and the paid creators | Guess, Chipotle, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Gymshark, Kroger, Aerie, Beats by Dre | Participation can rest on paid creators and prizes |
| Account as campaign | The weekly format or the tone | The Washington Post, Crumbl, Ryanair, Scrub Daddy, Duolingo | A format can wear out, as Crumbl's reported backlash shows |
| Creator moment | How fast the brand responded | Lil Nas X, Ocean Spray, Dunkin', Fenty Beauty, Barnes & Noble, Sol de Janeiro, McDonald's, Stanley, Dubai chocolate | Sales effects are hard to isolate, and supply can fall behind demand |
| Larger launch built on TikTok | The surrounding launch or retail plan | CeraVe, Charli XCX, Gap, Pop Mart | Results depend on a funded launch moment that smaller brands cannot copy at scale |
The earliest campaigns set the prompt: Guess supplied a hashtag, Chipotle supplied a reward and e.l.f. supplied a song. The 2020 to 2024 creator moments responded to a person: Ocean Spray rewarded a creator within 11 days, and Dunkin' put a creator's order on its menu.
The account-as-campaign brands compounded over years instead of weeks. EPR explains how the app ranks that work in its TikTok algorithm guide and how brands buy against it in the TikTok ads and creative playbook.
What can a brand copy from these 25 campaigns?
A brand should copy the response speed or the format, not the follower count. Ocean Spray answered a creator's video within 11 days, and Crumbl and Duolingo repeated one format for years.
Before copying any of the four tactics, check whether the brand can respond inside days and sustain the format, because Crumbl's reported backlash and BookTok's easing sales effect show that a TikTok advantage can fade.
Last updated October 2026.
