Australian TikTok influencer Thomas Cheung, known as Ricky Chainz, is joining influencer agency Born Bred as head of strategy.
Cheung has built an audience of 4.1 million followers in less than a year on the video-sharing app, mainly with clips of his grandmother. He joins the agency as interest in the platform swells, with big brands such as Superdry and Fanta launching TikTok campaigns.
In his new role, Cheung is responsible for helping brands, marketers and agencies create TikTok campaigns, starting with free workshops open to the industry.
“TikTok will become the go-to social media platform for micro video content and brands need to put some focus into the platform now and understand how they can leverage it, otherwise they will be playing catch up throughout 2020,” Cheung says.
The workshops will be hosted across Sydney, held on November 11, and Melbourne, held on November 14, and will focus on helping brands understand how to adopt the new platform.
“These workshops will cover how marketers can use TikTok strategically and leverage it in their influencer marketing campaigns, and also how to actually use the platform, grow a following and create viral and trending content,” he said.
Cheung is hosting the workshops, open to all agencies, brands and marketers, with Born Bred founder Clare Winterbourn, as well as other TikTok talents from the agency’s roster who have worked across brands such as Spotsgirl, L'Oréal, Sony, Superdry and Warner Music.
“We are thrilled to welcome Thomas to the Born Bred Talent team and give brands, marketers and agencies the opportunity to tap into his intimate knowledge of the platform,” Winterbourn says.
“We recently worked on the hugely successful Halloween campaign for Fanta that has received over 32 million views on content and 1,650 pieces of user-generated content in six days, demonstrating the power of TikTok for Australian brands.
“TikTok is still a new space and we are finding brands are hesitant to adopt a social media platform they are unfamiliar with, so these workshops are designed to uncover the potential of TikTok, how to use the platform and the opportunities that are available right now.”
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