There are countless accounts on TikTok dedicated to “The Mandalorian” star Pedro Pascal, with fans gathering to reflect on his acting skills and, of course, good looks. But who would expect that the account he calls “father’s father” would be Lionsgate, the distributor behind Pascal’s latest film, “the unbearable weight of a gigantic talent?”
“I’m a daddy daddy,” Pascal said in one of Lionsgate’s viral TikTok videos, taken from a livestream the actor performed in the studio. “Am I the father of the father? Because I have seen this name come up a lot to other people and I just want to make sure that I am the father of fathers.”
The comment section of the video is full of viewers marveling at Pascal’s “father”, but they also expressed shock that the clip was posted on the official Lionsgate account. But this social media strategy isn’t new to the studio — in fact, taking advantage of TikTok’s comedic voice and ever-changing trends is a staple of the Lionsgate account, which has 4 million followers and 90 million likes. As TikTok has become such an integral part of today’s social media landscape—particularly for users born between 1997 and 2012, known as Gen Z—more and more major film studios are embracing the platform’s unique soundtrack in order to harness its undeniable power.
Tweet embed Pedro is definitely the father’s father. #massivetalent # minus
“You can’t fake a link on TikTok. It’s a platform that has its own language that demands authenticity,” says Marisa Liston, worldwide head of motion picture marketing at Lionsgate. “Because our social team uses TikTok the way fans use it, they interact with our followers.” And they build our brands from a fan first perspective. They are a boldly creative group that continues to push boundaries in unexpected ways.”
This strategy is perfectly embodied in Lionsgate’s most viral video, a trailer from the “Pinocchio: A True Story” trailer. The studio added to a Twitter speech that occurred a week earlier, when viewers were surprised to hear Pauly Shore’s Valley Boy voice as Pinocchio in the trailer. Some users heard Pinocchio’s slightly androgynous tone and declared him an LGBTQ icon, flooding comment sections with nail polish emojis. Lionsgate got into the joke by making the caption to the video “yassification of #pinocchio,” a TikTok slang word which, according to Urban Dictionary, means “the act of making someone, something or more a girl boss.”
With over 26 million views, many of the 109,900 video comments ask the question “Who is responsible for this account?” Others praise the studio’s marketing strategy. “This type of advertising is very effective. I want to watch this now,” says the top comment on the video.
Although Lionsgate won’t reveal the ages of its social media leaders, it’s clear that the studio has specific handling of how Gen Zers post, speak, and interact on TikTok. It’s all part of not taking themselves too seriously in the app, Liston tells the Lionsgate team.
Tweet embed yawn #Pinocchio
“It’s about understanding the platform, the way people use it and having a team that is fully engaged and speaks the language authentically and organically,” Liston says. “Knowing our titles, setting our own trends in trends and sharing our unique value proposition as an entertainment studio is key.”
Studios use the platform not only to promote upcoming movies but also to stoke nostalgia and create conversation around old titles. With dedicated TikTok handles to every new Universal Pictures movie, their comprehensive account of trends in the app navigates with clips from films like Bridesmaids, Erin Brockovich and Bring It On. One of Universal’s most viral videos, which has garnered 8.9 million views, is a clip of the opening hymn “We Cheerleaders” from “Bring It On”, with captions and a description of the “original TikTok dance”. The video garnered more than 6,000 comments, such as “Watching this with the captions was a completely different experience” and “I haven’t seen this movie in years but tell me why I knew every word.”
Tweet embed The original tik tok dance. #bring it #Kirsten Dunst #TikTokDance # cheerleaders
says Alex Sanger, Universal’s executive vice president of global digital marketing. “We can get more disrespect and lo-fi with those headlines, and less value and more in the slang of how people communicate on TikTok… It’s a great place for us to have that ongoing, creative conversation with fans.”
Nikao Yang, Head of Media, Entertainment and Games at TikTok, Global Business Solutions North America, has seen firsthand how this strategy can pay off for movie studios.
“They see this as a real way to connect with audiences and turn them into fans,” Yang says. “It’s really about how you can use TikTok to amplify your message to connect with audiences, convert them into fans and then come to watch and stream your movies, to ultimately make a return on ad spend.”
Besides creating content to engage audiences, advertising is a huge part of the big studios’ TikTok strategy. According to TikTok research, 58% of users are interested in seeing more content from entertainment studios on the platform, indicating that there is a real opportunity for studios to leverage the app to achieve box office success. Unlike other video platforms like YouTube which have skippable ads before the content, TikTok ads appear naturally as the user scrolls down. Of course, ads can still be skipped with just a scroll, but the fact that users are viewing sponsored content is unexpected or instantly recognizable.
“Because we are a platform for entertainment and content, sharing what our community can offer these advertisers is truly unparalleled,” Yang says. “In terms of time spent and engagement on the platform in general, our users spend on average over the duration of a movie on our platform. That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
Universal strives to have multiple ad activations for each title, usually led by the famous creators on the platform. For example, the “Sing 2’s” campaign featured an on-app singing competition that ended with the winner being flown to Los Angeles for the movie’s premiere and receiving a record deal. The content created during the campaign garnered nearly six billion views. Another campaign that Universal is proud of is the “Fast & Furious 9” campaign, which saw the studio partner with creator Daniel Mack to produce a hilarious video with star Helen Mirren. The video has racked up 46.3 million views – a win for both the Mac and the studio.
Tweet embed Ice in her veins 🏎 🥶 # F9 #The Fast and the Furious # F9 Partner
As Yang explains, TikTok creators are the glue that holds everything together in terms of pairing content with ads.
“It all comes down to this amplification message and taking the IP address of an entertainment brand and giving it longer legs,” he says. “On competitive platforms, you push that content out; once it’s gone it’s gone forever. But on TikTok, what happens is that creators stick to it, co-create it, share it, audience finds it, clings to it, co-creates it and/or shares it. Then you have this virtuous course to publish entertaining content [which] It lasts significantly longer on our platform than anyone else, which is a very big reason why the studios continue to work with us.”
One of the star TikTok movie makers, Juju Green aka straw_hat_goofy, has 3 million followers and more than 296 million likes. Dubbed the platform’s “movie guy”, the 30-year-old Compton, California native began publishing in January 2020, and has since partnered with Sony to host the “Spider-Man: No Way Home” red carpet and has been one of the TikTok hosts live stream the Oscars red carpet. Green works in advertising as a copywriter on a daily basis, which gives him special insight into both users and marketers.
Tweet embed ♬ Wicked Weird Theme – Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness – Orchestra Cinema
“At the end of the day, these actors and directors and screenwriters and studios — they got into this game because they saw a movie one day and they said, ‘Wow, that was awesome, I want to be a part of something like this,'” says Green. “And when you keep that in mind, it makes them more human. I learned that through my time in advertising because it’s literally just a very collaborative and creative effort with a team that wants to make something that makes people feel something.”
Green has partnered with the likes of Sony, Google and Hulu — and has rejected many partnerships when he doesn’t believe in the movie — but says the best campaigns are always when the company gives the creator freedom to create, not just satisfy the bottom line.
“Because TikTok is a very creative platform, putting the fate of your movie in the hands of the people who might love it is a very smart move. It takes a little bit of a chile in the company,” says Green. “If you establish yourself on TikTok first as a real person with a lot From ideas about movies and then people want to hear your thoughts about a particular movie coming up and the studio wants to get involved in that, it kind of takes that layer off. He’s more than just a creator who’s really excited about something, and they want to speculate and bring you on this journey. It feels less like an advertisement.”
But when it comes to studios earning box office revenue – which has been a major struggle since the COVID-19 pandemic – are their efforts on TikTok really driving Generation Z to theaters? Although it’s hard to pinpoint an exact answer, Yang knows that the movie industry is getting a stronger presence on TikTok because studios are seeing a huge return on the time and money they spend promoting their movies on the platform.
“The industry is more into what we do because they know we can bring in the masses,” Yang says. “They know we have that coveted set of consumers and audiences that their industry needs, in a very mutually beneficial way, to grow the entertainment community and grow the industry as a whole.”
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