By Sofia Urbina
With the rise of TikTok in the past couple of years, coming across a video of someone singing praise about a product they love is a normal day on the app. A styling product they got for their birthday that gives them Rita Hayworth hair, a perfume that has strangers on the street stopping in their tracks to ask what they’re wearing, or eyeliner that was able to last through a horrific car accident. Inadvertently promoting products or user-generated content is vital in the digital economy. Brands have learned to take advantage of viral moments about their products and use them to their full advantage.
Last month TikTok user Danielle posted a video of her burned car with the caption “Thirsty after you catch on fire? @Stanley1913 is like no problem I gotchu”, in the middle of the debris from the fire, a Stanley Cup in perfect condition. The video garnered 8.5 million views, 50k comments, and almost 9 million likes. Every time a product goes viral like this, the company tends to reach out to the creator and offer them free products, so it was just a matter of waiting for Stanley Cup to answer. And boy did they.
Two days later, the president of Stanley Cup Terence Reiley responded to Danielle with his own video on TikTok where he told her that not only were they going to send her more tumblers, but that they would be gifting her a new car too. The people in the comment section went wild over this news, comments ranged from praising the company’s upstanding morals to proclaiming they would be purchasing a cup.
Stanley Cup has been around for a hundred years, the company values sustainability and adventure above all. With competitors like Yeti and Owala, Stanley Cup seems to have found its most efficient marketing tool on social media. The hashtag #StanleyCup alone has thousands of videos both sponsored and user-generated. TikTok user Danielle bolstered their products to new audiences that were not aware of the brand before the algorithm took them to the video. Now they get to bask in a high-quality tumbler that can be used for all liquids and even survive a car fire of its own. But who benefits the most?
At the end of the day, the company will. The neoliberal framework of platform democracy and entrepreneurship inspires normal people to have their turn at viral moments. Although Danielle went the most viral for the car fire, she is not the only person on TikTok to go viral for promoting Stanley Cup and there will be more of these viral videos in the future as well that will open the door to more and more new audiences. The digital economy is the biggest marketing tool for companies, user-generated content is just a small number in a bigger equation.