Tubular Labs, powered by Sharp-Eats, is a leader in global social video intelligence and measurement, providing a unified view of the passions and behaviours of audiences across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch and more. With the largest social video database covering more than 15 billion videos and 45 million creators, Tubular helps household-name brands, leading agencies and the largest media properties grow their business and lead on social by anticipating trending content new creators and what's next in culture. For more info, visit tubularlabs.com Telecast Hi, I'm Justin Crossley and welcome to another Telecast. On this week's show, and ahead of this week's Digital Content Forum, sponsored by BBC Studios, is the head of entertainment for TikTok UK, Ed Lindemann.
Ed, welcome to Telecast, how are you doing? Hi Justin, yeah, I'm really good. Thanks so much for having me today. Not at all.
Little Bird tells me you've been running a marathon, which is extraordinary. So, are you recovered from that now? Yeah, around Istanbul Marathon on Sunday is my fourth marathon of the year. I don't generally identify as a runner, because I feel like people have some stereotypes towards runners, but I guess if it's my fourth marathon of the year, then I would say I probably am.
It was a warm day in Istanbul, but amazing place, beautiful city, but yeah, happy to be back on my death now. Wow, okay. Well, that's some achievement. Congratulations on that.
And yeah, what an amazing place to run a marathon. So, Ed, what we usually do on Telecast with our guests is, before we get to talk about a little bit about their business and what they're doing currently, it's always really interesting to get a sense of their careers so far. And it'd be great to find out how you've got to the position of head of entertainment for TikTok UK. Tell us about your career story.
Sure, so I guess I first took an interest in social and content platforms in my team. Yeah, it's really the rise of YouTube and Facebook in the mid to late 2000s, really caught my attention. And I was always really interested in video. And I remember watching a video, I think it was a night football advert on my parents' computer for the first time, when I was really young.
And I just thought, I was just amazing, I can watch this on a computer. And obviously, video has come a long way since then. And I never could have predicted that I'd be working a short form video platform like TikTok 10 or 20 years ago. But yeah, ever since they say this, this space and this industry has grown, it's always been really, really interesting to me.
My background, I studied international business at Manchester University. I worked for a few different agencies kind of supporting with things like social commerce, social payments. And then joined TikTok, or actually musically, around five and a half years ago. So just before TikTok was officially launched, so June 2018, and I was part of the team that launched that up here in Europe.
Wow, OK, so that's interesting. Because we often find a lot of people from the TV industry or the content industry that we've moved into working for social platforms. But you've come from the agency side, really, in understanding social commerce, which is obviously a really big part of TikTok and also other platforms as well. And we'll come to talk about that in a second.
So what was that like? So that was before TikTok UK was launched. And that was pre-pandemic, assuming. Absolutely.
I only worked in agencies for a couple of years before joining TikTok. And actually, when I joined TikTok, or musically, as it was known before, we only had three people working on the platform in Europe. So it was very, very small. We didn't have that many users or many communities or really that much content on the platform.
So let's say the title or the role of head of entertainment really didn't exist for effort at TikTok. At that point, it was a kind of startup mode operations role where we looked at what the platform and the business needed. And then it was just kind of all hands on that to try and make that happen. But when I joined in 2018, it was a very, very small team, as I said.
And then as we started to make progression in 2019, the team started to grow. And then I guess 2020, which is when TikTok probably appeared, or most people became aware of it for the first time in that spring when the pandemic first hit. That's where we kind of hit this hyper growth phase. And yeah, lots of people joined the business.
But yeah, the start, it wasn't really like a, okay, this is an entertainment focus role. It was just a TikTok role. How do we grow the platform from here? So yeah, you talk about hyper growth and a hyper growth period.
So what was that like being one of a handful of people that was there at the very beginning in the UK of this stratospheric rise of TikTok, which is now, you know, complete cultural and entertainment and communications phenomenon. What do you think really set it like in terms of that hyper growth? What was it that set you on that path? You know, if we look at the last like four or five years and why TikTok has been really successful and being able to compete with what are some of the most innovative and biggest companies, you know, if you look at Google or YouTube or Instagram and Meta, some of the biggest companies in the world, I think where we've kind of developed competitive advantage is kind of two key things on the product side.
So one would be the creative tools that we provide to users so that they're able to create amazing content. So we were the first platform to enable users to add music to videos when they were creating an app. And that was an amazing creative tool, which most people who use TikTok now will take for granted. But back in 2018, when Musically and TikTok first enabled that feature, it was really, really advanced.
So that's one area. And then I tell you other areas like video editing, being able to edit and adjust videos in so many different ways through the platform just meant that people could just create a much higher quality piece of content and put that out into the world, into the internet. So I take like from a product perspective, like that content creation side is one of the reasons that we've been so successful and we start to see some of our competitive platforms also producing these really great features as well and people using them around the internet. And then I day on the content, let's see consumption side watching videos, we always prioritize video, we've always been a video first platform from the soon as the platform launched, the first thing you saw when you opened the app was a video.
We were very intentional about making sure that users would watch as much video as possible because we know that video is from a let's say content consumption perspective, like the most engaging format because you see and you also hear. So I think we were very focused there and if you're looking at the more detailed nuances of the user experience, we went full screen because we wanted to maximize the space on the screen that users would consume the content from and we went vertical because we knew that users were opening the app on their phone and they would naturally be opening the app with their phone in the vertical way. So we're just really leaning into what actually we felt people would want and I think that's been proven to be pretty popular and good product decisions. Now your first question was what's it, it being like, the nature of the work has changed dramatically and obviously we've grown so much that we have a number of different teams now that are very focused on the work that they're doing.
I mean for me when I first joined, because we were really some team and the platform was so small, we did kind of a little bit of everything but my core focus in the early weeks and months when I joined the app was diversifying the content ecosystem. If you ask anyone that used TikTok in 2018, 2019 when it first launched their opinion of the platform, then it's probably different to what they would say now. There was in a perception certainly at that time 2018, 2019 that TikTok was just an app for teenagers and that's because a lot of the content on the app was either lip syncing or dancing, so videos that it was using that music functionality that I talked about before to make those videos. Well if you open TikTok now, today you can find a wide variety of content.
So you can find cooking content, you can find sports content, you can find travel content, speaking really that you kind of piqued your interest, you'll be able to find that through the platform. But that process didn't happen overnight, it was very intentional by us to really try and diversify that content ecosystem and what that looked like in practice was myself and a number of other people in the team in the early days, quite manually going out and looking to attract creators and influencers to the platform and encouraging them to make video. And often the response we would get was videos really hard to make, I'd much prefer to just post videos or I prefer to post photos or I make video but I make it for YouTube, I'm not really sure I want to try out another platform and those pieces of feedback were really valuable but we always had that kind of trust and that faith that we had a great product offering and if people started to test it out then they would want to come back and I think the last few years has been successful because we had that kind of trust and yeah hopefully we can prove right. Yeah it's interesting what you say about video and casting our minds back about four or five years.
We take it for granted now with the vertical video format of TikTok but it was interesting what you were saying there, like creators really just posting images essentially up to that point and just the rise of TikTok in particular through COVID. Now we've had some creators on the show before, Brandon B who's one of the UK's biggest creators and a VFX expert, he told us about when he was in lockdown, he was determined, he loved the platform and he said right okay I'm going to post one video a day until the end of lockdown and he came out of the COVID pandemic with over a million followers which is extraordinary so his creativity was really really sort of unleashed if you like during this point. And I think video became so important to everybody during COVID, not only through S4D and watching other content for entertainment but obviously the way we communicate through Zoom and all these other video communication platforms that changed the game as well so do you see it being part of the reason why it became so popular just sort of an a culture of a phenomenon in terms of the way that people were using video and the creativity that it unleashed with people coming from that initial lip sync phase if you like into something else. Yeah I think because the product features that we built in terms of creating and editing and making a really high quality piece of video content without leaving your phone, because we released those features basically first and we enabled a massive community of people who already created content on the platforms but also other people that maybe hadn't done that hadn't kind of taken the plunge into those other platforms but had great ideas and were willing to spend some time to test them out and make videos.
We gave them the tools that they would need to actually make those videos without it being too difficult and I think what we did was we lowered the barrier to creating video content at the same time that the demand for video content was really exploding. You know that demand I talked about that demand exploding it was like a general trend demand for short video content over probably like the last 10 years but actually we saw a real peak of it during the start of the pandemic because everyone was at home and using their phones more and more to not just distract themselves from the reality outside but also to get like really from what was going on and also to get kind of information and I think through that people started thinking like oh you know what I could actually make some fun tickle videos and so many trends at that point I think there was a song by the weekend called Blinding Lights where people would just kind of do this quite fun silly dance with their like family friends really took off and I think that was probably the first video that most people made on tickle but then from there they're like oh you know I could actually do something about cooking or pottery or travel or whatever it might be and then from there they started contributing to the ecosystem and then the platform rewarded those people who made the best videos. We still see superstars that were merging through TikTok which is fascinating I mean only just recently I don't know if I'm sure everybody out there is aware of Sabrina Bassoon who's the the Tube Girl in London. What a phenomenon that's been over the last six weeks two months or so.
Yeah I think mid-August was when Sabrina first posted on the Tube so like her backstory I think is really interesting obviously a very creative individual but I was reading that she basically was I think training to be a lawyer and didn't feel like the corporate kind of life was the right thing for her to do. So she made done videos you go on her tickle count you can see she's made some videos at home they're quite interesting videos but actually she really starts to build momentum when she makes these videos on the Tube and if you watch the video the videos are on the Tube that the energy is just absolutely out of this world it's super infectious and if anyone who travels on the Tube I think public transport not just in London but anywhere in the world you have no choice but really to respect like her bravery and just like complete like willingness to put herself out there but you know people don't I don't think people watch those videos just because she's doing it on the Tube. She's clearly thought about the kind of some of the messages that like sit behind the videos the songs and she's building like a really really strong personal brand and actually the fact that the videos are shot on the Tube is a key part of that but not the only part so I think it's a discredit to her to say you know she's just going viral because she's on the Tube like actually what she's done is a lot more more clever than that. But it's context and authenticity isn't it I think that really resonates.
What she's done is she's almost used I mean I don't know if anybody else was using that sort of camera style the phone camera style moving it around when she's lip syncing and using the wind coming through the tube drag door and all of that stuff. It's really creative and as you say it kind of it must take balls to do that. I couldn't do that. Nobody would want to see me doing that but it's amazing how she's just utilizing the context like I said features of TikTok as well and just following her.
Seeing her being invited to various fashion shows internationally and she's a real influencer in the truth center of the world isn't she? Definitely yeah and like credit to her I think from the way we look at it at the platform we provide the tools to create those videos we provide the audience so people coming to watch them but that's really it like everything else is all her and yeah really happy and excited for her to see what is next for her in her career both within TikTok and the opportunities that brings outside. Give us some tips then for creating content on TikTok because it's obviously redefined short form I think in many ways because to me YouTube is becoming longer and longer form and all the other video platforms out there are almost like settling into different places within the marketplace and if you like for different creators to use different elements of that platform but TikTok still is very much short known for short form and is it just about because people are scrolling through at such a speed it's getting that first frame right? Can you give us some top tips for content creation on TikTok?
Sure so I think the number one tip I can give to anyone whether it's on a brand side as a media publisher or a creator or even a celebrity or public figure is to try and put yourself in the shoes or probably in the hands of the viewer and really focus on what it is that they're most likely to want to see and engage with because I think especially for brands and publishers and businesses often the things that are happening inside those businesses or those worlds that feel really important and that's why we always want to share them but often those aren't the things that are going to be most interesting or relevant to the viewer so try and put yourself in their shoes and then from going into the detail of the content the first second or sometimes we say three seconds but really the first second is so important because the engagement metrics so that the watch time are really influential in determining how many more people are likely to see your content on TikTok. Often we would use the term a hook i.e. something that hooks your audience in and makes them want to stay to the middle which is the body of the video so where you're offering the real value and then also to the end of the video where it comes full circle and finishes so if you have those elements I think you're giving yourself the best chance possible and I just touched on the end as well once the video is finished just make sure there's a short or no tail so it doesn't need to go on and on hopefully those short bits of advice will help put yourself in the shoes of your viewer keep it short especially have a hook off of the value in the body and then finish as soon as it's finished. So it's really the structure isn't it you should look at TikTok and look at the structure of lots of these really popular other videos that are doing amazing amazingly well out there and there is really a bit of a structure almost a bit of a formula but you say that and there's some reason about something like she's done and I suppose it has all of those elements in it but perhaps in such a creative way that you don't necessarily think about that.
Yeah exactly and I think also just the caveat that guidance not every video that does really well will you know follow those rules very often you'll see things that you don't maybe don't make sense but then you'll watch it and you'll be genius for this reason and all that reason so yeah I think it's a bit about lose structure give yourself the best chance possible but we're a creative platform so creative expression is like the main thing so if you've got something interesting to share or to show absolutely go for it. Want to get ahead in digital first content? The drop is the go-to newsletter for industry professionals delivering insider news trends and insights straight to your inbox. Navigate the fast-changing landscape of digital first production distribution and monetization.
Sign up now for free at dropmedia.co.uk and stay informed with the drop. Yeah don't be shy I think is probably the yeah that's exactly what's the spring I would say don't be shy. So talk about various different aspects of TikTok. TikTok Shop is a key feature of the platform that we've seen and monetization as a whole is something that content creators and we're finding more and more of studio businesses are looking to see how they can monetize content create content monetize it as well.
First of all tell us a little bit about TikTok Shop and how that works. TikTok Shop is our native econized tool so when we say native what we mean is that the econists experience that both the merchants so the set up and the buyer which is like someone who's using TikTok all happens within our platform. That means they won't need to leave the platform and go on to another website. So we built this really to connect demand and supply.
We were seeing so many videos on TikTok using a hashtag TikTok maybe by it. Someone would discover something amazing they'd make a video about it and then other people would watch that video and be like oh I need that and they would go and buy it outside on the wider internet. But we as a very ambitious goal wanted to basically build that marketplace within the platform so that sellers could come to TikTok and say okay I have these products. Who wants to try and tell them for me and then creators could come to that marketplace and say yes I'll use my audience I'll use my video making capabilities I'll use my personality I'll create content and that will drive traction into your products use if you list them on the platform for me.
So we built this basically marketplace where creators can now create and check content drive clicks into products the conversion will happen within the platform I check out and then once the product's been shipped the viewer or the buyer has paid for the product the creator that started that shopping journey can be paid commission by the seller and that kind of is growing this let's say e-commerce ecosystem within that app and we really hope that that's going to be a really big part of our users experiences both kind of discovering and buying products in the future. So in terms of the creators then that will be using that marketplace and basically bringing their audience to new products are they sort of a smaller or more medium size kind of creators typically because for example Sabrina or some of the other really big TikTokers that we've talked about they're perhaps getting approached by major brands to create content and then post it and do brand partnerships directly in that way as opposed to doing that through the platform. Is it typically a smaller and mid-sized more niche kind of creator that would work with shop or how do you see that? I wouldn't say so the TikTok shop affiliate platform is open to most creators above like a threshold which I think is only kind of probably like four maybe five figures in followers so not massive looking at the kind of the scale of some of the creators we have on the platform.
So not I think the answer is no really like anyone who can create traffic to drive clicks into products used to help brands and businesses sell products can use TikTok shops. So I think maybe the let's say looking at the economics of it what you might find is that for big creators or celebrities who have already been able to build like let's say big revenue sources working directly with brands they might not have the same financial incentives as creators who have just started out and haven't really necessarily made any money from the platform and they might think okay this is a good way for me to kind of like start out and start driving some affiliate revenues through TikTok. So depending on what their kind of financial situation is it might let's say determine their interest or like their willingness to work on affiliate commissions but I think for you know my kind of observation is that the TikTok shop marketplace will grow to become a major player in the e-commerce space and I think creators who have got a track record of being able to create content featuring products which don't necessarily feel like adverts will become really really powerful and really really influential and really really wealthy because brands and businesses will want them to create those videos that are able to sell their products through the platform and when they do that they'll be rewarded. Okay so adverts that don't look like adverts essentially is what I think is just like be clear or brand the content on TikTok has to follow and adhere to like the advertising guidelines so you know they need to disclose when they're being paid commissions or they're being paid for content and the platform manages all of that within the app but yeah absolutely if you can create content that tells a really interesting story about our products features and benefits and your audience your community values that content and they like the product and they can afford to buy it then I think both the viewers the creator and also the merchant or the seller or win.
So looking forward to this week Ed now you're kicking off things at the telecast digital content forum which is sponsored by BBC Studios you're the first keynote on the day and by the time this show goes out we'll have pretty much done that session. Can you give us a bit of a a bit of a sneak preview or some highlights of what you're going to be presenting to the digital first community at the BFI South Bank? So some of the bits we've kind of touched upon today I'll cover but I think initially I'll give a quick summary of that some of the key partnerships that we've worked on this year so some of the partners that we've partnered with in the entertainment space include the Edinburgh Fringe Festival the Olivier Awards working with talent on the BBC and then also Eurovision where we return there's the official entertainment provider then we'll talk a little bit about creative monetization so some of the bits I've discussed around econas will feature also live some direct monetization tools we built and also series which is a like a pay world like content play listing feature and then finally we'll just look at some of the the ways that we support in different media groups with some of their kind of key temples or activations that they've run this year and we've kind of helped to build bespoke kind of grow campaigns around some of those so we'll share that towards the end so kind of like key three key bits in there. So in terms of what's next for TikTok and the strategic focus of your like for 2024 because we're careering towards the end of this year what are the key areas that we can expect TikTok expanding into in the next year or so?
So I think in the coming six months or coming year creative monetization will be a big focus for us I think in the last year or so we've made a huge amount of progress in terms of catching up with some of the offerings that other platforms have so econas will be a big focus for us but also look at things like live gifting or create a marketplace which is where brands can do affiliate and brand deals with creators and a few other exciting product features that we get to launch so that's going to be a big focus for us and then on the media side will be kind of a lot more of the same so helping major media groups to grow organically on the platform so through their own TikTok accounts and then also supporting them with their kind of major projects or big bets this year so activations that they'll be running either through their own and operator channels or offline events that kind of thing. All right well we'll look forward to your keynotes on Thursday Ed and you know I'm sure there'll be lots of talk about it afterwards. Thank you Justin looking forward to it. And now it's time for story of the week the part of the show where my guests get to highlight the TV or content industry new story of the past seven days that's caught their eye.
Ed what's your story of the week? Okay so this is just a really creative and reactive marketing activation that I thought I think probably the start of last week so Jim Shark which I think are a brilliant really talented and creative. It's your sporting brand responded to let's say a contentious decision with one of their Jim Shark athletes who lost a boxing fight so Nagano who is a actually an MMA fighter was fighting Tyson Fury who is probably one if not the biggest boxer in the world in a kind of like crossover about and there was a very contentious decision I think Fury took it but many people thought that Nagano should have actually taken it and what Jim Shark did was they basically ran some billboards that were being towed around I think it was maybe Manchester or major cities basically saying that they'd like to report a robbery and they used the image from the fight of Fury actually on the floor and I think quite often we see brands or businesses not really like willing to take a side when there's something like controversy or there's some level of like contention but yeah I think Jim Shark did this in like a really creative and playful way and yeah it got a lot of people talking and tons of engagement across social platforms. Alright well we'll post a link in the episode description to that story so everyone can go and take a look and how about Hero of the Week and Game the Bin time now Ed so first of all who's your Hero of the Week?
My Hero of the Week would have to be actually kind of a group so in my role as head of entertainment we also support some of the let's say major news publishers on the platform and over the last let's say six to twelve months we've seen a lot of growth across news publishers on TikTok I think obviously at the moment there's a lot of news a lot of information flying around the world where people really need to be able to find really reliable information on current events and I've been getting a lot of my news from from the platform and I think a lot of the publishers here in the UK are doing a great job of creating short form vertical content that's performing well on TikTok so news publishers in the UK are my heroes. Alright news publishers and who or what are you telling to get into bin Ed? I don't know if this counts as this week but daylight savings has gone the wrong way for me and I think that was probably last week but I'm definitely still dealing with the fallout of that so yeah the early evenings are I'm struggling with a little bit if I can have that one. Yeah of course you can that's a good point you're right I mean sometimes when you're looking out the window at ARPA's four or something and it's like it's black and it's kind of right it does it does seem to be taken by surprise really that always makes a massive difference doesn't it?
Yeah I can definitely live with the light in the morning that's great but just getting dark in the evening that one stuff. Yeah you need to need one of those lights that you get on your desk a bit of you know maybe don't get on TikTok shop. There you go always plugging always plugging in fantastic listen thank you so much for joining us and really enjoyed speaking to you great to hear about what's going on at TikTok and what's coming next and really looking forward to hearing your keynote on Thursday at the Telecast Digital Content Forum yeah we'll see you there. Great thanks Justin.
Well that's all for another week's show as ever thanks for listening I hope you enjoy this week's telecast was edited by Ian Chambers and recorded in London. Next week we'll have some backstage interviews with digital first executives from the Telecast Digital Content Forum sponsored by BBC Studios. If you were there at the event thank you for coming thanks again for listening we'll see you next week stay safe