TikTok was discovered by Japan secretly paying KOLs to spread marketing “rumors” for brands

On January 24, sharing with Nikkei, a manager of ByteDance’s Tokyo branch, the owner of TikTok, said that this action started about two years ago and ended at the end of 2021.

ByteDance’s Japan branch manager will offer contracts to influencers with remuneration. The manager will then determine the TikTok videos to be shared on Twitter. This is part of a promotional strategy carried out by ByteDance’s Tokyo branch.

Covert marketing campaigns “disguised” as word-of-mouth without publicity in the form of a sponsored campaign by advertisers.

Japanese law does not prohibit “stealth” forms of marketing, but regulations in the field of marketing prohibit this practice because it misleads consumers.

The Japanese subsidiary of Chinese startup ByteDance said it regretted giving consumers the wrong impression.

TikTok has gained a huge following among young people in Japan after launching the service in 2017. The year 2021 has seen an explosion in the concept of “TikTok sales” of the products contained in it. videos on this platform.

Masayuki Hayashi, president of Loveable Marketing Group, a company that supports social media activities, said: “The fact that platforms with high user numbers engage in activities confuses traditional campaigns. common sense is extremely risky. This could cause the entire industry to be discredited.”

Many observers say that the increasingly fierce competitive environment is putting pressure on TikTok to secretly pay influencers to share content. In 2020, the US raised concerns about the risk of personal data being leaked from TikTok to Chinese authorities. In Japan, the government has stopped using TikTok.

This has created an opportunity for TikTok’s competitors to enter this market. In August 2020, Instagram began allowing users to post Short-format Stories videos on the platform, a feature akin to TikTok. A single tap on the screen can take the user to an e-commerce site. Reels has also been credited with a significant increase in the number of followers.

Last July, YouTube introduced “YouTube Shorts”, which attracts more than 15 billion daily views globally.

With Japanese consumers wary of “stealth marketing,” ByteDance’s Tokyo office risks losing users if its explanations aren’t convincing.