Life 360 are a San Francisco based company that offer geo-tracking services through their app. The idea is that parents would buy a subscription, download the app onto their child’s phones, and then be able to see where they are at all times. They can also set up location alerts (such as a rough neighbourhood or a radius from the house), see their battery life, and see how fast they’re moving if they’re in a vehicle.
Life 360 focuses on marketing to parents on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, since these are the platforms that parents mostly use and the content there is what you might expect from a brand (fun content that appeals to a parent). However, they understand that parents aren’t on Tik Tok so their content is focused on the experiences that a young adult might face.
Why are Life 360 Successful on Tik Tok
Life 360s Tik Tok output focuses on a young adults life and the experiences that they’ll face now that they’re entering the “real world”. They use these experiences, such as your mum asking why you’re driving over the speed limit or your friend visiting their ex’s house at 2am, to create jokes that a young adult could relate to.
This strategy works because social media users engage with content that has an emotional effect on them. For example, if you’ve worked in fast food then if you saw a picture about working in fast food it would subconsciously make you think about the time you worked in the industry. The picture has had an effect on you and if the picture is also quite funny, such as making a joke out of a common situation, then that’s another emotional effect. The more a piece of content affects you the more likely you are to engage with it which is why most content that you see online is of a comedic nature.
Since Life 360s audience on Tik Tok is young adults, there is quite a lot of experiences that they can use as the basis of jokes. Many of these experiences, such as heartbreak, carry strong emotional connections that almost everyone can relate to which increases the likelihood that they’ll engage with the content. This is why Life 360 are so successful on Tik Tok, because they’re making content that their audience (who are also the average Tik Tok user) will have a strong emotional connection to.
What is Caput and Why do brands on Tik Tok Use It?
Capcut is a sister company to Tik Tok that creates cutouts and templates for creators to use. These cutouts could be characters from movies, celebrities, or anything, that can then be used to create memes that are relevant to your niche. For example, if there was a cutout of Homer Simpson saying “D’oh!” then any brand could take that, insert their own background, and caption, and apply it to their field.
This is popular across Tik Tok because it requires very little effort. Apart from being able to create jokes and understanding your brand, all a marketer needs to do is scroll through Capcut and they can create 30 pieces of content within an hour. This is very efficient and Capcut content often gets more engagement than original footage (something that has been scripted and acted) and lip sync videos (which requires people to act) put together. You just need to be able to tell a joke.
How to Create Hilarious Jokes Whilst Remaining Professional
There are 2 core factors when it comes to crafting appropriate jokes for your brand:
- Relevancy
- Logical Extremes
The unfortunate truth is that you cannot be truly hilarious whilst remaining professional because there will always be someone that doesn’t have that limitation. You can make a joke about the manager being slightly upset but a random person could make a joke about going to the toilet in the managers desk which you could never compete with.
The way to get around this is to craft jokes using situations that your audience would find themselves in and then taking them to their logical extremes. For example, being on public transport on their way to work and listening to the bus driver have a meltdown because someone gave them a high valued note.
This joke combines an experience that many people would find themselves in and then makes a joke by making a big deal out of something small. Most bus drivers would be slightly annoyed if they were handed a high valued note, but you can turn that into a joke by taking the drivers reactions (slightly annoyed) to its logical extreme (infuriated). This keeps the joke professional whilst also rooting it in a relevant experience which is a win-win for your brand.
How to Use Capcuts to Create Jokes for your Brand
Think of Capcut templates like the first half of making a meme. The content, i.e., who it is and what they’re saying / doing, is already there for you and all you’ve got to do is create a new context that’s relevant to your brand.
The key to creating a joke that works for your brand is to use content pillars to develop “themes” that jokes can then be made out of. Ryanair, who are a travel service, are an excellent example of this since they cover all aspects of the travelling experience. They have jokes ranging from booking a holiday, being at the airport, boarding and being on a plane, and returning from your holiday.
These are all experiences that their customers/audience (who in reality is anyone who’s been on a plane) would have experienced and can relate to which means that they’re more likely to engage with the content. There are possibly dozens of experiences that can be taken from going on holiday and each cutout determines which one. This gives Ryanair an almost endless amount of content for their Tik Tok since there are always new templates.
Creating content pillars is all about understanding your audience and the experiences that they might have. For example, if your audience is school children then you could break that down into:
- Different lessons
- Lunch time
- Teachers doing x
- When someone in class does x
These four basic ideas will allow you to create hundreds of jokes that will be relevant to your audience. Try to develop at least five themes for your brand and then break them down into smaller experiences within those themes. Repeat this method for each new theme that you develop, and you’ll have thousands of potential ideas for jokes.
How Life 360 uses Capcuts
Life 360 uses trending templates with the following themes on their Tik Tok:
- Your mum asking where you are instead of using the app
- Watching your friend visit their ex’s house at 3am
- Watching your friend drive very fast after a heartbreak
- Watching your partner do x when they haven’t replied to you
As mentioned earlier, these are all experiences that young adults would have and therefore are likely to get engagement from that audience. They use different templates to approach these themes from different angles, therefore ensuring that their content is slightly different each time.
Unfortunately, they don’t often make a joke out of the topic but just present it as an experience that you might have had. This can work when the topic is your friend going back to their toxic ex because there’s a strong connection to that however it falls flat with broader themes. They’ll often let the template tell the joke, such as Homer saying “D’oh”, instead of building a joke on top of that which will lead them into trouble when the original template isn’t funny.
Life 360 gets around this somewhat by approaching everything from the attitude of a young adult. Many of their videos depict parents as an annoyance and they approach the subject of people visiting their ex from several perspectives. This builds a connection between a follower and the brand since they’ll be “thinking” the same way which is how people become friends in real life.
Where Life 360 is Going Wrong
Life 360 are unfortunately limiting their success on Tik Tok because they keep repeating the same jokes from the same angle. They use new templates as the basis to retell the same jokes instead of using them to develop new angles on a joke. This would be the equivalent of Ryanair using different templates to repeatedly tell the joke of dads wanting to be at the airport several hours before they need to be.
This is a problem because, as mentioned in the section above, they don’t make jokes out of the templates but let them stand as the joke. What Life 360 need to do is break down their themes and develop smaller themes from that which they can then make jokes out of. This would give their page some variety and allow for a larger reach.
For example, here are some potential smaller themes that could be used:
- Watching your friend
- Watching your friend hang out with someone that you know they fancy
- Watching your friend third wheel on a date
- Watching your friend on a date go to the other persons house
- Watching your friend driving:
- Watching them in the Mcdonalds drive thru when they said they had no money
- Watching them in a rough area
- Watching them race someone else and win
These are just a few basic ideas for how Life 360 could break down their themes and these six ideas alone would add a lot of variety to their page. They key with themes is to think of experiences that your audience would have experienced and create categories for that. Being specific, such as watching your mate racing, can work if the base topic is broad enough (street racing).
Overview
- Capcuts are an efficient way to create hundreds of posts for your brand
- Life 360 understands their Tik To audience and takes steps to be like them (finding parents annoying etc)
- Life 360 repeats the exact same joke which is hurting their page. They need to break down their themes further to find new jokes to make.
