The 2.3 Billion Recipe for Going Viral

Every Marketer Can Learn from #SalmonRice

👋, I’m Kimberly. I’ve been creating obsession-worthy brands for the past fifteen years. And now, I’m giving away my secrets every week in this newsletter.

Getting one hundred people to interact with your brand is hard.

Getting one hundred million people to interact with your brand (if you’re not a Kardashian) is almost impossible.

Yet, viral TikTok recipe videos regularly boast the kind of numbers that would make any brand salivate:

• Lifestyle blogger Emily Mariko posted the how-to for her leftover salmon bowl on September 21—and it has already racked up 40 million views

• At the height of baked feta pasta mania, many outlets reported a global feta shortage

• #frozenhoney has over 1.6 billion views

• Passionate reviews for the “so wrong, it’s right” Flamin’ Hot Cheeto Salad have flooded the platform

• And no one could escape the ULTIMATE cure for quarantine boredom, the whipped coffee known as “TikTok coffee” that gave #whippedcoffee a whopping 2.3 billion views 😲 😲 😲

But what exactly makes all of these viral TikTok recipes so insanely appealing—and how can you, as a brand founder or marketer, mimic this success for your brand?

1. They Start with Familiar Ingredients

Pasta. Coffee. Rice. The ingredients in the most viral TikTok recipes are simple to find in any grocery store.

And for many of the recipes—like this three ingredient crème brûlée involving ice cream, sugar, and an egg—you may just have the ingredients sitting in your fridge right now.

People feel comfortable with these known flavors (ahhh yes, tomato! I know what a tomato tastes like!).

And the likelihood that they’ve cooked with these ingredients before is almost 100%.

✔️ Your Marketing Takeaway

Whenever people encounter something new, they view it first with their “lizard brains.”

The lizard brain is the most primitive part of your brain, where the instincts that warn you of danger reside. If something new is too radically different or sets off all of the alarm bells all at once, your lizard brain says, “No! I will have none of that!”

So, if you want people to interact with your brand in an immediately positive way, it is smart to begin the conversation with something they know and relate to—something that won’t set off tons of immediate alarm bells… like tomatoes.

Because no one was ever scared of a tomato.

Unless you cut into one that looked like this.

2. The Process is Interesting

Whether it’s eating pancakes like cereal, whipping up the coffee, or adding an ice cube to your rice, something about the way the creators are making their viral TikTok recipes differently gives us pause.

There is something inherently off, entirely unique, or downright remarkable about how they’re treating their ingredients that strikes people—and also makes the dish talk-worthy.

And not only is the process a little bit different. Because it’s on TikTok, it’s also visually appealing.

✔️ Your Marketing Takeaway

People like small, strange, and weird details.

Ask yourself: What is small, strange, and potentially weird about how my brand makes our product or creates our service?

Zero in on these details, and use them to up your storytelling game.

And remember: It’s best if you can both “show and tell” the process with your visuals. Seeing is believing… and intriguing.

3. The Instructions Are Easy

It doesn’t get any easier than the recipe for TikTock’s Frozen Honey phenomena:

1. Step 1: Pour pure 100% honey into a water bottle

2. Step 2: Freeze it

And while not all of the recipes are this dead easy—they are simple, and very simply laid out in the instructions.

Dummy, meet proof.

✔️ Your Marketing Takeaway

When I started my career at an advertising agency fifteen years ago, the rule was that you should try to write your marketing copy at a sixth grade reading level.

That means…

Short words.

Simple sentences.

And this rule is still true today.

If you want people to interact with your brand, take down any and all barriers to entry that you can.

And one of those barriers can be complexity of explanations and language.

4. There’s an Unexpected Flavor

The feta in the pasta.

The cream of tartar in the cloud bread.

The Flamin' Hot Cheetos in the salad.

There’s a singularly strange ingredient in many of these viral TikTok recipes, even if you can’t put your finger on it in the finished product (which can be part of the fun!).

✔️ Your Marketing Takeaway

Adding an extra odd ingredient to the mix is another way to get people hyped up to test your product or service.

Think of it as the “There’s no WAY that can taste good!” phenomena.

It gives the recipe something to prove—and people something clear to give their opinions on.

So, next time you’re creating a piece of content about your product or service, go deep and think hard about what might surprise people about it.

What “weird thing” might get them weirdly excited to interact with your brand?

5. They Invite Experimentation

Mixing the honey with corn syrup, maple syrup, or even Kool-Aid.

Subbing broccoli for the tomatoes in the feta pasta.

Putting the weirdest thing possible into the air fryer (including Flamin’ Hot Cheetos).

The best of the TikTok viral recipes don’t only invite follow up reaction videos.

They give people room to make the recipes their own.

✔️ Your Marketing Takeaway

In today’s social media driven world, the desire to be a creator is stronger than ever.

It is also easier than ever for people to feed this desire, given the technology advancements.

How can you encourage your customers’ creative instincts in ways that will benefit your brand?

Brands that don’t encourage their customers to experiment with their products and services—then share their own experiences, hacks, and stories—are going to miss out.

Actively ask people to make your brand their own.

You may find that your customers are way more creative than you are.

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About Me

I help early stage founders create the kind of brands that get customers so obsessed, they’ll do your advertising for you.

Based on my experience founding my own consumer brand, I developed The Branding Sprint—a uniquely collaborative, streamlined, and agile approach to brand creation.

Click here to learn more about The Branding Sprint, or schedule a call with me.