CHRISTMAS spirit is non-existent in my house, though you wouldn’t know it from my online antics. A former colleague once dubbed it the “festering season”, and I couldn’t agree more.
I can’t abide the last quarter of the year. I also can’t stand the New Year. At this point, if you are thinking that I am a miserable cow, you would be absolutely right. I dislike all forms of obligatory joy, and my only decoration is a doormat that reads “Beware of the Grinch”, gifted by a neighbour who knows me too well.
Sadly, though, as the owner of a packaged goods business, there is no choice but to embrace it at a commercial level. That’s the problem – as a producer of things, you must allow yourself to be swept into it, whether you like it or not. People are shopping, and I have things I want them to buy. It necessitates offers, bundle deals, free shipping … Yes, shipping. I’ve included that word to upset the other half of the business. She hates Americanisms almost as much as I hate festivities. I take great joy in using shipping in place of postage as often as I can.
Anyway, last weekend was the ultimate in American imports – Black Friday. This shopping day is always the last Friday in November, following Thanksgiving the previous day. It’s now an entire weekend, culminating in “Cyber Monday”, which increases the depth of the discounts. Because as humans we can’t but go too far, that has morphed into Cyber Week.
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There’s a school of thought in the small business world that you should do something different – maybe a green Friday where you promote eco-friendly products, or a social media post where you tell everyone how you are not doing Black Friday because you are a small business. I’m a pragmatist. I throw the kitchen sink at Black Friday and its following days. Why? Because humans will human. They will be on Amazon, or on Temu, or on TikTok Shop because we all love a bargain.
I don’t think there is a choice – not if you have a business you want to scale. You need to take a deep breath, work out your margins, and go where the people are.
As there are decreasing returns from Facebook and Instagram – and because I am a glutton for punishment – I have decided to turn my attention to TikTok – currently in the spotlight due to legal woes – as part of my strategy to reach new customers.
TikTok is a wildly popular app that lets users create and share short videos, usually between 15 seconds and three minutes long. It’s a hub for everything from dance challenges and comedy sketches to life hacks and cooking tips.
What makes TikTok stand out is its clever algorithm, which learns what you like and fills your feed with content that keeps you glued to the screen. Launched by Chinese company ByteDance in 2016, it now has more than a billion monthly users worldwide and has become a cultural phenomenon, shaping trends in music, fashion, and beyond.
Its meteoric rise is down to its mix of fun, creativity, and the thrill of going viral – anyone with a smartphone can become a star overnight. But not everyone’s a fan.
People who worry about it include the US government. They have raised concerns about TikTok’s links to China, with worries that user data could be accessed by the Chinese government. TikTok says this isn’t the case, but suspicions persist, fuelled by broader tensions between the two countries.
In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), mandating that ByteDance divest its ownership of the app by January 19, 2025, to prevent a nationwide ban.
The company had appealed to a federal court, arguing that the legislation was unconstitutional due to its “staggering” effect on the free speech rights of its 170 million American users. Their appeal failed last week.
ByteDance vowed to continue its legal fight, with a spokesperson expressing confidence in the Supreme Court’s track record of upholding free speech, criticising the law as based on “inaccurate, flawed, and hypothetical information”.
While the debate rumbles on, TikTok’s popularity just keeps growing, not least because it has an inbuilt shopping functionality. Businesses can upload products and sell them. In an interesting twist, all users can earn commissions from promoting other brands. This is the home of the aspiring influencer. And it is now home to me.
I've been guddling around the edges for a few years, but the other week, for some unknown reason, I decided to sit down and figure it out properly. I’m a card-carrying hermit, but I don’t mind making an idiot of myself on camera. I started out life as a children’s TV presenter, so there’s a precedent.
Which is how I found myself wearing a selection of ridiculous festive hats and wittering at a camera in the tea shed last weekend. I then lost approximately eight hours of my life trying to work out how on earth you add products to the TikTok Shop. It’s a labyrinthine process fraught with technical hurdles, paperwork hurdles, verification hurdles and the appalling user interface which always lies behind an app that looks slick on the consumer end.
Once I’d got them online, there was the question of how you navigate the discounts and free shipping beloved of the app. Despite the deep discounting, there is money to be made – there’s no doubt about that.
However, making that money is almost entirely personality-based. The big brands don’t have their own accounts – or if they do, they are not particularly active. Instead, they rely on show-offs to promote their products. Which is presumably why it works so well – we’re not watching brands, we’re watching people like us flogging products on behalf of brands for the commission of a few pence to a few pounds.
It’s a fiendishly brilliant concept – with the potential to really supercharge a business. The trick is working out what appeals to your desired audience – something I have not yet done. My data to date suggests that a combination of cats and dogs, a destructive elf in the shed, and my Grinch-like approach to Christmas may be starting to pay dividends – assuming I can keep up the momentum. Making and editing videos at 11pm at night only adds to the air of Grinch that continues to pervade the exercise.
I almost threw in the towel when I got an order from Tiree, which necessitated sending the parcel on a tracked service (no tracking, no payout), precisely six miles, to a house I pass on an almost daily basis. I left a Post-it note on the parcel for the postie when he collected it, in case he thought I had finally lost the plot.
So, is the effort the world’s show-offs are putting in – often on behalf of large corporations – worth it, given this week’s ruling? I’m betting that the answer is yes. With Donald Trump’s return to the presidency in January, TikTok might find an unlikely ally; he’s hinted at opposing the ban despite past attempts to shut it down.
And me? Whether it’s Black Friday or TikTok, going where the customers are is the logical choice. I’ve bought a new turkey hat and I’m off to the shed to prostitute myself in the name of a few pounds and some likes. I might hate Christmas, but if my antics can keep the wheels turning for my business, I’ll keep at it. And if I can dial up the festive cheer, some of you might even buy it.
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