Have Content Creators Changed the World?

by Jeremy Pang

I remember about 5 years ago, when School of Wok hit its first 5000 subscribers on YouTube, my friends were already categorising me as a ‘micro-influencer’, which at the time I had no idea what they meant. As far as I was concerned, I was a chef, teaching people how to cook delicious food and that was that. There are so many articles out there around influencer marketing and about how Tik Tok and Instagram reels have gotten us closer to personality driven content connecting brands with ‘real life stories’. But then whilst flicking through both platforms in my 10-15 minutes a day to myself (with 2 young kids, this is usually on the toilet these days), there always seems to be a point where you go from one video to the next where each video starts to mould into one and they all start to look the same.

Are social media platforms there to show off unique personalities or are they there to accentuate our innate human nature to be like everyone else? When it comes to video production for example, we specialise in producing high quality videos for brands, which if you were to just follow the Tik Tok data of today in the UK, some may say is a dying trade (not great for us or any of our peers in the industry), yet with the major social media platforms all fiercely competing with each other and an ever changing, superfast moving digital world, perhaps the home-made videos of one-hit-wonder Tik Tok stars will continue to be a phenomenon for a while and appeal to a certain audience, but as we are seeing with You Tube already, will start to push other audiences further afield looking for more detail, education, and the type of learning that fuels a certain genre of human and their fascination and drive to learn more about the world. At the end of the day neither type of human can ever be coined right or wrong, we’re just all different after all; or are we?

One thing for sure is that history shows that we are a species who constantly want to ‘better ourselves’, learn, improve and over time, use our collective knowledge, experience, or from a marketing perspective, qualitative and quantitative data analysis to adapt and change. As a non-generation Z, at the older end of millennial, I do acknowledge that a modern day content creator like myself, or in this case with our video production agency hat on; a third-party content creator, must embrace change especially as the newest technology, platforms and algorithms are thrown our way, HOWEVER, I refuse to forget that knowledge, experience and what’s makes me, me or what makes a brand, that unique brand should ever be left on the wayside. Brands should never stop telling their own brand stories.

If you are nimble enough to jump straight in and create a story out of every instant moment in your busy daily schedules, then I applaud you and absolutely continue to do that, but if, like most people I know, you are incredibly rushed off your feet in your everyday life and cannot afford to hold your phone in your hand for 8 out of 10 hours in your working day, then my advice is not to rush into yearning for viral content and don’t try to jump onto any current band wagons. Forget trying to make everything you do on social media look the same and sound the same as every other trending creator. If you aren’t riding that trending wave already, it’s extremely likely that you’ve missed the boat on the peak of that trend anyway, so you may as well just be yourself and do what’s right for your brand.

With the short-lived content craze, the ‘old skool’ way of building longevity into brand story-telling is definitely the harder route to take, but I still think if a story is well thought out, and can be told in short snippets over time that there is hope yet for us oldies and establishing brand appeal to all generations over time is something worth pursuing. We, as a large mass of humans will always want to learn more and better ourselves and so the place for longer format content will evolve and prevail once more.

Don’t get me wrong, Tik Tok isn’t going anywhere, but it certainly will change, for the better, for the worse, who knows; much like Instagram has tried and failed with big feed changes recently, Tik Tok will almost certainly have those moments too in future! My point here is, although, yes, as brand owners, we need to be where everyone else is to shout out about what we do, experience and taking control of your brand is not to be forgotten about, and more often than not, watching and learning, whilst plodding away at what you are good at is worthwhile in the end.

That said, I’m sure I’ll be trying out something on my own Tik Tok ‘channel’ soon for sure, just not sure how real my reels will be until I’ve sat on the toilet a little while more, waiting for the robotic app to work out what I apparently like to watch and tell me exactly what I should do to show the world how real I actually am… on your phones. This is an evolving conversation in my head. Perhaps checkout my Tik Tok soon (not yet because there’s nothing on there) to see which part of the ‘real me’ I think others want to see of me in this everchanging social media world that we live in.

Has the world changed? I don’t think so, we are just herding another generation of sheep that like to dance and talk the same old drivel, kind of like how us oldies do, except on their phones, much quicker, and not in full sentences. I guess it’s not dissimilar to a night out in the pub… “Ah’ go-on-then I’ll have a cheeky one before I go home” – am I talking about an ASMR video of ‘the best looking cheese toastie I’ve EVER seen’ before bed or that last pint before getting the last train? Still not sure which is better in the long run for my health…