There Are Many Things More Interesting Than Your Product On Tiktok
Most people don't wake up thinking "I really want to watch gin content." But millions of people are interested in James May being curious about things, experimenting, and providing his own particular brand of commentary on the world.
So James Gin’s TikTok content is always entertainment-first, product-second. We post James doing interesting things. Testing kitchen gadgets (with bottles of gin on a shelf in the background), making terrible sandwiches or road testing a car (and assessing how many bottles of gin it could accommodate). Gin is present, but it's not the subject.
To create this content, we don't just repost our YouTube videos. We edit our Planet Gin content specifically for TikTok - shorter hooks, faster pacing and mobile-first vertical framing. And we’re very aware that one channel can lead to another - you could (if you insisted) call it ‘content scaffolding’ - a behind-the-scenes TikTok leads people to full YouTube videos.TikTok is the hook, YouTube is the depth.
Meanwhile, we know there's a whole TikTok community of bartenders, mixologists and cocktail enthusiasts creating their own great content. So instead of paying them to promote us, we give them access to content that’s sufficiently interesting that they choose to reference it or engage with it. Basically, it’s user-generated content without paying for it.
The Results - James Gin’s TikTok channel has currently attracted 385,000 followers - compare this to virtually zero meaningful presence from our premium gin competitors. And this isn't just a vanity metric. It's 385,000 people who have chosen to see more content from James Gin.
Of course many will never buy gin. Some are underage. Many don't even drink. But they're building familiarity with the brand. When they are in the market for gin in 2, 5, 10 years, James Gin will be a known entity, associated with entertainment and authenticity.
Traditional brands spending millions on TV ads are trying to buy that awareness. We're earning it, at virtually no cost, by being interesting.
