In a 47-second video, a man wearing a blond wig walks into a Quebec dealership looking for the perfect vehicle. In this unsubtle put-on, “she” rejects several options before finding a Jeep Wrangler with a rearview mirror her to admire herself. Sold! Welcome to the off-the-wall world of TikTok, a popular platform for sharing short-form videos and one that a growing number of dealerships are using as a social media marketing tool.
The blond-wig video was made by TikTok content creator Alexis du Maïs, a French-language social media influencer with 107,400 TikTok followers and 4.5 million likes for all his posts. Although he was hired by Montreal-based HGregoire, a group with 31 dealerships across North America, including 20 in Quebec, the video’s only link to the dealership group is an “@hgregoireauto” in the text of the post.
Harry Kasparian, chief marketing and product officer at HGregoire, said the company scaled up its TikTok efforts in December to appeal to an oncoming generation of buyers.
“Why? We go where our future customers go,” Kasparian said, adding the group is paying special attention to the psychology of the upcoming generation: “The way they produce and absorb content is quite different from existing channels.”
More than three-quarters of TikTok users are 39 years old or younger, 32.5 per cent are 19 or younger, and 29.5 per cent are in the 20-29 age group, said Ryan Holtz, a social media expert and owner of Edmonton-based Ryan Holtz Marketing.
Since the blond-wig video was posted in mid-April, it received 10,500 likes and 35 comments, mostly from followers who get the joke.
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