Hair Science Meets Music Science in K18 Hair’s New TikTok Challenge That Encourages Fierce Hair Flips For a Chance to Win $1,000 to Sephora
LOS ANGELES: Biotech hair care company, K18 Hair, announces their TikTok Hashtag Challenge, #K18HairFlip. K18 Hair has been making waves in salons globally with it’s hair mask that leverages a patented peptide to deliver hair-like-new in just 4 minutes. This official TikTok Hashtag Challenge marks the first time K18’s Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask will be widely accessible to the public, available across North America at Sephora and on K18hair.com. To celebrate this moment, K18 Hair is serving up an empowering original song and a chance to win K18 salon service + $1,000 shopping spree to Sephora by joining the hashtag challenge. To join, users can simply create a TikTok using K18’s new song, #K18hairflip, and tag #K18HairFlip for a chance to win.
More than just another TikTok Challenge, #K18HairFlip is a work of art and science.
K18 Hair set out to create a campaign that would be fun for their audience and embody the confidence that comes with reaching hair happiness. K18 partnered with Song Candy to bring their vision to life by ideating a trend-driven TikTok campaign complete with an original branded song. Michelle Miller, SVP of Marketing at K18 Hair noted, “With TikTok being an audio-first platform, we wanted to communicate our brand message and create something fun! Our collaboration with Song Candy allowed us to integrate K18 to users of the platform in an engaging and authentic way.”
Song Candy is a first-of-its-kind creative agency that helps brands connect with their audience by using music as a marketing vehicle, a natural fit for a sound-centric platform like TikTok. Music and audio are quickly becoming powerful assets for brands on TikTok. A recent study found 65% of TikTokers prefer to see videos from brands featuring an original sound, and 58% of TikTokers said they felt more connected to the brand if the sound/music was something they enjoyed listening to [source: US TikTok Marketing Science Music Perception Research, conducted by MRC Data Nov 2020].
Similar to K18 Hair, Song Candy takes a data-driven approach to unlocking creative expression. Song Candy tapped into music science and audience insights to identify key music genres such as Retro Funk Pop and Hip Hop that are widely trending on TikTok, in addition to identifying musical artist styles like Lizzo, Cardi B, and Dua Lipa that over-index with K18’s target audience. Song Candy and K18 collaborated to meld the musical inspiration with K18’s marketing message to create a one-of-a-kind original branded song engineered with TikTok in mind. “We set out to write a sticky song that was not only going to tell the brand’s story in a memorable way (aka live in your head rent free), but also inspire content creation on TikTok with the inclusion of beat drops and lyrical cues,“ said Gabbie Bradford, co-founder of Song Candy.
K18 wanted the challenge to be inclusive and easy for anyone to join in, regardless of having the K18 hair mask in hand. Song candy scoured TikTok and the niche sub-community within the platform, #hairtok, for natural actions and trends. All data pointed to a fierce hair flip as the perfect catalyst for K18’s TikTok Hashtag Challenge — nothing says hair-happiness or hair-confidence like a bold flip of the hair. It’s a feeling that everyone can relate to.
To complete the challenge-in-the-making, Song Candy tapped powerhouse vocalist Tarmara Jade, season 19 Top 9 finalist from NBC’s ‘The Voice,’ to power the vocals. Speaking about her experience, Jade shared that “recording the K18 song was so much fun and didn’t feel like work at all because I related to the message. There’s a certain super power in flipping your hair right after it’s freshly done: it’s like you're telling your problems, not right now, I look too good to be stressed!”
