Hilton’s success with long-form TikTok videos burst the bubble for marketers

Last week, Hilton Hotels' 10-minute-long video went viral on TikTok. The success of the video is prompting the industry to reconsider its TikTok marketing strategy to include long-form content.

Within 48 hours, Hilton's video received over 4 million views and thousands of comments.

The video featured famous creators such as Chris Olsen, GirlBossTown, and KelzWright, in addition to iconic hotel chain heiress Paris Hilton. On the video, the creators challenged viewers to watch it until the end in order to win Hilton Honors Points.

Hilton’s video appears to be a mix of different videos, with different styles, filters, creators, and effects.

In addition to receiving millions of views and thousands of likes and comments, Hilton's video increased the company's TikTok following by 25%, or over 70,000 people, in the two weeks following its release.

The video's star-studded cast of creators, according to Mae Karwowski, CEO and founder of an influencer marketing agency, was undoubtedly a major component of what drew so many TikTok users' attention.

Those creators also assisted Hilton in better capturing the type of language and humour that performs well on TikTok, such as the influencers' snarky, self-referential jokes throughout the video.

In recent years, short-form videos have become more popular than ever. The explosive growth of short-form video app TikTok in recent years has even pushed its rivals Meta and Google to prioritize short-form videos and follow TikTok’s footprints.

At this point in time, the Hilton long-form video’s popularity is gaining marketers' attention. It makes marketers re-evaluate their TikTok marketing strategy in order to incorporate long-form videos. It even strongly emphasizes the fact that long-form videos can still work if done in the right way.

Long-form videos, in fact, are an excellent way for brands to go into greater detail about their products or services, provide more value to audiences, and establish brand authority. Although short-form videos can help to get more views, long-form videos are more effective in terms of providing more information to audiences.

As a result of Hilton’s success, we can expect more long-form videos on TikTok going forward. But, before starting to experiment with TikTok long-form videos, marketers have to keep the following in mind:

A concrete content strategy is essential:

A solid content strategy is vital for making long-form videos successful. The reason is, it is not easy for marketers to keep audiences engaged until the end of a video. To do so, it is important to create content that piques people's interest and is relevant, engaging, creative, and funny. Otherwise, audiences may become bored and lose motivation to watch it all the way through. As a result, it will easily frighten away your target audiences and cause brands to lose significant amount of money.

It demands more influencer collaboration:

Of late, audiences are pretty much accustomed to watching short-form videos. In order to entice them towards long videos, brands have to outright invest in influencers. For Hilton’s video, they invested in multiple famous TikTok creators to make it more interesting for audiences. Besides, in order to push the success of long videos, brands have to come up with multiple short-form videos that promote the long-form videos. As a result, experimenting with long form videos comes with the challenge that if videos featuring multiple creators fail, it costs brands a lot more than a single short-form video failure. As a result, brands need to well plan their marketing budget in advance and act accordingly.

In a nutshell, although long-form videos are nothing new in the digital space, Hilton’s success with long-form video debunked the idea among marketers that long-form videos won’t work and short-form is the only way.

This doesn’t mean marketers should ditch short-form videos and revert to longer ones. In fact, there should be an ideal combination of short and long-form videos. We recommend marketers to keep experimenting stuff, sometimes with ground-breaking attempts like this. Sometimes it may be a huge success.

Sometimes it could be an utter flop. Either way, experimenting is good for the brand.

Check out the viral video here.

@hilton Unexpected & amazing things can happen when you stay, and we want you to stay with us for 10 minutes. Yup, we made a 10-minute TikTok AND we’re giving away 10M Hilton Honors Points + more. #HiltonStayFor10 #HiltonForTheStay ♬ Hilton’s 10-Minute Stay - Hilton