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Director of Marketing Insights

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Assc. Director of Strategy

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Co-founder

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“Quickly gives us an idea of content that will resonate with our audiences and the most efficient channels to deliver it on”

Gabriel Authier

Global Brand Manager

“Continuously informs our social and advertising strategies”

Jaime Parson

Director of Marketing Insights

“Pivotal in improving our client's media strategies”

Gemma Philpott

Assc. Director of Strategy

“Mind blowing! Helped surface a lot of great insights”

Chris Mikulin

Co-founder

“Strategic insight that helps my team move fast without hesitation”

Martin Brueckner

Global Head Spots Communications

“Lots of actionable insights. Very Impactful.”

TJ Walker

Founder & CEO
Scroll For More

TikTok Surf Audience Content Opportunity Analysis™ Q4 2022

December 5, 2022
Sport & Outdoor

Content Opportunity Methodology

  1. Measure & Categorize: Sample a large number of social posts to find ones that are significantly outperforming the average.
  2. Identify Top Themes: Identify the themes that are resonating most with the audience by sorting the themes by their aggregated performance metrics.
  3. Identify a Benchmark: Identify content themes that are performing above and under an average benchmark for the industry based on views & engagements.
  4. Identify Opportunities: Look at the data and find the content themes that are resonating with the audience based on a set of top creators.
  5. Repeat For Each Platform: Repeat the analysis for every platform that matters to your brand and audience to find platform-specific opportunities.

TikTok Content Bucket Definitions

  • Raw Footage: Short-form videos that focus on varying moments of surfers in the barrel or calming moments of large swells.
  • Huge Swells: Videos that record different views of large wave swells forming.
  • Slow Motion: Videos of surfers primarily either in the barrel or performing tricks in slow motion.
  • Surf Humour: Various clips of surfers playing up the nuances of surfing and pointing out funny moments.
  • Flips and Tricks: Short clips that showcase a surfer exiting off the crest of a wave, performing either a flip or trick.
  • Competition Highlights: Clips showcasing moments from small or large-scale competitions amongst surfers.
  • POV Clip: Clips taken from the POV of the surfer on their board or at the front of the surfboard.
  • Gear Highlights & Demos: Videos highlighting particular pieces of gear and occasionally demonstrating their use.
  • Wipeouts: Surfers attempting their run and falling off their board in the process.
  • Surf Edit: Stylized edits of different surf runs that compile a handful of high quality clips.
  • Wave Pool: Videos showing surfers practicing their skills in a wave pool as opposed to waves in the ocean.
  • Day In The Life: Videos showing off the day-to-day life of different surfers through certain activities or events.

Excellent performing content categories for the Surf audience on TikTok include:

Good performing content categories for the Surf audience on TikTok include:

Substandard performing content categories for the Surf audience on TikTok include:

Low performing content categories for the Surf audience on TikTok include:

Content Opportunities:

1. Raw Footage

Short-form videos that focus on varying moments of surfers in the barrel or calming moments of large swells.

Tactics to Implement:

  • Music: Clips often include popular and trending music to a highlight style of raw video clips of surfers.
  • POV: High-performing videos are filmed from the position of someone on the beach filming a surfer out in the water.
  • Hashtag Use: All clips within this category have at least 6 hashtags.
  • Athlete Feature: The first video below starts off with a title featuring the athlete's name to hook viewers.

Top Format:

  • Duration: 0:19 & 0:08
  • Nothing goes to waste, make sure to compile a series of b-roll footage that can be paired easily with trending audios for a minimum of 8 seconds.
@wsl So this happened over the weekend…🤯 @Kai Lenny Video: Dayan#wsl #surfw#athletesontiktoks#mauit#coderedswelle#woww#hawaiiw #hawaii ♬ Level Up - Kwe the Artist

307K Views

263K Views

2. Huge Swells

Videos that record different views of large swells forming.

Tactics to Implement:

  • Terminology: In certain situations, videos will be posted with terms like “Code Red” to emphasize how large the wave swell is.
  • Location: Within the caption, a consistent piece of information that is always given is the location of where the swell is occurring.
  • Audio: In certain instances, as seen in this video, clips will include inspirational audio that relates to the culture of surfing.

Top Format:

  • Duration: 0:14 & 0:13
  • Think about moments in history where the swells have been out of this world. Start a throwback series to help remember and honour the amazing runs made on the waves.

603K Views

263K Views

3. Slow Motion

Videos of surfers primarily either in the barrel or performing tricks in slow motion.

Tactics to Implement:

  • Capturing The Moment: High-performing clips in this category focus on capturing key moments such as the entry into the barrel. 
  • Filming Position: Being that slow motion emphasizes all the best and worst characteristics of a surfing moment, camera position is critical. High performers in this category often place the camera near the base of the swell or from a farther vantage point to capture the surfer at eye level. 

Top Format:

  • Duration: 0:36 & 0:17
  • # of Hashtags: 14 & 10

697K Views

@surftock Wavestorms are the superior surfboard, prove me wrong 😤 #fyp #foryou #surftok #surf #surfing #wavestorm #ocean #beach #wedge #socal ♬ Chinese New Year - SALES

22K Views

Outliers: These videos were omitted from their content buckets as ‘viral’ outliers for exceeding 3x the views and engagements of their respective benchmarks.

Slow Motion

Content: Surfer attempts to ride the crest of a swell, but falls off their board in slow motion. 

1.7M Views

Raw Footage

Content: Surfer quickly enters into a large swell riding through the barrel perfectly.

1.9M Views

Huge Swells

Content: A surf patrol in Teahupoo spots a historic “Code Red” swell and records it as the wave crushes down. 

@magicseaweed_official It’s official, Teahupoo has gone Code Red, the first time since 2011. Government could ban all water activities for 24 hours. Right now, people are taking a look. Here’s Tereva David live from the channel 😮 #surf #surfing #surfer #surfvideo #wave #waves #bigwaves #sea #ocean #swell #water #codered #teahupoo #tahiti #magicseaweed ♬ original sound - Magicseaweed_official

1.4M Views

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