In a television commercial, Sister Monica Clare, a nun in northern New Jersey, walks through a sunlit church, sits in a pew and crosses herself. Her message: TikTok is a force for good.
“Thanks to TikTok, I created a community where we can feel safe asking questions about spirituality,” he says in the ad.
Clare is one of several TikTok fans, along with thickly accented ranchers, a Navy veteran known as Patriotic Kenny and some entrepreneurs, who appear in commercials for the social network, now subject to intense scrutiny in Washington, DC.
“TikTok definitely has problems with its brand in the United States,” Clare, 58, said in an interview. “Most people, especially those over 60, say TikTok is a bunch of superficial garbage. They don’t use it. “They don’t understand what kind of content is there.”
“TikTok has been very smart in saying, ‘That’s not who we are; we are much more than that,’” he added.
That seems to be the driving idea behind TikTok’s multimillion-dollar advertising initiative on television and on rival social networks across the country — with the hashtag #KeepTikTok — now that the Senate is considering a bill that would force the company’s Chinese owner , ByteDance, to sell the application or be banned in the United States. Many lawmakers from both parties have pointed out that the app could endanger users’ sensitive data or be used as a propaganda tool by China.
Since the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill three weeks ago, the company has spent at least $3.1 million in advertising time to air commercials that will appear throughout the month of April, according to AdImpact data. a media monitoring firm. Some of the states it is targeting most strongly are presidential election battlegrounds, such as Pennsylvania, Nevada and Ohio, according to the firm’s data. TikTok has also spent more than $100,000 on ads for Instagram and Facebook, according to Meta’s Ad Library.
TikTok claimed it was spending more than AdImpact data showed, but the company did not specify the amounts. When asked about its advertising efforts, Michael Hughes, a spokesperson for TikTok, replied: “We think citizens should know that the government is trying to mess with the free speech rights of 170 million Americans and take down seven million small businesses throughout the country.”
The ads are part of an extensive lobbying campaign that TikTok is carrying out to transform the perception of lawmakers and the general public. The company has explicitly opposed the bill and described it as a veto, noting that it has not and would not share data with Beijing, nor would it allow any government to influence algorithms for recommending videos to users.
ByteDance spent $8.7 million on lobbying last year, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit research group, and its internal team and several outside firms are trying to convince lawmakers. ByteDance has encouraged its vast user base to contact its representatives, although some of those efforts may have backfired. Additionally, Shoun Chew, CEO of TikTok, is co-chair of this year’s Met Gala, where TikTok will be the main sponsor.
TikTok began spreading the stories of American citizens like Clare and Patriotic Kenny last year, through a campaign it calls “TikTok does good.” Much of that initiative seemed aimed at the conservative public. The company spent an estimated $19 million on television ads that appeared primarily on news programs, especially Fox News, according to data from iSpot.tv, a television measurement company. TikTok ran more than a dozen ads during the Republican presidential debates or on debate-related shows last year, according to the company, and continues to run ads promoting creators from last year’s campaign.
“It’s a classic tactic,” said Cait Lamberton, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “They take an idea, put it in a human’s mouth, and allow you to make a personal connection.”
Lamberton added: “TikTok is expressing itself as a brand that represents freedom and democratization of communication and, frankly, a lot of values that most people are pretty comfortable with.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has seen the legislative measure as a threat to First Amendment rights, last month posted ads on Facebook and Instagram that included a link to an opposition letter for people to send to their senators. A spokesperson for the organization said it had no formal partnership or fundraising relationship with TikTok or ByteDance.
Advocates of the law also publish advertisements. Several newly created nonprofit groups led by conservatives, whose promoters are undefined, have aired ads on television and social media.
One of those groups, the American Parents Coalition, is led by Alleigh Marré, founder of a public relations firm and spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services during former President Trump’s administration. Marré promised “a seven-figure awareness campaign” called “TikTok is poison” in a March 20 press release.
The intensity of the battle has struck a chord with Clare. She was delighted when her ad began airing, she said, but she was soon shocked to receive hate mail and even some angry phone calls.
“It was a torrent of great emotion and then a lot of disappointment,” he said. “These were people convinced that China is spying on us through TikTok, people who may not have used social media in their lives.”
He said he was hopeful that TikTok’s advertising efforts, like the ad, would help convey other ideas about the app. (The company made a $500 donation to his convent in Mendham, New Jersey, for its participation, he added.)
“There is a great community of people doing good on TikTok,” he concluded.
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