Beyond the scroll: how fmcg brands are turning TikTok buzz into business

Little Moons’ mochi ice cream exploded across the platform, as bored Brits filmed themselves tracking down the colourful snacks. Almost overnight, sales jumped 1,300% in Tesco and were a similar runaway success in Waitrose, Ocado and Amazon Fresh.

Five years on, that Little Moons moment has become the gold standard TikTok case study for fmcg brands chasing viral success. But while going viral may spark growth, the real challenge is sustaining the initial buzz, says Little Moons head of brand marketing Milly Tuck.

“Lots of brands will enjoy viral success, which seems amazing at the time, but a truly brilliant brand will keep the community there,” she explains. “Since I came into the business, I’ve been really challenged to look at how we drive conversations and create a platform that feels entertaining.”

So, how are fmcg brands like Little Moons using TikTok to support their growth plans? What’s their endgame on the platform? How can viral success stories maintain their momentum? And to what extent will food and drink suppliers have to adapt their social strategies to navigate new online junk food ad bans?

Cultural conversations

While it might be tempting to diarise content, Tuck advocates for flexibility on TikTok: “We really want to talk with our audience and engage our community, so we don’t have a strict schedule.”

Instead, the Little Moons content team has a WhatsApp group called ‘The Newsroom’, where they share content ideas relating to cultural conversations. “We might put something on WhatsApp on a Monday morning and we could get it out by the afternoon,” reveals Tuck.

In late December, for instance, Little Moons jumped on the ‘dream rotation’ meme with a table plan featuring nothing but People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2025, actor Jonathan Bailey, and various mochi ice cream flavours. The team also jumped on the ‘2025 flops’ trend, with one member admitting to sending text kisses to the CEO. But it was the team’s sweet version of a seasonal cheeseboard that really got people talking, with 1.8 million views so far.

Like Little Moons, beauty brand Hair Syrup – which is also cited on the TikTok for Business website as a key success story – looks to cultural conversations and social mediatrends to influence its own TikTok content.

“If there’s a trend, we always find a way of relating it back to Hair Syrup,” says the brand’s founder, Lucie Macleod.

Macleod explains, for example, how Hair Syrup used the viral ‘sad hamster’ meme to promote its Growsmary hair oil. “We posted a mechanic saying: ‘Your tyres are bald’, and the little hamster was saying: ‘Here, put some Growsmary on them.’”

Thanks to their agility, “smaller, disruptive indie brands have a massive edge” over fmcg giants on TikTok, argues Macleod. She founded Hair Syrup in 2020 after a video she posted about using a homemade hair oil went viral on the platform.

“A lot of people saw it and said they’d like to try it,” explains Macleod, who was in her third year of university at the time. In response to the interest, she started selling bottles of her concoction online.

Today, Hair Syrup has 452.3k TikTok followers and generates more than £5m in annual revenue. “I think TikTok favours brands who show a lot behind the scenes,” explains Macleod, who used ‘before and after’ photos of her own hair in her debut video.

“[TikTok users] aren’t fussed about brands that are really polished, which works in our favour,” she says. Hair Syrup focuses on quantity over quality on TikTok, posting an average of 25 videos daily, despite only having a three-strong content team.

“We want to be quite aggressive, bombarding with content, so people have this feeling they can’t get away from it,” says Macleod.

Going organic

By contrast, Britain’s top-selling cereal brand, Weetabix, “won’t overburden” followers on TikTok, says senior brand manager Sarah Alexander. Weetabix posts on TikTok approximately twice a week, “but what we tend to do is try and engage with community and comment… Organic [content] is very much where we see our best-performing posts.”

A standout example from 2025 came from singer-songwriter Raye posting a video of herself eating a bowl of ’bix in May. “When she won her Spotify award, she posted herself eating Weetabix Protein. She was crouched on her knees with her big Spotify award, which is like a big bowl, eating Weetabix Protein out of it. We jumped on that and sent her this beautiful, sparkly gift box.”

According to Alexander, the activity reached 28 million viewers. Weetabix also used the viral moment as a springboard for an OOH ad in Raye’s home town of Croydon.

From a planned perspective, Weetabix also promotes content featuring its four sporting celeb ambassadors: Mo Farah; Jessica Ennis-Hill; Ade Adepitan; and Leah Williamson. While the All-Stars campaign was initially intended to inspire shoppers aged 45 and over, it’s the unscripted moments that have helped boost Weetabix’s TikTok fame most.

“In some of our branded content, Leah Williamson said she liked having an omelette with Weetabix, which got conversations going… It’s often the savoury serving suggestions that get people a bit het up!”

While Weetabix is not shy about actively leveraging shoppers’ outrage, Itsu looks to established TikTok trends to inform its NPD. After noticing consumers were customising dumplings and posting their creations to TikTok, it launched microwaveable Soup Dumplings, backed by a TikTok campaign, in October 2024.

Itsu recruited a diverse group of creators to post about its Soup Dumplings within a 24-hour window to build hype around the launch. It was a success – high levels of demand caused the NPD to sell out within its first week on shelves.

“The whole trend was around ‘your tray, your way’, and we saw an incredible amount of organic content off the back of our creative campaign,” says Itsu assistant digital brand manager Roma Longster. To date, Itsu has racked up over 15 million organic views on its Soup Dumplings content.

The power of the scroll

Viral fame, rising follower counts and organic views in their millions are all well and good, but with brands investing significant amounts of time, effort and money into their TikTok strategies, what’s the payoff? After all, not every food-based video that hits a cultural nerve is going to end up as a Little Moons success story.

For brands looking to increase sales, the primary objective has typically been to build awareness and mental availability. Of course, short-term sales uplifts in response to specific campaigns like Itsu’s are always welcome, but the big wins come from long-term brand salience and increased relevance in a crowded market.

By allowing brands to embed themselves into these everyday moments, TikTok is shaping shopper consideration long before any purchase decisions are made. But it’s also far more than that.

“TikTok has moved beyond being primarily an awareness tool”, explains Eva Liu, social commerce director at social-first agency SAMY. “What we’re seeing now, particularly in fmcg, is consumers using TikTok as a place to browse, compare and buy in real time. The endgame is about being ready to capture demand when it appears.”

Ed East, global CEO at social agency Billion Dollar Baby, agrees the landscape has shifted dramatically.

“It’s not about choosing between brand building or driving sales any more,” he says. “On TikTok, the two are now deeply intertwined. These days, you can build brand, drive consideration – and convert to sale in just one scroll.”

TikTok Shop

Almost half (44%) of all UK TikTok users already shop directly on the platform, a figure that’s continuing to grow. According to TikTok, fmcg is leading this charge: although few of the leading brands are converts (see list), the likes of Trip, Love Corn and Free Soul are all using the platform to boost sales and connect with consumers at the same time.

“Combining content with commerce makes shopping feel natural and engaging,” says TikTok Shop’s head of fmcg, Matt Beane, adding that food content “thrives” on TikTok. “Around 50% of users who interact with grocery-related videos take action, whether that’s trying a recipe, visiting a store or making a purchase.”

On the purchase side, one fmcg product was sold every second on TikTok Shop UK in 2025. And to make the most of the opportunity, brands must also have the right products, pricing and availability in place. East says brands that are doing well have taken a dual approach, building relevance and cultural presence through content, creators, community and culture, while also “putting the plumbing in place” via TikTok Shop, product feeds and paid amplification to convert demand when it arises.

Shaping shopper behaviour

With influencers frequently reviewing new snacks, meal kits or recipes, TikTok has also become a form of social search and is highly effective at driving new food trends and shaping consumer behaviour, as users actively search for terms such as “best healthy snacks” or “easy midweek meals”.

This ability to influence impulse consideration allows grocery brands to show up at the exact moment of intent – something few other social platforms offer at the same scale.

The point of difference comes from TikTok’s algorithm, which is built to prioritise relevance and interest, rather than numbers. This means brands don’t need an existing audience to perform well, making the platform potentially “transformative” for challengers and startups.

“TikTok has flipped the script on the importance of follower counts,” explains East. “The algorithm is interest-led, so a video from an account with 5,000 followers can outperform one with five million if it taps into the right behaviour, trend or moment.

“It’s where we most commonly see discovery outperform distribution – more so than other platforms.”

Challenger olive oil brand Graza has seen exactly that. By mixing trending content with attention-grabbing recipe combos (such as ice cream and olive oil), some of its videos have racked up millions of views, despite a relatively modest follower count.

Joe Gagliese, co-founder of social-first marketing agency Viral Nation, says smaller brands often benefit from faster decision making and a more informal tone, allowing them to react quickly to trends or consumer conversations.

“Larger brands tend to have greater reach but face more constraints around compliance, consistency and approvals,” he explains. “The most effective large brands now borrow from challenger behaviour, testing frequently and backing content that performs, rather than relying solely on pre-planned campaigns.”

At the same time, he says smaller brands can learn how to translate cultural momentum into sustained retail growth – but all should remember that TikTok rewards “usefulness, humour and relevance far more than polish”.

Many of the top-selling fmcg merchants on TikTok Shop are challenger brands rather than established names for exactly this reason, says Liu, pointing out that Graza adapted to the platform’s fast-paced purchase behaviour with “limited-run bundles and novelty products” to capture the constantly changing demand.

“Brands that perform well on TikTok Shop tend to design products specifically for that environment, focusing on limited runs and quick-turn SKUs that suit impulse-led behaviour, rather than trying to replicate a full online grocery shelf,” she adds.

“What brands can learn from each other, especially from challenger fmcg players, is that TikTok rewards commercial creativity as much as content creativity. It’s not just about how a product is marketed, but whether the product itself is built for social-first discovery and impulse purchase.”

‘Volume, variety and velocity’

Unsurprisingly for a platform like TikTok, which prides itself on rapid, viral content hits, the market is changing quickly, and fmcg brands will have to keep up.

The HFSS advertising regulations that came into force on 5 January (see box, left) are expected to accelerate the shift away from product-first content and towards entertainment-led brand building. For brands, the most interesting question is how they will respond.

“We’re likely to see more creativity in the way product stories are told without relying on overt promotional campaigns,” says Liu. “HFSS doesn’t remove the opportunity, but it does raise the bar on how smart brands need to be.”

As feeds become increasingly saturated, audiences are gravitating toward brands that focus on storytelling, continuity and genuine connection. That means treating TikTok as a two-way cultural channel: looking at how brands can naturally fit into everyday life and reflect real consumer behaviour, rather than approaching the platform as a space for traditional, ad-style broadcasting.

The common thread among those getting it right is a willingness to let creators lead, measuring success through sales uplift and cultural relevance rather than vanity metrics.

“The biggest lesson is to stop thinking in campaigns. TikTok rewards volume, variety and velocity,” East says. “In the UK, beauty retailers are setting the pace. TikTok has effectively become the new shop floor for cosmetics. Everyone can learn from beauty, which has turned TikTok into a £30bn discovery engine by leaning into education, creator credibility and community-led trends.”

TikTok data also suggests a move toward longer-term content is likely, with episodic formats and more enduring creator collaborations outperforming one-off posts by building anticipation, community and a reason to return.

Out-of-category brand collaborations will also earn attention, while the evolution of creators into storytellers will drive even deeper partnerships. At the same time, brands are increasing IRL investment in cultural tie-ins and community experiences for creators to further amplify on the platform.

Although social commerce will continue to mature as audiences respond to the dopamine hit of one-click purchasing, influence on store sales is expected to remain the primary value driver.

Gagliese puts it most succinctly: “For grocery and fmcg brands, TikTok is no longer experimental – it’s a core channel that shapes how shoppers discover food and drink in the UK market.”

At the same time, the creative bar has been raised. Brands that develop consistent, always-on content strategies that prioritise entertainment, consistency and creator-led storytelling won’t just do well – they’ll stand out.