In this episode of Brand2Brand, Thomas and Veronica explore the unique business opportunities lurking in the most unlikely of channels. OnlyFans and TikTok are just two of the popular platforms showcasing user-generated content that are constantly competing for your audience’s attention. Beyond offering viable marketing opportunities, brands can stand to learn lessons around the power of creating exclusive content, generating buzz, and understanding algorithms to hyper-target their consumer base.&nbsp;

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<span style="color: #444444;">TRANSCRIPTION FROM AUDIO PODCAST:</span>

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You're listening to Brand2Brand. A B2B marketing show that’s safe enough for work but not safe enough to be on the radio. With your host, Thomas Stirling.

Hey everybody. Today on the show we're talking trends and social media giants. We'll take a look at platforms like OnlyFans and TikTok to discuss the opportunities emerging channels mean for your brand. Alright, let's kick things off. Here we are back again in the studio. And can you believe that we're getting close to the end of season one, Veronica?

It really has and we only have a few episodes left.

Yeah, season one is coming to a close, season two. Maybe we'll just go right to season three. Keep the people on their toes!

Keep them guessing, skip a season, make a gap year!&nbsp;

We should have started at 10 and did a tenant podcast or we just go backwards in time.&nbsp;

Maybe we'll pull a Netflix and we'll drop the whole season at once. No, we're not gonna do that. It's really a lot of work though.

Yeah, you're right. Wait, that's not fun for us.&nbsp;

We love our listeners, but not that much.

We're here today to talk about some fringe platforms that started out as fringe platforms going up against major players in the space that have kind of evolved to these huge, I'd say, social media juggernauts. Fun word. Both have also been at the center of a lot of controversy and conversation over the past year and both have seen a lot of growth during the pandemic. So I feel like we couldn't do a whole season of Brand2Brand without talking about OnlyFans and TikTok.

And the two of those on a headline is provocative, honestly.&nbsp;

It is. Whoever's listening, you're listening right now, so we got ya!

It's clickbait. But it's an important, important big picture conversation for all brands that are trying to navigate an equally growing, complex social media environment and marketing landscape. Gone are the days where you see business cards with Facebook and Twitter, gross pixelated logos on the cards - people don't do that anymore. It's creepy to say "follow me on Facebook." And these new brands are leveraging and changing the game for content creators. So with that, let's get into it. OnlyFans or TikTok. No judgment either way. Which brand do you want to choose?

I'm gonna take TikTok. So I'm gonna let you swim through OnlyFans. Spoiler alert, Tom had to do a lot of research and I just had to watch him suffer through.

I thought I was going to take TikTok, so I guess the research that I did is not going to be relevant. And I should say full disclosure, part of my intent to stay married, I have not been on the OnlyFans platform, but in part of my research, I've talked to a lot of people that have.&nbsp;

Part of my intent to go to Heaven. I haven't either.

You can find Hell on TikTok as well.&nbsp;

You can find Hell anywhere. I'm taking TikTok. I have been so blown away, I think at first - and if anyone listened to the last episode about influencer marketing - we've uncovered that Veronica is an early stage curmudgeon.

I thought we uncovered we're both influencers.

That too. So I think when TikTok first started gaining popularity, I didn't really get it. It was a lot of people doing dances, and it is a music forward platform. There are a lot of trends that are aligned with songs, which I guess makes sense because it became available worldwide started by a company in China that actually still owns the rights to the underlying algorithms of the technology. It became worldwide available in 2018 after merging with a company called Musical.ly, (I would assume it's pronounced "musically"), so I think a lot of people when they think TikTok, since it's such a visual medium, they don't think about audio trends.

Oh, God, we're just gonna keep on chugging along.

I just had to because they are both visual platforms. I think in one way, right? The OnlyFans route content contributors, content creators are getting paid for their content. Nobody's getting paid for their TikTok dance moves. They are in the form of the advertising and some of the other things that they can do on the platform, how they're being leveraged, but it's a very, very interesting thing. You talk about these people that spend all of this time working on these TikTok competitions, these dance move competitions. And they have these houses, people that all live together, whether it's Instagram or TikTok that are all working together kind of collaboratively.

Yeah, you don't hear about a lot of OnlyFans houses because I think those are illegal.

Only fans started in 2016. I think what's interesting about this platform is, it's kind of been just a ghost under the radar, really, until 2020. Nobody really knew about it, or it was, as we discussed before, kind of this fringe social network. And with the pandemic, a lot of these social channels have just been exploding. I can talk to you about my data here, you can tell me yours. But specifically in terms of numbers of creators, it's quintupled from 2019 to 2020, and the total number of "paid fans" - and we'll get into how you get paid on OnlyFans - went up 500%. So just absolute explosion in terms of adoption.

I mean, TikTok, very similar, I think the pandemic changed that as well, you had a lot more people at home. OnlyFans, because users got paid for their content, had a source of income by immediately turning to this platform. And for those of you, we are dancing around the topic of OnlyFans, if you know what OnlyFans is these jokes are hitting, if they're not hitting you might not know it. OnlyFans is a platform where users are able to sell exclusive access to content. However, based on whoever started this platform, and kind of where it's evolved, they do allow people to sell, we will say "not safe for work" photos, nude photos, videos, and it allows people to access that exclusive content.

They work really hard at OnlyFans to sell the concept that they are all about solving an important problem. Oh, if I go to OnlyFans right now, and I'm there but I'm not logging in, don't worry, I don't want to get in trouble here. "Sign up to support your favorite creators." Very nice concept because so many people are putting so much great stuff out online and getting nothing for it. It's not like you can log on and post one picture like OnlyFans and boom, you're making money.

And it's interesting, because both of these platforms faced in some way some kind of a, I guess you could call it censorship in a way, but a ban. TikTok's was in 2020 where our former president basically said he was worried that there was some fear that China would be able to track and data mine US citizens through TikTok, which TikTok responded basically saying they would never provide user data to the Chinese government. And nor they ever would if they were actually asked, that was a huge thing. Remember, there was like a doomsday date, where Trump was like, "We're gonna shut it down, we're gonna shut it down, we're gonna shut down TikTok." Then OnlyFans, similar controversy, they came out and were like, "We're gonna get rid of all explicit content." And there are a lot of like pro sex-worker people who are saying, "Hey, if people want to go on and do this, that's their God-given right to do it."&nbsp;

But I think to finish your point there, though, I'm surprised that Donald Trump isn't on both of these platforms. To be honest with you, and maybe he is and I just haven't found the page yet because I haven't signed in. I mean, Donald, I'm talking to you - You could be on these networks and earning a lot of great cash.

I would just be curious to see how he would price his own content.

He would learn how to leverage these. If there's one thing the guy knows it's how to use social media. You may not like what he has to say, you may like what he has to say that's up to you. But he knows how to use it and leverage social media and commands it at his age.

He definitely did. It's surprising, until he got banned. Speaking of bans, going back to the topic of bans, it was interesting that OnlyFans was saying as a company, they were going to make a decision to ban explicit content. There was an uproar. There was an uproar when Trump said he was going to ban TikTok. Both of these entities, call Donald Trump an "entity," had a doomsday date that this was going to happen. And in both cases, it didn't happen. It reversed. But there was so much conversation and controversy around those decisions. You have to wonder how popular is a platform if the President of the United States is saying "We want to ban this," like that's some serious clout. So I wonder for how many people OnlyFans wasn't even on their radar until they then started seeing the trending news of it going away? And how much publicity those platforms garnered from that.

100% and I think if we think about OnlyFans and its inception, has fought really hard not to have a lot of publicity, which is fascinating. And when we think about how they present their brand, they present their brand values, and they talk about this concept of putting money in the hands of the these creators, and this sort of noble quest associated. And they've got people like chefs and models on the platform, you've got celebrities like Cardi B, then you've got adult stars. They can't really hide from this explicit content. And when you think about this potential ban that was going to happen and go into effect at the beginning of November, it would be in banning pretty much the vast majority of the content that's on the platform.

Yeah and people are relying on this as a source of income.

They are and speaking back to these founders. It was actually started by a family. It's a nice family story.

OnlyFams. Tim Stokely, Guy Stokely, who is so infamous and yet, you can't really find photos of him online. Very interesting guy, very private guy, previously in banking, and then Thomas Stokely. So two brothers and a dad, and a silent partner, Leonid Radvinsky, who formally started myfreecams.com. So again, if the origin story involves a family trio, two of three that were in porn and a financial backer, OnlyFans can't hide from its heritage. That said, you are finding content creators that are making millions of dollars on the platform. And some of them aren't doing anything explicit at all. And some brands are actually using it, believe it or not, not that I'm advocating for that right now for your brand, but leveraging it to get out there and create community. It is all based around this concept of a subscription model. Now, if it's porn, that's one thing, right? But you pay a content creator a subscription to have access to their channel, and by subscribing you have access to all the content that they produce. Whereas on TikTok, it's all in a feed. No one's getting compensated for any of that work that they're doing any of that content that they're creating. So it's a radically, radically different model, and then you have access to those contributors. You can pay them directly for things, you can tip them directly for things.

It's fascinating. I had no idea brands were even on there in the slightest.

I think it's still got a really dark stigma, but it's worth a review. And it's worth a discussion. Because OnlyFans is not going to be the only platform that comes out that starts thinking about, "How can we pay content creators dollars? Hmm." And they may not be the best at doing it, three guys and some other people in a back room that are all from porn. They may not be the people to solve this problem, but it's a problem worth solving. Right? How do we protect intellectual property we've talked about before on the show, how do we give money to the creators? You're a meme maker right?&nbsp;

You are right. And it's so easy for people, you're right. I want to protect my IP. I should start making my memes NFTs, what the hell am I doing?

My OnlyFans would be like the three people in my meme group. So it's great. Shout out! I think TikTok being such user-generated content, by the people for the people. There's less of a space for that. But you are still seeing how brands are figuring out how to leverage TikTok. The NBA - 12 million followers - launched a campaign aimed to enhance global awareness. With young people of the NBA, which is interesting. Chipotle launched a "boorito" campaign, where they encourage users to dress up in costumes and post stuff. And it had over 4 billion views when they first launched this. So brands are definitely figuring out there's a space for them. But it's interesting, it is such a Gen Z fueled medium, where you're allowing these content creators to really fully be themselves and be authentic.

100% but even more than that, the nice thing about the algorithms behind TikTok is they're incredibly democratizing. Your first view as you scroll is not just simply things that you follow, it's things that are for you. So if you know someone that wants to launch a cooking vlog, or some sort of new career, and they want to showcase self help videos online or really anything and everything, business tips, etc. You can put it out there, power it with the right hashtags, and boom, you're in front of an audience that you would have never had access to. I think a lot of people are missing that they just think it's another way to do the same thing, another take on Instagram Reels or some other video forward platform, but it's not.

ONLYFANS VS. TIKTOK: Find Your Channel