Back in August, we wrote about TikTok‘s then-newly-launched Spotlight feature, a suite of tools that was designed for film and TV studios to tap into its user base and encourage sales of things like tickets and streaming service subscriptions. It tested elements of Spotlight with Dune: Part Two and House of the Dragon, but now, thanks to Sony‘s third Venom film, The Last Dance, we have a concrete example of Spotlight in action–and it just set a new record for TikTok.
To promote The Last Dance, Sony’s marketing team decided to run with Marvel fans’ appetite for easter eggs. It set up a Spotlight campaign where people who commented specific words on videos posted by the official @venommovie account would unlock unique animations. Comment “Venom,” for example, and a little animated Venom head would pop up in the center of the app screen with one of his and beloved host Eddie Brock’s core catchphrases: “We are Venom.”
There were eight easter eggs in total, and hints for them were scattered through @venommovie’s posts, leading viewers on a scavenger hunt to get all of them to unlock. There wasn’t any final reward for figuring out the full set, but judging by the sheer amount of engagement this promotion generated, Marvel fans are happy to do the work just to say they caught ’em all.
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And they really did the work. On one single 13-second video posted Oct. 26 (two days after the promotion launched), fans left over 20.5 million comments, setting TikTok’s new platform-wide record for the most comments on a single video.
That record was previously held by Minecraft content creator meqs, who set it at 10.9 million comments in 2021. Returning to that video of his now, it’s shot up to nearly 12 million comments, with thousands of new ones pouring in from people who say they want to help him beat Venom’s number. (Maybe Ironmouse vs Kai Cenat isn’t the only record-setting duke-it-out on the internet right now…)
@meqs comment for a cookie 🍪 #minecraft #mcシ #comment #fyp ♬ original sound – Minecraft Meqs
The easter egg hunt also pushed the @venommovie account up from 141,000 followers to over 4.5 million. And, on top of that, fans went from The Last Dance promo videos straight to its previous videos, jumping the account’s average per-video view count to 11 million.
A TikTok spokesperson points out how Sony’s campaign prompted organic fan engagement, too, with creators like @brandonspam (9.3 million followers) making videos chronicling their hunt for all eight animations. His video alone got more than 4.8 million views and 17,000+ comments.
So, what does all this boil down to? TikTok has been pushing hard for ad dollars from studios, debuting Spotlight and releasing a study that shows how cinephilic its users are. Its Head of Industry, Entertainment, Edvin Dapcevic, recently told The Hollywood Reporter that advertising films and TV shows on TikTok “drives affinity and resonance for the entertainment users on our community to want to go and consume that content in real time.”
We don’t have data on how many TikTok users might have seen Sony’s campaign and bought tickets to The Last Dance. But we do know the film is No. 1 at the box office for the second week in a row and has made $317 million so far, putting Sony in profit. It’s clear TikTok’s Spotlight tool could be a much-needed symbiotic link between studios and online fandom, and we’ll be keeping an eye on what other studios do with it for future campaigns.
