The bot comment marketing trend brands are quietly using
Anaita points out a pattern where brands appear repeatedly in the comments of unrelated viral TikToks, with real and fake accounts asking about the same product to make it look organically popular. She flags this as an emerging, possibly unethical marketing strategy that founders should be aware of.
The lessons
Watch for brands seeding repeated product mentions in comment sections to manufacture social proof.
Fake or bot-driven comment engagement can make a product look more popular than it really is.
Transcript
Is definitely a marketing strategy going around that big brands are using. And I don't think people have caught onto it yet. Someone will make a TikTok video and they'll say like, they'll have a video of themselves with text on screen and they'll say something like, give me the most unhinged makeup tip or something like that. And in the comments, there is a brand that shows up a number of times, but from different people and it'll end up being the blue comment that gets clickable.
This is an example one, right? So I saw this video and she was asking about unhinged beauty hacks. And then I looked at the comments and people are starting to talk about which Hazel in the comments. And then I keep scrolling down and different people saying which Hazel, which Hazel, which Hazel and there's even more of them and it they seem so legit cause people are like, which which Hazel is good to buy or like which one should I get?
And some of them are real people and some of them are just user 9, 3, 4, 8, blah, blah, blah. I feel like this is a bot marketing strategy that big brands are using now.
