TikTok turns viral "sea shanty" meme into a TV spot

While TikTok has departed from the region, that hasn't stopped the first viral trend of 2021 from reaching Hongkongers' ears — and everyone else's, for that matter.

At the end of last year, Scottish postman Nathan Evans posted a TikTok video of himself singing The Wellerman, a whaling song that originated from New Zealand. In a few short weeks, this sea shanty picked up over 7 million views, with countless others "remixing" and laying harmonies, vocals, and more on top of the original video with the app's "Duets" feature — even Phantom of the Opera composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber felt compelled to make a contribution.

The video and the remixes that followed exploded on TikTok and have since soared to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and everywhere else the #SeaShanty earworm could live and flourish. If "The Wellerman" isn't stuck in your head yet, it will be.

It's not clear exactly why this meme picked up steam when and how it did, but TikTok and VaynerMedia have capitalised on the moment with a new TV spot for the original singer's own market in the UK to celebrate TikTok's community of creators and anoint the platform as the place where the virality all began.

"Modern marketing needs to move at the speed of culture to be truly relevant, from trend to TV in this case, and that speed has enabled us to celebrate a truly magical moment that started on TikTok and has captured the UK’s imagination,” said James Rothwell, head of marketing in Europe for TikTok.

"This epitomises the new marketing model — built on cultural relevance: listen, learn and understand how consumers are really engaging with your brand in real life, then scale quick and scale big,” said Sarah Baumann, managing director for VaynerMedia London.

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