About Annie Arsane, Head of Business Marketing, Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan – TikTok

Annie spent most of her 17-year career honing her brand building skills at Procter and Gamble. She spent over a decade specializing in Insights and Analytics before she moved to Brand Management where she led the Pantene business in the MENA region.

Annie joined TikTok at the beginning of 2021. She established the Platform Strategy team, responsible for building the TikTok for Business Brand across METAP and then moved on to leading the Business Marketing organization.

When she isn’t working, Annie spends time with her daughters, Ella and Carlie, who finally think she is cool since she joined TikTok. She is an avid reader but often finds herself quoting the books she reads, which her colleagues politely tolerate.

About her thoughts for the industry

While marketing continues to reinvent itself over the years, we are seeing a refreshing return to entertainment. After years of six second ads that focus on interrupting consumers, leading them to spend their money on ad blockers and premium subscriptions, we are finally going back to entertaining them with our marketing messages. 

The future of marketing is entertainment. We have already seen this in 2022 and I expect it to continue into 2023 and beyond.

As marketers, we came to the realization that the issue is not that consumers have less time, it’s that they have more choice. As such, they are intentional about where they spend their time. In fact, they spend half of their ownable time (ie time excluding work and sleep) on digital entertainment. So why don’t we just entertain them?

Working at TikTok has reminded me of the power of marketing and creativity when they entertain. People come to TikTok to be entertained, and when brands leverage our dedicated creative tools and our ecosystem of creators, they also entertain consumers. This has resulted in sales increase and often in products going out-of-stock. Look up #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt to learn more about that.

I expect this to find its way into the broader ecommerce ecosystem also, another area in which marketing will re-invent itself soon: shoppertainment. According to BCG’s Future of Commerce report, as technology provides ever more choices and control, consumer needs are shifting from more functional needs, such as value and convenience, towards more emotional needs, such as treating oneself or knowing the story behind the brand. This represents a huge opportunity for marketers willing to embrace entertainment-first shopping that appeals to the emotional needs of consumers to sustain the purchasing journey.