News and Insights

Last month, Sabrina Bahsoon, aka Tube Girl, shot a handful of TikToks for Boss at Milan fashion week. And one blew the rest out of the water. It was a behind-the-scenes video that captured Bahsoon filming herself dancing in her now famous #tubegirl style. It garnered 145M views, more than twice that of the front-of-camera version she appeared in with Dixie D’Amelio.

A mystery confounded social media in August 2023 when the probiotics brand, Seed, posted a short video of Gwyneth Paltrow to its TikTok account. “So… this is a twenty-four strain probiotic. Not the kind you find in yogurt and stuff like that,” she began, before being interrupted by a loud, long whooshing sound. “Moses is steaming some milk," she calmly explained and then finished. “It’s so good for bloating and regularity.”

For something to be considered a part of popular culture, it needs to have mass appeal to a broad audience. That’s a rarity these days given the ocean of content available to us, at any time. There are more than 5 million podcasts. More than 800,000 TV programs across streaming services. There are roughly 100 million songs. And there have been at least 800 million videos uploaded to YouTube.

This past summer, big and small brands jumped on a TikTok trend. They used a clip of a seventh grader singing "Where's My Dad" from Finding Nemo JR. The problem is that the music wasn’t made available in TikTok’s Commercial Music Library. It should have been licensed from Music Theatre International on behalf of Disney-Pixar. Using it without permission could put any brand in legal hot water at any time.