TikTok’s Global Marketing Head Fired After ByteDance Founder Loses Patience With “Repeated Cheap Stunt Marketing”
The New York Post reported on Wednesday that Nick Tran, TikTok’s Global Head of Marketing, had been abruptly ousted after blindsiding top management with a series of “increasingly bizarre campaigns.” A spokesperson for TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based internet giant ByteDance, confirmed Tran’s leave on Wednesday without providing further details.
Pandaily has learned from confidential sources at ByteDance that Nick Tran’s ouster might have been prompted by a campaign dubbed “TikTok Kitchen” that he launched in late December, 2021, which has clearly got on the nerves of top executives including firm founder Zhang Yiming himself.
According to the widespread media coverage about the initiative at that time, TikTok was planning to partner with Virtual Dining Concepts and open 300 ghost kitchens across the United States starting in March 2022, which would prepare meals based on the most popular recipes trending on TikTok. The company also made it clear in the press release that “TikTok Kitchen” was more of a marketing effort to bring the platform’s popular food to fans, instead of the company’s official venturing into the restaurant business.
Not long after the “TikTok Kitchen” campaign, however, Zhang Yiming expressed his frustration in a group chat on ByteDance’s workplace platform Lark with some of the company’s top executives including TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew and ByteDance’s CEO Liang Rubo, writing:
“I read about the campaign in media reports, and have been asked by friends what it was all about. I am upset…This isn’t the first time that they [the marketing team] have done this. I don’t understand why we have to do this cheap stunt marketing over and over again. They would become negative campaigns and jokes that hurt our brand and damage our business. Only those narcissistic but incompetent companies would do such marketing, pretending to be innovative – and we’re getting there. This is completely contrary to our principle of being ‘user-centered, business-oriented, honest and natural to the public’.”
Although Zhang Yiming stepped down as ByteDance’s CEO in November 2021, and no longer holds any titles in the management board, he continues to participate in the company’s high-level executive meetings, and has a major role in supervoting shares that gives him control over the company and its board of directors, according to The Information.
As suggested by Zhang’s comment, “TikTok Kitchen” is not the first “cheap stunt marketing” to spark concern among the company’s top executives.
Since joining TikTok in April 2020, Nick Tran has led a series of high-profile campaigns including an initiative on a creator-led NFT collection and a pilot program dubbed “TikTok Resumes,” which sets TikTok as a channel for recruitment by encouraging users to find jobs with short-video resumes. He was among Forbes‘ “World’s Most Influential CMOs (Chief Marketing Officer)” in 2021 for “helping TikTok grow its already rapidly growing user base,” which reached 1 billion active monthly users in September, 2021.
It is unclear how or whether “TikTok Kitchen” will proceed after Nick Tran’s leave. A source familiar with the issue told Pandaily that there remains some controversy surrounding the project, but so far there are no signs to suggest it will be called off.
UPDATE on Friday: Following Nick Tran’s abrupt departure, many of the marketing initiatives he led have been paused, sources told Pandaily.