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TikTok creator Jake Schroeder tries to post at least two ballads a day.
They’re entirely original songs, usually performed by the singer-songwriter as he plays piano, and they can be about anything from the quadratic formula to political violence. There’s almost no way to predict what subject he will take on in musical form next—unless you’re a brand partner.
Schroeder has been posting on TikTok since he was in high school, but he only began “taking it seriously” this May, he told Marketing Brew. The recent University of Chicago grad wanted to be more creative and had begun using a journaling technique called “morning pages,” a method from author Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way that requires a stream-of-consciousness, 30-minute writing practice every day. This practice led to what he calls his “dumb songs” written as musical comedy, which he posted to TikTok. He now has more than 360,000 followers.
After Schroeder’s songs began going viral, brands started reaching out to commission their own ballads, drawn to his platform-specific humor and his ability to stand out on the app without the typical barriers around copyrighted music trends.
In just three months, he’s completed around 60 wide-ranging brand deals, including work with AI writing assistant Grammarly, deodorant brand Degree, and a Swedish music library brand called Epidemic Sound. And he’s only seeking to do more. The topics Schroeder features in his songs are wide-ranging and often random-seeming, which he sees as an asset in creating funny and feel-good posts about just about anything.
“Things that are as simple as the Caesar salad can be exciting and fun,” Schroeder said. “Working with [so many brands]...sort of represents what I’m trying to say in my other songs too, which is like, life can be enjoyed.”
Trending audio
Schroeder said he doesn’t seek out brand partnerships so much as they have come to him, and brands of all kinds have come calling. The first brand to approach him was personal hygiene company Good Wipes, he told us. The second? Luxury designer brand Jimmy Choo.
“Gag of the world,” Schroeder said of the dichotomous duo. “If I can do butt wipes and Jimmy Choo…what’s in between that?”
Schroeder credits the brand outreach to his decision to make a series of ballads featuring brands that he already loved, including Diet Coke and Costco; those posts, he said, led to more brand attention. (He didn’t sing about those brands because he thought it would attract sponsorships, he told us, instead choosing them simply because he thought they were funny to sing about.) As he continued recording his songs, Schroeder recognized that his particular approach could be brand-safe while still offering a comedic sensibility that so many social media managers chase.
“Comedy could be really good for brands, but a lot of people are either like, really hypersexual or kind of take the comedy over the top in a way that’s inaccessible,” Schroeder said. “I am really conscious about what is brand-safe in my content.”
Maggie Khoury, social media manager at Grammarly, told Marketing Brew that Schroeder’s Diet Coke ballad helped pique her interest, and she bookmarked him as a creator to watch for potential future collaborations. When it came time to work on Grammarly’s back-to-school campaign, she said she reached out to compare Schroeder’s audience demographics to the campaign’s target college-aged audience, finding that there was a great deal of overlap.
“He’s not just a great creator who’s really taking off. He is so specifically himself,” Khoury said. “We wanted to basically say, ‘You’re the expert of your audience and this corner of the internet that you’ve carved out for yourself.’”
Khoury said that she wanted to give Schroeder as much creative liberty as possible in order to not “dilute” his work with “brand brain.” The resulting post riffs on the use of the word “period” as both a punctuation mark and a slang term, and it nabbed more than 100,000 views.
This hands-off approach Grammarly took isn’t always what brands are comfortable with, though, which Schroeder said can sometimes be detrimental to engagement.
“The ones that don’t perform well are the really rigid ones,” he said.
For brands looking to get in on trends on TikTok, singer-songwriters like Schroeder can offer up a unique opportunity. Instead of jumping on a trending audio, which can be complicated by copyright concerns, a brand can essentially create its own audio-based piece of internet culture.
“Partnering with Jake gave Degree a unique opportunity to lean into a musically driven platform while also making the creative execution feel distinct, ownable, and fun to watch,” Christopher Symmes, head of marketing at Degree US, said in an email. “Honestly, his song has been stuck in my head for weeks now, so he’s definitely doing it right!”
Keep it cute
As brand requests continue to roll in, Schroeder said he isn’t agreeing to every single one. He describes his approach to selecting partnerships as a way to build his universe, and he goes off a gut reaction of whether, ultimately, the brands feel “cute.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t also do his research. When a doorbell security brand (whose name he declined to share) approached him, Schroeder chose to look a little deeper into the company, which ultimately led to him turning down the partnership.
“I found that they give all of their data to ICE,” he said. “They offered me a really big, fancy, crazy deal, and I was like, hell no, because why would I support and raise the voice of this company that is doing evil things?”
Schroeder does often choose to weigh in on political subjects or current events in his non-branded ballads, which he said can affect how his brand partnerships operate; sometimes, he told us, existing brand partners request that he delay posting branded content to avoid being too close in proximity to hot-button topics. Still, Schroeder said he doesn’t plan to stop making this kind of content, and his commitment has opened up opportunities to work with organizations that align with his beliefs, like the New York Immigrant Coalition.
“I think it’s obviously so important to show my humanity beyond my thoughts on food, or my thoughts on TV shows, or my thoughts on countries in my songs, especially because I am putting out something every day,” he said. “I think it’d be strange if I didn’t share my opinions on this dying world around us. But it’s dope when a brand is like, we’ll pay you to do this.”