It seemed like a typical first day of school.
In January, Matthew Prince, a Taco Bell public relations executive who teaches at Chapman University in Southern California, was telling 80 students what to expect from his influencer marketing course as he guided them through the curriculum. projected on a screen at the front of the conference room.
This semester, he said, things would be a little different: If someone in the class could create a TikTok video that got a million views before him, the final would be cancelled.
His words caught the attention of Sylvie Bastardo, a 20-year-old sophomore who was sitting toward the back of the room. She took the iPhone out of her and started filming.
First he zoomed in on the screen. Beneath the words “TikTok Influencer Challenge,” it read: “First to reach viral status wins. (Me against the whole class). If you win, the final is cancelled.” After capturing this explanation of the challenge, she moved on to a classmate who had a surprised look on her face.
The next morning, Ms. Bastardo selected a song to use as the soundtrack for the six-second clip, a catchy tune about a bad hair day that had begun to gain traction on TikTok. Ms. Bastardo said she was a smart enough TikTok user to know that a trending piece of audio can help boost viewership.
After adding the song to what he had filmed in class, he posted the video along with a simple caption: “My teacher said if our class got a TikTok of 1 million likes, he would cancel the finals! Please I would like to!!!”
Getting to a million likes was technically not the task. In explaining his challenge, Mr. Prince had asked for a million views. In an interview, Ms. Bastardo said that it had been difficult to hear exactly what the professor was saying in the lecture room once she had issued the challenge. But she figured an influx of likes would attract the app’s algorithm and help get her video off the ground.
“It’s easier to get views that I like,” he said.
The view counter began to climb as comments came in from people cheering for her. There were also many detractors. “There were people commenting like, ‘Oh, I don’t like this, because you should have to take a final. I hope none of you are a doctor or a medical student,’” Bastardo said. But even the backlash helped his project, since TikTok’s algorithm feeds, at least in part, on comments.
One day after posting the video, Ms. Bastardo saw that she had achieved her goal.
“My mom told me, ‘You have to send him an email,’” she said.
But instead of immediately sending a note to her teacher, Ms. Bastardo took a nap, she said. When she woke up, she saw that Mr. Prince had already made a duet with her video, that is, he had recorded a new video that he had posted along with hers.
At the start of the next class, he brought her to the front of the lecture room and announced that the final was cancelled. Ms. Bastardo curtsied as the other students applauded.
Prince asked if anyone else had tried to make a viral video. No one raised their hand.
To date, Ms. Bastardo’s video has garnered over five million views. She also did a follow-up video about his success, a clip that itself has been viewed over a million times. “MVP,” Prince wrote in the comments.
Feedback on the challenge has been mostly positive, Prince said, aside from one detractor who appeared on a Facebook discussion group for social media teachers.
“A gentleman who had been in the education system for a long time was basically downplaying the role of influencers and this study,” said Prince, who is a member of the group. “‘So you’re asking for social media play instead of a shock test?'”
Mr. Prince, who is the director of marketing communications and public relations at Taco Bell, said he wanted his students to learn firsthand about the possibilities of social media.
“I was just trying to think of new ways to help support some of the teaching that I’m trying to deliver over the course of the semester,” he said. “Mostly, the idea of how democratized virality and influence are within social media, specifically TikTok, and that you really don’t have to be a celebrity to drive it.”
From Ms. Bastardo’s point of view, Mr. Prince had never really counted on missing the final. “He didn’t think anyone would do it or that it would be possible,” he said.
Mr. Prince, an adjunct professor at Chapman, isn’t the only pedagogue trying to incorporate social media into curricula. Duke University offers a course that teaches students how build their personal brands online. At Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business, Marina Cooley, an assistant professor in the marketing practice, set up a tik tok account for his class last semester.
He divided the 65 students into groups and tasked them with posting a TikTok that would account for 20 percent of their final grade. A video that got 25,000 views would be worth an A, the teacher and her students decided.
the first of the class video to make the grade they showed campus scenes edited together. She referred to Emory as “the Harvard of the South,” a sort of nickname that tends to irritate fans and detractors of the university alike.
An even more successful bid for virality passed the three million mark. In the video, 22-year-old senior Margaret Chang ranked the six major college majors that make for the worst daters as she lip-synced to an audio clip from the reality show “Dance Moms.” (“Finance bros” took first place.)
Ms. Chang said she was surprised when she realized the course would require her to create content for social media rather than just study it. “Especially since it was basically the equivalent of a final exam or final project in terms of grading,” she added.
Like the Ms. Bastardo clip, the Ms. Chang video was not slickly produced. Short and simple, he showed her wearing earmuffs and sunglasses as she introduced herself. “Audiences, especially my generation, Gen Z, I think we are very tired of the artifice of everything, like the embellishment of very curated media,” Ms. Chang said.
Despite her nerves about “being noticed by thousands of people on the Internet,” she said she was glad she participated.
“As someone who is on the internet, you really can’t escape influencer marketing, period,” continued Ms. Chang, who plans to study law. “I am interested in IP, business, corporate law. Maybe it will end up playing a role in my career.”
Ms Cooley said her marketing course had become known as “the TikTok class” on campus. This week, students will register for the next semester. The school is doubling class sizes.
