Marketing in limbo: the long shadow of TikTok’s turbulence

For 14 hours on January 19, 2025, TikTok disappeared from the U.S., plunging marketers into a state of collective panic. The app, once synchronized with teenage dance crazes and meme culture, had become a cultural juggernaut — and for many brands, a hard to replace lifeline.

“It was a shell shock to the system,” said Jennifer Kohl, chief media officer at VML, the ad agency that had clients suddenly grappling with a possibility they’d only entertained in hypotheticals: life without TikTok.

Six years of political theatrics had turned the app into a lightning rod branded a national security threat and dragged repeatedly to the brink of extinction in the U.S. But in a twist that might as well as come from TikTok’s own algorithm, President Donald Trump stepped in, reviving the app’s chances with a 75-day lifeline to resolve its future.

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