How TikTok's pushy watermark boosted its brand—and hurt Instagram – Fast Company

By Rob Walker4 minute ReadBranded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture.As a rule, no business wants to become a distribution tool for its greatest rival.But that’s what happened to Instagram early in its struggle to be more competitive with TikTok. Reels, its answer to TikTok, was regularly being used to repurpose videos that were not only made for TikTok, but actually included a TikTok “watermark,” consisting of a logo and user name. In effect, Instagram was promoting its competition.Instagram-parent Meta made moves to fix this problem: It announced that the company had “heard” that “content that is visibly recycled from other apps (i.e. contains logos or watermarks) makes the Reels experience less satisfying,” and was thus making rival-branded videos “less discoverable.”But the issue persisted and has again resurfaced, thanks to a Wall Street Journal report drawn partly from a recent, leaked internal document, “Creators x Reels State of the Union 2022.” This document noted that “nearly one-third of Reels videos are created on another platform, usually TikTok, and include a watermark or border identifying them as such,” according to The Journal. While Instagram’s algorithm “downranks” these clips, limiting their audience, recycled videos apparently…
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