Fictional movie characters are chasing 'authenticity' on TikTok to get your attention

Smoke fills the screen as Skye Riley marches powerfully through a room full of figures silhouetted in white. 

The video was posted last month to the Skye Riley Nation TikTok, a page dedicated to someone who appears to be a massive pop star, with content similar to what you'd see on the TikToks of Taylor Swift or Canadian talent Tate McRae.

Except there's one stark difference: Skye Riley isn't real. She's the fictional protagonist from Paramount's recent hit horror film Smile 2, played by Naomi Scott. 

Experts say Riley's profile is such an effective marketing campaign because its realistic appearance can attract new audiences, while also serving as something that is shareable and engaging for people who are in on the secret. 

The authenticity of the videos on Riley's page is what stands out to Aleena Mazhar Kuzma, senior vice-president and managing director at Fuse Create, a Toronto-based advertising agency.

She said the marketers are "capturing attention" of users by creating something that resembles a video someone would engage with organically on their feed. When users visit Skye Riley's profile, they can click a link that takes them to a website promoting Riley's music from the movie — which is being marketed as an album — and other Paramount products.

And if the video's comments are any indication, some users genuinely don't know that Riley is not a real person. "The way I was confused with this until googling" reads one. This speaks to the organic way some users are coming across the video.

The marketing for Smile 2 is an attempt to live up to the savvy strategy for the original Smile, a film about about a therapist tormented by increasingly terrifying visions. You may recall back in 2022 when the first Smile came out, actors sporting creepy smiles attended major public events like MLB and NFL games. That campaign went viral, spurring the creation of dozens of articles and online reaction everywhere. 

Kuzma says this kind of marketing resonates because it's "disruptive."  

"It becomes almost like a sort of folklore," according to retail analyst Bruce Winder. 

This idea of creating folklore is not unchartered territory. Widely considered to be one of the greatest horror movies ever, The Blair Witch Project's entire marketing scheme was based on the idea that its actors were real people and that the film itself was a documentary.

Originally made on a budget of $30,000 US, the film went on to gross nearly $250 million worldwide after its release.

Even this year's horror standout Longlegs played on the idea of realism by publishing a cryptic letter in the Seattle Times, similar to something the Zodiac Killer may have written, and deploying other creepily realistic assets across the internet.  

The strategy of blurring what's real and fake also worked for Smile. The first film, which was released shortly after the viral stunt, grossed $216 million US worldwide against a budget of $17 million.