With a U.S. Ban Looming, TikTok Portrays Itself as a Force for Good

The popular video app, which could be banned in the United States next month if it is not sold to a non-Chinese owner, is portraying itself as a savior of Americans and a champion of small businesses in a new campaign.

In an emotional advertisement running on Facebook and Instagram over the past month, a young woman, Katie, talks about being diagnosed with an illness that resulted in kidney failure at age 19. But she was able to find a transplant match “because a stranger was scrolling on TikTok.”

Thanks to that stranger’s kidney, she continued, she was here today. “For some people, having TikTok has literally been life saving,” the company wrote in a caption punctuated by a tearful smiling emoji.

The messages are part of a new ad blitz from TikTok, the popular social media app owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance. The campaign frames TikTok as a savior of Americans and a champion of small businesses as the app hurtles toward an April 5 deadline to sell the company to a non-Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States. President Trump, who paused a federal law demanding TikTok’s sale because of national security concerns related to its ties to China, has said he will give the app more time for a deal if needed.

But TikTok does not appear to be taking any chances.

In the past couple of months, the company has wallpapered Washington in marketing; bought wraparound ads in the print editions of The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times; and poured money into national commercials. (Continuing the theme of saving lives, TikTok’s ads have also featured a creator who sells a product that helps with administering CPR.)

TikTok is scrambling to right itself after the Supreme Court in January unanimously backed the law that effectively bans the app, and the platform went dark in the United States for around 12 hours. TikTok, which spent about $5 million on advertising time for commercials in February and March last year when Congress was first debating the ban, has already spent more than $7 million in the same months this year, according to estimates from AdImpact, a media tracking firm.