British R&B singer Mabel has placed TikTok at the centre of the marketing for her single, ‘Mad Love’.

The first part was making a 15-second clip of the track available on the short-form videosharing platform ahead of its full release. Users were able to add the track to their own videos.

This was followed up by the creation of the #MadLoveTrain challenge. “Join Mabel and show us your #MadLoveTrain, grab your friends a [sic] jump in for a hug!” is how TikTok lists it. What that involves is lots of people piling on top of each other (or piling things on top of each other) to show the ostentatious ways in which they can “hug” friends.

“We are always looking for original and innovative ways to connect Mabel with her existing and potential new fans around the world and TikTok is the perfect platform to do that,” said Fiona McAuley, senior digital marketing manager at Polydor Records in a press statement. “Their community is passionate about music and creativity and we can’t wait to see the content they will produce as part of the #MadLoveTrain challenge.”

What is interesting here is a clip of the track being released first and it being precision cut to fit the parameters of a platform – allowing it to be seeded across that community with ease and not having to be crowbarred into it.

At the time of writing, there were several hundred posts associated with the #MadLoveTrain hashtag and 2.9m cumulative views of the videos.

This is not her only foray into using different video formats in her marketing. Back in 2016, Mabel was commissioned by the Tate to create a video project to mark the opening of the new Tate Modern building in London. Then in May this year, YouTube Music named her as its first UK-based Artist On The Rise which will see her heavily promoted on the service.