In April, Marc Anthony True Professional started to notice some out-of-the-norm sales data from stores like Walmart and Target.

Sales of a certain product in its line of "Strictly Curls" products, which promises to define curls and help with shine and humidity control, were seeing a "pretty dramatic increase," said Kimberly Konstant, vice president of marketing and innovation for Ontario, Canada-based MAV Beauty Brands, the umbrella company that includes Marc Anthony. The brand started doing some detective work, she said.

Seemingly overnight in mid-April, the brand's curl defining lotion had become a meme of sorts on TikTok, the popular social app that lets you share short videos that play on loop. Users, primarily young women, would show themselves buying the product, showing off the yellow bottle like they were starring in a shampoo commercial and applying it to show off the "after" results. They captioned the videos with messages like "beachy waves for $6!! I think yes" or "Y'all this stuff works miracles."

By early June, there were more than four million video views with the hashtag "#strictlycurls." MAV says it saw a 60% increase on Marc Anthony True Professional's "Strictly Curls Curl Defining Lotion" and says it saw "significant increases" on other Strictly Curls products.

It's the kind of lightning in a bottle virality that marketers dream of. And the company whose products were catapulted to beauty fame insists it didn't have anything to do with it.

"This is 100% organic, and it's a really nice, pleasant surprise," Konstant said.

It also speaks to the promise of TikTok, which is becoming the app du jour for Gen-Z, and, therefore, everyone who wants to market to them. It was the third-most downloaded app in the U.S. in the first quarter of this year, behind Facebook Messenger and a game called "Color Bump 3D."

Users speak of the delightfulness and addictiveness of using TikTok, and brands who learn how to speak that language have a chance of being swept up in the attention of a demographic that hates advertising more than anyone else.

But it's still early days for TikTok. The app's advertising business in the U.S. is still nascent, partly because it can't yet give marketers the same kind of precision and tools they get with some of the more mature social apps like YouTube and Instagram.

There's also the point of brand safety. The app has had issues with users posting pornography and harassment in other parts of the world, which has caused hesitation with some advertisers. (TikTok says it has policies and protective measures in place to reduce misuse and enforce its community guidelines, but says it's a "complex, industry-wide challenge" and that it's always refining its protective measures.)

The company plans to court advertisers and brands later this month at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity for the first time. TikTok will have a mainstage presentation at the festival with two of its top creators and will be leading other roundtable discussions, signaling to the industry that it's ready to step into the big leagues.

In the meantime, cases like those from Marc Anthony and Chipotle, which tried out a sponsored hashtag challenge earlier this year, show there may be value for brands who can weigh in on TikTok in a natural-feeling way.

A TikTok spokeswoman said the company's current priority is creating a "great app experience" for its users, while always exploring opportunities to create value for "both our community and our brand partners."

"Brands see TikTok as platform to reach and engage with a broader audience," she said. "At its core, TikTok is a platform for creative, fun, and positive experiences -- the brands we see having the most success are those that embrace the creativity and authenticity of the TikTok community."

In MAV Beauty Brands' case, Konstant said the discovery of its product on TikTok has prompted discussions of how the brand might work on the platform in the future.

"You try to strategize and create, dare I say manufacture, something viral," she said. Then, sometimes things like this just land in your lap.