Who is the best marketeer for your brand? They may not be the colleague with the marketing masters degree. They may not have 10+ years of experience. They may not be in your company, let alone your communications team. Your best marketer isn’t even employed by you.
Your customer base is bursting with potential to advocate for your brand. And UGC is the perfect tool with which to harness that potential. By welcoming the customer in as co-architect and marketer, you not only empower their brand loyalty, you make your job a whole lot easier…
As The Guardian says, “Advertising is failure. Ideally, a company offers a great product or service that its customers love, talk about, and sell to each other. It’s when that fails that you need to advertise.”
More and more brands are turning to UGC to add zest to their marketing campaigns, build meaningful relationships, and create relatable content that customers love. And Covid-19 only accelerated this: the connection and entertainment that UGC offers made it uniquely popular during lockdowns, with 78% of our customers spending more time online.
The Drum agrees: “Brands have been pushed to find alternative solutions to complex studio setups, huge budgets and high production value – all of the traditional expectations for an impactful advertising campaign. A strategy that’s found success is the clever utilisation of user-generated content (UGC) as it taps into a real desire for human connection, strengthens a community and, in this unprecedented time, has transformed what might have once been local content into global content.”
This new form of content has been lauded for its authenticity. Having a product that your consumers love so much that they’d happily promote it to their friends and online connections is a self-sustaining marketing cycle: the more people promoting your product with UGC, the more people discovering it, loving it, and hopefully endorsing it too. And, when 74% of our global insights community said they’d promote a product to their contacts if the quality was good enough, there’s huge potential for your customers to become the next wave of advocates.
So, let’s look at the top ten brands leading in the advocacy and content space. Here are the brands making a difference with UGC – and what you can learn from them.
L’Oréal
Shopping experiences became unrecognisable during Covid – especially for makeup. Testers for lipsticks and in-store swatches of eyeshadows were one of the many losses of lockdown. And in a world where the customer can’t try their foundation before buying it, makeup retailers such as L’Oréal have been presented with an obstacle to overcome. But the L’Oréal brand, NYX Professional Makeup, saw an opportunity in this obstacle.
NYX Professional Makeup launched Makeup Addyx, their customer insight and product testing community with Bulbshare, amidst the pandemic to roaring success. Within this app of makeup lovers, NYX Professional Makeup co-created their CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP ALL THE OBSESSION tagline for their popular foundation. Hoping to leverage the powerful consumer love for the Can’t Stop Won’t Stop foundation – despite the lack of testers – the makeup brand pursued the route of reviews, UGC, and insights to create authentic buzz.
To overcome the testers hurdle, NYX Professional Makeup guided consumers to their website, where they could choose their shade based on swatch imagery and a variety of model pictures. Having sent bottles of the product to the community to try, NYX Professional Makeup used consumer insights to inspire the new hook of their campaign – as well as the messaging, look and feel, and imagery.
The project drove rich UGC, including before and after photos, application shots, final images of them holding the bottle, short video clips of consumers raving about the foundation, realistic images of the wear and tear of longevity after a long day, and creative TikTok style transitions. Additionally, consumers sent in ratings and reviews which could be promulgated in their social media and campaigns.
Combining the power of UGC and product insights, they moulded a campaign which had the consumer at its core, every step of the way. With hundreds of videos and images to utilise, and a social sharing reach of 70,000+, the Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is a resounding example of UGC done right.
“User generated content is a brilliant tool with which to connect to your customers. It invites them in to become a crucial part of the branding process and makes them feel part of something big - which increases brand loyalty. With this campaign, we saw some amazing results and we loved all the images and videos the tribe sent in. We’ll definitely continue to put our customers at the core.”
Meg Grant: Assistant Product Manager, L'Oréal UK & Ireland
“UGC formed a powerful driver for the Can’t Stop Won’t Stop campaign. With rich imagery and video content galore, the Makeup Addyx app fuelled the look and feel and injected some serious authenticity, passion, and fun into the marketing of the foundation. By putting the consumers at the heart of everything, we harnessed the brand love around the product and inspired even more.”
Roxanne Smith: Client Collaborator and lead on the L'Oréal UK & Ireland account here at Bulbshare
Apple
‘Shot on iPhone’ is a shining example of UGC. The campaign started where all great campaigns begin – with customer insight. Having discussed previous efforts to market their phone camera as an alternative to professional cameras, photographers told them they were shooting in the dark. Professionals simply weren’t ready to ditch the extensive collection of tripods and lenses they invest so much time and money in to try their luck with a phone.
Instead of focusing their marketing efforts on sleek product shots to attract pro photographers, they tapped into a different, more amateur market.
Apple’s campaign for the iPhone 6 displayed the work of 77 iPhone photographers from around the world on billboards in 24 different countries.
Their campaign beautifully highlighted that their phone camera gave the everyday person the ability to shoot like a pro. With this tool, the everyman could take photos that belonged on billboards.
LEGO
LEGO Ideas is at the heart of LEGO Group’s UGC. With fun challenges and hundreds of creators, LEGO Ideas is the perfect place for content sharing. This forum isn’t just a social media platform for LEGO creations, though. The goal of the platform is for creators to get to 10,000 supporters. If they achieve this milestone, their idea is reviewed by LEGO itself, where it has the potential to be produced and sold in stores.
This initiative works on two levels. Not only does it reward brand loyalty, it encourages customers to be pioneers of brand awareness. The customer doesn’t just create original and exciting marketing content, they clamber to get the word out about their LEGO products to get more followers. This is the dual power of UGC.
LEGO Group have also built their very own Bulbshare community, through which they can get in depth consumer insights and rich UGC. Some of the brilliant content generated from this channel is shown below.
Orelia
Jewellery brand Orelia invites and rewards UGC by offering a chance to win a £100 gift card to anyone who shares a selfie with their jewellery on Instagram. By incentivising brand love online, they broadcast their brand in an authentic, trustworthy way. Not only is it more likely potential customers will discover their brand when scrolling through photos of their friends on social media, it also floods Instagram with real pictures of the jewellery and its high quality. This e-commerce hack is especially useful since Covid, with reduced access to in-store shopping experiences and the lost validation of seeing what you’re buying in person. Orelia successfully harnesses the power of peer marketing and UGC.
Starbucks
Starbucks’s White Cup Contest is a classic example of just how ingenious UGC can be. Inspired by the posts on social media of people’s doodles on their paper coffee cups, they launched the #WhiteCupContest. With 4,000 entries in just three weeks, the contest took off to huge popularity. The winning submission was selected and made into a reusable cup that could be bought by anyone.
The winner, whose limited edition reusable cup was sold for a year after the competition, was given a $300 gift card. But, most importantly, she used the online momentum to start her own sticker business on Etsy that is still thriving today.
Starbucks associated their brand with creativity, expanded their presence beyond just the world of coffee, and showcased how important it is to observe the trends and behaviours of your consumers. The contest only arose because Starbucks paid attention to what its customers were already doing.
Walkers
The ‘Do us a Flavour’ campaign was brilliant for more than just its name. From Cheesy Beans on Toast to Chip Shop Chicken Curry, Walkers’s contest attracted over 1.2 million entries, which were whittled down to 6 finalists by a judging panel which included David Walliams and Marco Pierre White.
Pulled Pork in Sticky BBQ Sauce was selected in top place, with winner Paul Rothwell receiving a million pound reward. The five runners up were awarded with £10,000 for their efforts – and their flavours were sold for a limited time in shops.
Walkers’s campaign was impactful because it blended product innovation with the creativity of UGC to drive sales.
Snug Sofa
A quick glance at Snug Sofa’s Instagram will reveal the extent to which they rely on UGC to fill their feed. With pictures borrowed from their customer’s home accounts, they both give back to their customers by promoting their Instagram pages and have ample access to content to keep users engaged. True symbiosis.
Citizens of Humanity
Premium denim brand, Citizens of Humanity, made UGC into a powerful charity initiative with their #WEAREALLHUMANITY campaign. For every photo posted with this hashtag, $10 was donated to the UN refugee agency USA for UNHCR.
This campaign was a hit because it relied on people’s need to feel good about their purchases. This initiative highlighted the ‘Humanity’ ethos behind the brand, but also instilled consumers with a positive emotional association to purchasing from Citizens of Humanity – and promulgating their brand mission. To make someone feel they are affecting change in the world is more powerful than simply giving them the $10.
When 72% of our insights community think that brands need to have a social purpose, Citizens of Humanity channeled the millennial and gen-z instinct to #bekind in their UGC.
Monsoon
Monsoon introduced UGC to e-commerce in a new, dynamic way with #MyMonsoon.
Monsoon’s UGC initiative begins, as you might expect, on social media. However, the application of it is much more inventive. Monsoon makes UGC shoppable on their site by supporting their product descriptions and images with pictures of real people in the item being sold.
Fortnite
Gaming is all about UGC. From the YouTube community flooding the internet with tutorials, play throughs and reviews, to TikTok being inundated with dances, no game has been so rushed to eminence like Fortnite. From mods to cosplay to Twitch, Fortnite’s secret weapon is UGC – and its 350 million players is no coincidence.
For more information, download our webinar with L’Oréal UKI’s Helena Osborne to unlock even more UGC and advocacy advice.
