Sam and other speakers discuss how brands use user-generated content to grow. Coca-Cola and McDonald's campaigns show what works and what doesn't when customers create your marketing for you.
Chapters
With the continuing rise of social media and influencers, there has been a ton of buzz in the ad and marketing world about user generated content. As brands look for new ways to extend their reach in a rapidly growing digital space, UGC is becoming a more viable and cost effective marketing strategy than ever. Here's what you need to know User generated content is defined as any type of content that has been created and put online by contributors. Contributors in this case would be followers, product users, and anyone outside of your company who is promoting the brand rather than the promoting itself. For example, someone goes online and makes a YouTube review of your product, or a tweet about your company, or a blog post about an experience that they had with you. Those all fall under the UGC umbrella. And what an important umbrella it is because 92% of people are more likely to trust a recommendation from another person over branded content. AKA people don't trust ads. People like ads, people enjoy ads, people are even entertained by ads. But people do not trust people. Trust people. UGC gives your brand the social authenticity that 60% of consumers are craving, all by simply allowing users to just say how they really feel. Now, while a defining characteristic of UGC is that it's made outside of your company, there are some clever ways for you to have the best of both worlds. Coca Cola took blending professional strategy with UGC to new heights with their Share a Coke campaign in 2012. The brand launched limited edition Coke bottles printed with popular names. Customers were then invited to find Coke bottles labeled with their name or the names of their friends and family. We all did it. Admit it. We searched for a bottle with our name. Tori was never on any of the bottles. Once you found a bottle with your name on it, we snapped a picture and posted it online with the hashtag Share a Coke. Each post sparked social interactions. The result was that more than 150 million personalized Coke bottles were sold on Instagram. There were 650,000 pictures and 1 billion impressions share a Coke hashtag all done for the price of slightly changing their packaging and creating a dynamic call for ugc. What did we learn here that can be applied to your own UGC campaign? Make it personal offer Incentive to collect, make it picture worthy and don't forget to make it easily shareable. Now while UGC can be awesome, be very careful when utilizing it. If you aren't aware of how the public already views your brand, UGC may harm your company's image rather than enhance it. Just ask McDonald's.
Roll the footage so McDonald's is realizing just how powerful advertising can when it goes horribly, horribly wrong. Earlier today they created the hashtag mcdstories but within minutes the hashtag became a place to tell horror stories about McDonald's.
Some of our favorites include I lost 50 pounds in six months after I stopped eating and working at McDonald's. McDStories.
McDonald's infamously pulled that campaign after only two hours but the hashtag continued to circulate and Even transformed into McPhail, a hashtag that still trends to till this very day. Now even though user generated content isn't new, the reason we're talking about this now is because with the continued upgrade in social media tools, ways for the consumer to post about your brand are growing. With that so are the chances for some mega reach. Make it personal, offer incentive and make it picture worthy. Your customers will do the rest. As always that's the info. Do with it what you will until next time. That's what you need to know. Sam.
