User-generated content, also known as UGC, has always been a hot marketing strategy for brands. Since the dawn of social media marketing, leading brands across the globe have been making use of UGC for creating innovative, genuine, and persuasive campaigns for driving fruitful results. UGC can be defined as any form of media or content created by the users of your service or customers of your product. This includes audio/video files, digital images, tweets, wikis, text posts, podcasts, advertisements, and much more.
UGC is an affordable yet effective way of promoting your business. In today’s post, we will cast light on four user-generated content campaigns to elucidate how different brands have leveraged these campaigns for boosting brand-awareness and customer engagement to drive sales.
1. Oreo India’s #PlayWithOreo Campaign: This global social media campaign was rolled out by Cadbury Oreo in 2015 to inspire the imagination of Oreo Lovers in India with the world’s most favourite cookie brand. Various interesting contests were carried out as a part of this playful social media campaign. What’s more? All user-generated content was captured by a micro-site. For example, #DoodleIt was a doodle making contest where Oreo lovers were invited to make doodle art using an Oreo sandwich cookie, click a picture of the doodle and share the image on Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #DoodleIt.
What imaginations will you welcome with an Oreo? Share your doodles and win exciting prizes! #DoodleIt #PlaywithOreo pic.twitter.com/3mFqHNi80U
— Oreo India (@OreoIndia) June 12, 2015
The success of #DoodleIt contest inspired Oreo India to roll out another fun contest ‘#PopIt’ in partnership with Interface Communications. #PopIt invited Oreo fans to find out creative ways to pop the cookie. Similarly, Oreo’s #PlayIt contest inspired the participants to keep their playful imagination alive. In this contest, Oreo lovers were asked to find novel games to play with the Oreo cookie. The play with Oreo series continued to win the heart of Oreo fans with several other exciting contests, such as #DipIt and more.
2. Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ Campaign: This award-winning campaign was initially launched by Coca-Cola in Australia in the year 2011 with the beguiling slogan ‘Share a Coke’. Soon the campaign was rolled out in the U.S.A, the U.K and other countries across the globe. Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke 2015” multi-national summer campaign stood out as one of the finest promotional campaigns in the history of the company. Throughout the campaign, Coca-Cola manufactured Coke bottles with the names of customers on its labels and distributed them among different cities. This campaign helped Coca-Cola significantly to gain spotlight on Twitter. Fans were asked to click their pictures with customized coke bottles and share their stories along with the pictures on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram with the hashtag #ShareaCoke.
Who would you want to #ShareACoke with? Share your story with us inside the Pop Culture Gallery at #WorldofCocaCola! https://t.co/lTsjsXMYvc pic.twitter.com/YGYYDrMFct
— World of Coca-Cola (@WorldofCocaCola) February 3, 2017
The campaign was a huge success as it boosted U.S. sales by 2% after more than a decade of dwindling revenues. Moreover, 500,000+ images were shared on social media using the hashtag #ShareaCoke, thus generating multiplatform conversations on social sites.
The Davis family @DrBaronDavis @readavis_ got the coolest gift in the mail today #thanks #shareacoke pic.twitter.com/gMijvXhU7J
— Pamela D. (@ptodddavis) January 19, 2017
3. Starbucks’s White Cup Contest: This is yet another example of UGC. The campaign was rolled out in April 2014 in the U.S and Canada. This design competition invited Starbucks’ fans to decorate their Starbucks cups with doodle art, click a photo of the cup and submit their entries on social media using the hashtag #WhiteCupContest. Starbucks’ also announced that the winning entry would be printed on Starbucks’ limited edition reusable cups. In just three weeks, Starbucks received approximately 4,000 entries from customers. This is how the White Cup Contest helped Starbucks earn significant publicity.
4. Center Fresh’s #Endless Storytelling Campaign: In the year 2015, Perfetti Van Melle India launched Center Fresh Endless, a new variant of the chewing gum that guarantees long-lasting freshness. To capitalize on the ‘endless’ value proposition in an innovative style, the company utilised social media to roll out a storytelling contest with the hashtag #Endless. The brand picked a winner every hour to take the story further from the winner’s tweet. Graphic visuals were also designed to support the user-generated story.
The #Endless story, and the names of the creative storytellers who wrote it. What happened to Gollum’s missing gum? pic.twitter.com/S8LGL1OSWP
— Center Fresh India (@CenterfreshIn) March 4, 2015
Key Takeaways:
These are four user generated content campaigns picked by us to illustrate how simply user-generated content campaigns can promote your brand in extraordinary ways. By motivating your customers to be creative and providing them with the opportunity to have fun with their content, you can significantly drive customer engagement, besides making your campaign exciting. This is a significant way of promoting your brand as people like to share what they are exhilarated about. Moreover, by pairing your campaigns with appealing hashtags and encouraging your customers to upload their photos using the hashtag, so that you can reward them for participating, you can significantly drive customer engagement to build a rock-solid sales base for driving profitability.
