Expanding Creativity Through UGC

Advertising is creativity at its core. Those who think otherwise probably shouldn’t be in this business. Think about it, ads are a creation of creativity that extract an emotional response from the viewers. It’s that emotional response that makes UGC ads stand out from the rest. Their authenticity has the power to provoke stronger emotional connections to the content that real people made that is now being shown in the ad. We are here to argue that using UGC in your campaigns can actually increase your creative power. For example, we get the brief that you send for specific content you’re looking for. Your brand has an idea for a great commercial using UGC found content. We then start searching for the content that fits within the parameters. However, sometimes we come across a gem that may not fit into that box. We will pitch it to your team anyway because sometimes it’s worth a shot. Your team falls in love with the video and decides to take a new approach to the UGC ad. The organic content that someone created just shifted your creative process that you may not have otherwise thought of. Playing around with ideas is the heart of creativity. This is how original ideas come about. UGC is kind of way to collaborate different creative ideas through the creativity of those who created the content. This can expand the team’s creative juices with fresh ideas to come up with new ones for their campaigns. We’ve seen it happen and when it does, the campaigns are one of a kind.  

Super Bowl 2023 Advertisement

We’re sad that there weren’t more found content campaigns in this year’s Super bowl commercial spots. The Super Bowl is one of our proudest moments here at Locomotive! The  Discover Card campaigns, “Yes & No” aired during the Super Bowl a few years back that we helped source and license content for. That being said, there was one ad this year that stood out to us as relatable and funny. This type of ad falls under the found content space that we deal in and that was, “Football Cat.” In our industry of user-generated content we often deal with viral memes or viral videos. This video went viral of a cat playing the keyboard 15 years ago and was originally published under Charlie Schmidt and now represented by our friends over at A Weird Movie. Shout out to Ben Lashes! Since then, it’s had 1.5M views and now that it has been used in the commercial, we’re certain that number has climbed. This is our favorite clip of the Super Bowl advertisements this year although we hope to be part of any future user-generated content campaigns for the Super Bowl. We’ve been seeing that most of the ads didn’t reach their audiences liked they hoped they would. Found content would change that. Let’s connect with audiences on a deeper level through found content!

Found Content is the New Word of Mouth

Word of mouth marketing is the oldest advertising strategy out there. Although times may have changed greatly to that of a digital age, one thing is for sure, WOM is still the most common way that people find a brand. 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and WOM marketing influences 99% of B2B purchases. Those numbers are truly staggering. In our digital world, WOM is no longer restricted its literal meaning. It now extends into the online space and is just as important, if not more, on social media. This is the new word of mouth. Instead of telling one or a few people, you can tell thousands if not millions. It will spread through the grape vine quickly.

Organic, unproduced and authentic found content. That is the wave of the future and 2023 advertising trends are leaning toward it. Trusted and proven time and time again to be more trustworthy by consumers and influential for purchasing power of your audience. Found content can help your brand engage, equip and empower your audience. It creates emotional connections with your audience. It can give your customers a reason to talk through product reviews, social media challenges or just a revel over a great UGC clip embedded to your advertisement. It can also empower them to spark conversations and share the love of your brand. Found content is the new word of mouth and there are millions of new pieces uploaded every day. Brands that incorporate this tactic into their campaigns are taking it to the next level. If you haven’t already done so, take your brand to the next level. Contact us today about using found content in your next advertising campaign.

Two Truths & A Lie: UGC Myths

Not all UGC is good for your brand. True! There have been plenty of UGC campaigns gone awry and it would be naive to think that all UGC is good UGC. Found content seriously affects your customers’ trust and opinion of your brand through emotional connects. Also, true! People trust real people so if this goes sideways you could be looking at some serious consequences and fires to be put out. This is what we are here for, to get your brand quality, legally cleared content that reflects positively on your company and its mission. However, that being said, we thought we would go through some myths on UGC and clear them up for you.

1.     UGC is too risky to employ into my marketing & advertising strategy. Not so, and actually it is the opposite. It’s not risky if you let the pros take the reigns to properly source and clear your content like we do. It is a crucial component of your marketing & advertising strategies in our digital world today.

2.     If UGC has a negative impact on my brand, I should just ignore it and it will fade away eventually. This is never a good idea and is bad PR mitigation. You should always address issues that have a negative impact on your brand’s image. The sooner you tackle an issue the sooner it will get resolved before the damage is irreversible.

3.     UGC is lower in quality. False! We should all know by now that not all sourced content is created equal. With the rising age of technology, there are a number of smart phones that can capture quality video and photo nowadays. Although not produced, they’re enough when it comes to quality. Billions of videos are uploaded every day to social platforms so the possibilities are literally endless! Did you know that 90% of the worlds population has a smart phone with a camera on it? That’s over 7 billion creators!

4.     UGC cannot be controlled. Although it may seem like it can be difficult to control, sourced content can be easily controlled with creative briefs before sourcing. Agencies have deciding power of the content they receive from us initially and will have the final say in which pieces they want to clear to use for their projects/clients.

5.     UGC doesn’t work for all brands. Not so! UGC has a place in every brands marketing and advertising strategy. It’s cost effective, creates trust and humanizes your brand’s voice. The facts speak for themselves. It works!

So, there you have it. Two truths and some lies. Now you can see that not all UGC is created equal. Sourced content can seem tough for those trying to produce it on their own without a professional. It won’t take you long to realize that curation and clearing should be left to the pros. Doing so will prevent any negative impacts from using found content in your campaigns. Contact us today if you haven’t used us for your campaign and want to give it a try!

Increasing Creative Control Through Found Content

Creative Control: the power to exercise the final authority over the planning and execution of an artistic medium, such as a film, commercial, a song, etc. We often think of produced shoots as having complete, immense creative control from the production and directing teams from start to finish of a campaign or project. However, here at Locomotive, we believe that when using found content in marketing and advertising campaigns, it in fact gives the team more creative control than that of a produced shoot. Not to mention it saves time, money and the environment. With an extensive and endless supply of creator content out there, this leaves the imagination with limitless possibilities. Brands create their initial briefs based on their own set of guidelines. But, with millions of new content being uploaded each day, no matter what their creative parameters may be, there will always be fresh content to curate from. You can literally take the same creative brief from two months ago and find completely new content to fit the same exact bill. The content that is found can also shift the campaigns themselves as they progress. It depends on what kind of stuff we’re finding. Maybe we find something that they hadn’t intentionally set out to include and the brand loves it, so they decide to make a slight shift in their creative direction. The beauty of found content campaigns is that the brand gets to decide which pieces of content align with their values and appeals to their particular audience. They set the tone. They choose which pieces they want or don’t. We provide our clients with a monumental list of content during the curation process. If they say they need five pieces we’ll give them twenty to choose from. Brands can also get creative with how they use UGC in their marketing strategies. The creative possibilities are truly endless.

History of User Generated Content

Did you know that the first massive user-generated content composition was the Oxford English Dictionary? Yep, that’s right! It was composed solely of contributions aggregated by the public in 1857. To look back throughout the history of UGC in the media however, one would have to go all the way back to 1840 with the first U.S. patent for photography. Because if you think about it, this was when the rise of photography and film began. You can’t have user-generated content without users having access to cameras and although, it won’t become publicly available until much later this was the when the birth of UGC would be. After this, in 1990 there were several electronic bulletin board systems based on UGC, which would then later be converted to websites with the creation of the internet. For example, IMDB, Flickr, and Wikipedia are a few. These sites were basically informational and still images. Later, video content would be publicly popularized with sites such as YouTube in 2005. Also in 2005, BBC set up a UGC content team in response to a London bombing that bolstered “citizen journalism.” A year later in 2006, CNN started a similar campaign called iReport. This was the same year that Time magazine published “Person of the Year: You” that hailed to the rise of user-generated content due to YouTube and other up and coming social media platforms, such as MySpace. This is quite a brief history but it gives an idea on how far user-generated content has come since its inception. Now, we have influencer marketing and customer reviews. Literally, UGC is everywhere. Advertising now harnesses it because it has great ROI for campaigns, higher conversion rates and it builds overall trust between consumers and brands. With the technological advancements happening everywhere, UGC isn’t going anywhere and it’s just getting started. It’s our specialty!

Found Content: Recession Proofing Costs

Americans feel terribly about the state of the economy right now. We can’t say we disagree. Just this week we wrote an article  on holiday consumer spending trends during times of financial distress this season. Advertising agencies and brands are not immune to the economic hardships that we are all currently facing. Everyone is navigating budget cuts for advertising spend. This is yet another reason how found content in your marketing and advertising strategies can help recession proof your brand’s budget this year. The cost effectiveness of UGC makes for a good plan to combat these budget cuts and rising cost of production.

Let’s break it down for you. Most produced commercials can cost anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000. But, depending on the resources used, it can hike up to $50,000-$100,000. That’s seriously a lot of dough for something that’s going to last a roughly 60 seconds! UGC campaigns can run anywhere from $3,000 to $25,000. Starting costs are much lower for UGC campaigns than a produced one. Even the highest amount that you could possibly pay is way under top dollar production shoots. Of course, there will be editing costs and some others associated with them in post, but it still won’t rack up to what a production team would cost you, plus actors, plus post. You get the idea.

There is also evidence that the ROI on found content campaigns is very high in comparison to money spent, according to case studies conducted by Pixlee. So, not only do you spend less of your budget, you see higher returns. This means higher engagement, high click through rates, high return to site visitors, more credibility. We could go on for a while. We love found content. If you think that your brand would benefits from found content campaigns, please don’t hesitate to reach out this holiday season and let’s get a conversation started. Happy Holidays!

YouTube Stats 2022

We deal quite a lot with content creators on YouTube for our projects. It’s one of the things we’re most grateful for this Thanksgiving day! It’s by far one of the best places for user generated uploaded video content. It’s importance in the UGC advertising industry is quite considerable. Just in case you don’t believe us, we thought we would throw together some interesting stats that may change your mind.

1.     YouTube is used by 55% of marketers (Social Media Examiner)

2.     84% of people bought from a brand after seeing it on YouTube (Optinmonster)

3.     78% of people agree that they use YouTube because it serves them with content that is personally relevant to them (YouTube)

4.     56% of marketers say that YouTube offer the biggest ROI (HubSpot Blog Research, 2022)

5.     YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine after Google (Search Engine Journal)

a.     Search engines drive 93% of all website traffic (SEO Statistics)

6.     50% of all social media users are on YouTube. There are 2 billion users (Omnicore Agency)

We could go on for hours on the many amazing stats of the YouTube platform. It’s hard to believe that it launched only 17 years ago by a guy named Jawed Karim. It provides content in all genres of topics. Pretty much anything you can think of is on there. If you can think of it, someone will have a channel for it. This colossal giant is worth 180 billion when writing this. Make sure your brand is harnessing the potential of this platform, whether it be for sourcing user generated content or promoting your brand via advertising. It is not to be disregarded. 

Explanation of Terms in the UGC Space

UGC. User-generated content. Sourced content. Found content. What do all these terms mean? People get confused by what it is and how they are different. We thought we’d clarify a few things for you. They’re not different. All of these terms are literally synonymous with one another! They all mean the exact same thing. It’s anything on the internet. Organic, non-organic video and photos. 720,000 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every day. That’s 500 hours per minute. It’s not shocking really. Everyone with an iPhone can record high-quality content and that number is roughly 6.6 billion people worldwide. About 83% of all humans inhabiting this wonderful planet. The only reason to call UGC “sourced” or “found” is when you come to a service, such as ours, to find it for your advertising campaigns. Hence, why some change the name of user-generated content to those terms instead. We hope this cleared up any confusion for you and hope to work together on your next campaign. Unlike our competitors, at Locomotive we personally hand pick every single of content that comes through our screens for each specified creative brief for our clients. Compounding content, steam powered forward.

Ways to Incorporate UGC Into Your Marketing Strategy

It’s no secret that we love UGC. It’s what we do and we’re passionate about it! We deal with UGC in the advertising campaign spaces mostly. However, there are some other areas of marketing that you can use this powerful tool. First, let’s talk about UGC in advertising since that’s what we specialize in. This is a great way to get consumers to trust your brand seeing real people in real-life situations that your audience can relate to. This type of UGC marketing will increase your ROI immensely. Let’s dive in to the other ways your brand can use it for marketing strategies.

1.     Promote your next product launch. UGC influences purchases so using it promote a new product is a great way to get new customers.

2.     Highlight your customers. Everyone likes to be appreciated. Highlighting your top customers through UGC photos and videos will not only make them feel great but it will increase your brand awareness through reposts and reshares. This is great for increasing brand awareness.

3.     UGC in advertising. As we listed above, UGC is one of the best ways to create an emotional connection with your audience. People trust real people in real-life situations that they can relate to.

If you’re interested in learning more about how UGC can help your brand grow contact us today. The benefits of UGC marketing and advertising just keep growing. Every campaign that we’ve ever done for advertising agencies has been successful to say the least. Don’t wait to get UGC into your marketing and advertising strategies. Trust us. We know a little something about this one.

The Future of Video Content Creation

Social media has been growing and evolving over the past 15 years, so what’s in store for the future of content creation? We don’t have a crystal ball but we do have some ideas. This is what we predict for the future of video content.

1.     Tailored content. Video content will be tailored to fit each platform. For example, Instagram is big for reels right now, where TikTok is short form video. These trends will constantly change and will have to be adapted to on each.

2.     Livestream increase. This has been growing and we think it will only continue for content creation.

3.     Silent video content. Look at Khaby Lame. He’s made this trend blow up. However, it won’t be totally silent. Voice over is a new and growing trend so expect to see this over the silent video.

4.     Vlogs. This is just a glorified way of saying story telling. This is a great way for brands to tell their story and connect with consumers.

5.     Individuals. Not everyone has to be an influencer to create great content and the more people do it, the better they get. We source many of our user generated content videos from people who would be considered the average joe. We truly believe that the future of video content creation will be for the individual users. Real people, doing real things, in their everyday lives.

6.     Short form video. We all know attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Content creation will follow suit. Short form video will take the lead.

Though, we can’t say whether or not our predictions will come true, we will be keeping up with trends as they come along. Video content has come so far and we’re excited to see where it continues to go.

Desktop Posting Guide

Did you know that you can post to Instagram from your desktop computer? Yea, neither did we! We recently learned that this was an option so we thought we’d share a quick tutorial on how to do it. It’s basically the same as from your phone but the video quality is better. Sometimes when posting from your phone the quality of the video decreases. Ok to create a post from your desktop first click the add button on Instagram. It will prompt you do select from your computer. Select the photo or video you want. You can change the aspect ratio as well as do a carousel. Click next. It will then prompt you to choose the cover photo if using a video. You can then trim your video as well here and turn the sound on or off. If using a video, edit and click next. Finally, here is where you can add your caption, hashtags and location. Do this and you’re ready to post! Sharing from your desktop can be easier sometimes and you can avoid any decline in video quality. Happy posting!

Top Reasons to Adopt UGC Into Your Advertising Strategy

It’s no secret that we love user generated content pieces. We’ll scream it to the mountain tops and swear by its effectiveness. We’ve written articles on the cost effectiveness of UGC, building brand trust with UGC and overall UGC statistics for making our case. But…just in case you aren’t sold yet, we’ve decided to put a list together to show you just why you should incorporate it into your advertising if you haven’t already.

1.     Increased customer engagement. People are more likely to share content created with UGC. Millennials share more UGC as well. There is a “28% increased engagement rate when UGC and product videos merge” (Comscore). 

2.     Brands are focusing on UGC. 16% of brands have an effective UGC marketing strategy already and 86% of companies understand the importance of it according to an article in Taggbox.

3.     Increases return visitors. Digital Information World Brands claims that brands featuring UGC on their sites have a 20% return rate.

4.     High impact. People spend more time watching UGC than produced content and it has a higher impact on the viewers.

Do you believe us now? We hope we’ve made you a believer as we fully trust what UGC has to offer in the advertising space. Contact us now for your consultation to get started! 

UGC Stats

We’ve all heard it a million times now. People trust people more than paid actors. It’s for this reason and many others that user generated content is now at the forefront of digital advertising. The purpose of this blog is to shine some light on some statistics about user generated content, otherwise known as sourced content.

·      79% of people are strongly influenced by UGC when making purchase decisions (Rachna & Khajuria 2017).

·      71% of people have positive attitudes toward UGC in digital advertisements (Rachna & Khajuria 2017).

·      73% of people believe that the presence of “real people” is the most important component of sourced content (Olapic Survey).

·      Consumers are 3x more likely to say content created by a consumer is authentic compared to content created by a brand (Stackla).

·      Roughly 70% of advertisers believe that sourced content is more cost effective than traditional advertising (Catch & Release Survey).

·      90% of consumers say that UGC influences their decision to make a purchase (Cision PR Newswire).

·      Demographically, Gen Z YouTube viewers prefer UGC to professional videos more than older generations (YouTube 2020).

·      Ads that feature UGC garnered 73% more positive comments on social networks than traditional ads (IAB Study).  

·      UGC generates a 25% higher ad performance than traditional advertisements (AdAge).

·      85% of companies incorporate UGC in their marketing strategy (Semrush).

·      Almost half of customers say that UGC is a way for them to discover new products (Forrester.com)

·      UGC is 35% more memorable comparable to other media (Mediapost).

·      92% of consumers trust UGC more than traditional marketing (Marketing Insider).

This is reason enough to make sure your brand is incorporating sourced content into the advertising strategy. Of course, we will always believe it is one of the best ways to connect with your audience but don’t just take our word for it, let us show you. Contact us today for a free brief evaluation!

Consumer Empowerment Through UGC

A customer who feels empowered is a customer for life. People who feel supported by a brand to make smarter choices will then develop a stronger bond with that brand. With the continued digital space for advertising and brand promotion, the communication between customers and the brand has ultimately changed. The customer now has the power to state what they want, what they need and what they expect from brands. Businesses that listen to their customers will lead to an increase in overall customer satisfaction and retention rates. With social media, customers can now connect with their favorite brands online. This is where UGC can come into play for your brand to empower its audience. User generated content can be created by anyone, anywhere. Your brand will benefit from creating customer empowerment through the use of UGC. We’ve all seen videos on product reviews and promotional videos from a customer at some point while scrolling through the gram or YouTube. This is where customers feel empowered to be part of a brand’s journey. They are invested with them as their values align. Social media now gives customers authority on decision making for a brand. They will publicly state whether or not they like a product and you want them to like it but if not, this is where the brand can benefit from the feedback and make changes for the benefit of the consumer by way of the consumer, if that makes sense. Brands can also license this UGC content from their audience in order to further promote their brand and/or products. It’s a feedback loop where everyone wins. Most brands now understand the importance of sourced content within their advertising strategy but if yours has not, it’s time to start looking into it. Contact us today!