Creating Meaningful Campaigns With User-Generated Content
Credit: Spotify
If you joined us last week, you’ll remember that user generated content (UGC) popped up in a recent Alicia Keys campaign. Well, that sparked some conversation at Habit HQ about the use of UGC, so we’ve taken a look at some of the most inventive ways artists, labels and music brands have utilised UGC.
Billie Eilish’s Letters
To coincide with the ‘My Future’ single release, Billie Eilish’s team launched the ‘Letters To Your Future Self’ campaign. Billie invited fans to write letters themselves, to be kept in a time capsule, which would be released at the time of their choice. A selection of letters were chosen to be shared across Spotify and Billie EIlish’s socials, offering some lucky fans major bragging rights, plus a sense of exclusivity. Not only did Billie’s fans get to enjoy a letter from their past selves, they also generated their own content that would later remarket ‘My Future’ to themselves - an impressive feat from Billie’s team.
Brands Are On Board Too
In 2017, Spotify executed the highly successful ‘Goals’ campaign, where their street posters and billboards set out goals, inspired by Spotify user’s listening habits and playlist names. The campaign shared goals like ‘Be as loving as the person who put 48 Ed Sheeran songs on their ‘I Love Gingers’ playlist” and “Have fewer issues than the person who streamed ‘Issues’ over 3,152 times this year” across posters and billboards worldwide. Thanks to the clever use of users’ playlist names and data, Spotify were able to roll out a witty campaign that went viral.
In partnership with Adobe Creative Cloud, The Presets invited students across Australia and Asia to submit content for the ‘Tools Down’ lyric video in the ‘Lyrical Masters’ campaign. The competition received 450 entries, and the winning designs were included in the official lyric video for the track. Creators were awarded a year’s subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud and signed artwork from The Presets. You can watch the final result here.
Of course, the use of UGC doesn’t always have to come with extravagant bells and whistles. Even if it's as simple as re-sharing social media content from fans, UGC has proved itself an effective marketing tool.
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