Final recommendations for marketers embracing user-generated content

In terms of traditional marketing tools, user-generated content is still in its relative youth, and undoubtedly this document will need updating within the year. Furthermore, it would be impossible to cover every aspect of social media in detail here, and please feel free to give the IAB a call if you have any further questions. The case studies and insights provided throughout this report illustrate that online is a marvellously rich ecosystem for a brand to be in. So if you haven’t embraced it yet, then ask yourself “Why?”

Currently, we know very little about the reasons why internet users feel compelled to generate their own content. Why did those two boys decide to film themselves miming to a cheesy pop song, why does a student in Oslo upload a photo to Sony Ericsson and why does the Wendy’s square burger on MySpace have nearly 80,000 friends, a number of whom leave comments? To a certain extent, this desire is within all of us, and relies on something that advertising has always strived to inspire… motivation. Marketing communication has always aimed to motivate its potential audience right back to John Pemberton (inventor of the Coca-Cola syrup) who went through countless attempts at persuading his potential market to buy his product. Cure for headaches and morphine addiction are two examples of his failed marketing attempts.

The joy of online is that it facilitates this motivation, which is largely driven by the fact that contributing your own thoughts, photos, and videos is now such a simple process. The 65,000 videos uploaded to Youtube every day and the 1,438,990 English articles on Wikipedia are clear indications of the motivation levels of today’s general public.

The challenge of motivating consumers to engage with your brand remains, but the technology and audiences are now there to make it easier than ever before. Motivating your consumer to become involved in your brand and letting them interact on their own terms stimulates advocacy, an excellent result for marketers. User-generated content such as uploaded photos, reviews, comment threads, films, stories (the list goes on) are all ways that consumers can participate in a brand and by default become its advocate. It’s human nature to let your friends know about a site that you’ve contributed to or one which you know they will enjoy. This not only fuels the volumes of visitors, but also creates a social network of likeminded enthusiasts.

Following the recommendations outlined at the end of each chapter, if you think UGC and social media are right for you now is the time to think about how, and where your brand fits within the complex yet infinitely rewarding online space. Let’s go back to the golden rules in this document’s introduction:

1. Understand your audience - where they are, what they do, and why.

2. Try and make your campaign social currency, so that it can live on far past itsexecution.

3. Ensure the campaign reflects your brand image and is in keeping with yourbrand values.

4. Try to ‘let your brand go’ online whilst at the same time managing andmonitoring the process carefully so that consumers don’t undermine it.

5. Learn from any mistakes, and always consider feedback. Whether you like it ornot, the consumer is the expert, and they’re probably almost always right.

Hopefully this report will have shown how you can master and stick to these rules, as well as how a number of brands have adapted and restructured their thinking in order to engage their audiences successfully. To do this, at the IAB, we recommend you ‘unthink your brand’…