A big chal­lenge for con­sumer-fac­ing brands today is tying togeth­er their social media chan­nel out­puts, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, and con­tent mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. While there are exam­ples of brands using user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent to their advan­tage, it’s often as an after­thought and it’s rare for con­tent to be ampli­fied across plat­forms. Apple­bee’s lat­est #fan­tog­ra­ph­er cam­paign bucks the trend.

In July Apple­bee’s rolled out #fan­tog­ra­ph­er, a social media cam­paign encour­ag­ing users to Insta­gram their most tan­ta­liz­ing snap­shots of Apple­bee’s meals and din­ners. Apple­bee’s then selects the best of the bunch, curat­ing their own haute cui­sine and ensur­ing the images are also post­ed on Face­book and Twit­ter, there­by ampli­fy­ing the con­tent.

The data is now show­ing that the cam­paign has been a tremen­dous suc­cess. Since the campaign’s launch, Applebee’s has gained 4,500 new fol­low­ers on Insta­gram alone, mark­ing an increase of 32 per­cent. Fol­low­ers now num­ber at 19,750, and engage­ment has risen 25 per­cent. In addi­tion it’s pre­dict­ed that tweets tagged with #fan­tog­ra­ph­er have now appeared on 78 mil­lion users’ time­lines.

Apple­bee’s report that they have now col­lect­ed over 770 images, which gives the restau­rant enough visu­al con­tent to last until next sum­mer.

A look at Apple­bee’s Insta­gram feed shows the high qual­i­ty of sub­mit­ted images. It begs the ques­tions: why haven’t we seen more exam­ples of brands lever­ag­ing user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent in their mar­ket­ing cam­paigns?

Power To Your Consumers

The most com­mon rea­son for brands to avoid user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent is in the fact that means hand­ing over some of the con­trol to con­sumers. For some, it may seem like a gam­ble and this is true to an extent.

Just last year, Apple­bee’s expe­ri­enced first hand the effect of neg­a­tive user con­tent, in what can only be described as a user-gen­er­at­ed melt­down. Unrav­el­ling on red­dit, news unfold­ed of how an Apple­bee’s wait­ress was fired after post­ing a receipt where a pas­tor had writ­ten of Apple­bee’s stan­dard tip: “I give God 10% why do you get 18?”

Online com­mu­ni­ties rose in uni­son to refute Apple­bee’s deci­sion and the sit­u­a­tion was a PR night­mare.

It makes it all the more impres­sive that Apple­bee’s have thrown cau­tion to the wind in their lat­est cam­paign, giv­ing over a degree of trust to their users in the name of #fan­tog­ra­phy.

6 Reasons Brands Should Use User-Generated Content

Apple­bee’s have every rea­son to believe that their work has been a suc­cess. The rise in the lev­el of engage­ment speaks for itself, and it easy to see how #fan­tog­ra­phy has result­ed in a huge increase in pos­i­tive aware­ness for the brand.

Ulti­mate­ly, there are sev­er­al rea­sons why the use of user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent in Apple­bee’s cam­paign has been a suc­cess, and why all con­sumer-fac­ing brands should be look­ing at their options of lever­ag­ing the medi­um:

1. Cost-effec­tive: UGC is cheap! Exe­cut­ed well, it’s like hav­ing an army of will­ing vol­un­teers, all look­ing to spread pos­i­tive mes­sages about your brand.
2. Scal­able: UGC can be an incred­i­ble way to scale con­tent. In Apple­bee’s case, it would have tak­en sev­er­al months, or even years, to cre­ate the amount of high qual­i­ty images that users were able to cre­ate effort­less­ly in a num­ber of weeks.
3. Impact­ful: Espe­cial­ly for a brand with a prod­uct that lends itself to strong visu­als, such as Apple­bee’s, UGC can be huge­ly impact­ful. If your prod­uct or cam­paign can moti­vate one user to post an image or engage online, it’s like­ly to make an impres­sion on the users who read it too!
4. Orig­i­nal: Cam­paigns based around UGC are almost always nov­el and orig­i­nal. Con­sumers who engage on social media are often high­ly cre­ative, and this fil­ters through into the for­ma­tion of excit­ing, orig­i­nal cam­paigns.
5. Builds Com­mu­ni­ty: A good UGC cre­ates an incred­i­ble sense of com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, going one step fur­ther toward build­ing up that col­lec­tive of ded­i­cat­ed brand advo­cates that every brand hopes to win.
6. Dri­ve Social Engage­ment: Those brand advo­cates can then be a pri­ma­ry means of dri­ving social engage­ment. Stud­ies have shown that those con­sumers most loy­al to brands are far more like­ly to engage on a con­sis­tent basis.

Have you seen any cre­ative exam­ples of brands using user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent to dri­ve their mar­ket­ing cam­paigns?