UGC Ads: Why Creative Freedom Is The Secret To Success
The secret to all good UGC ad strategy and paid social campaigns is creative freedom. Seems simple right? But unfortunately, the vast majority of dedicated UGC agencies and platforms don’t seem to agree.
We see it far too often, agencies and brands trying to dictate exactly how a creator’s content should look in UGC ads. This is a recipe for disaster.
If you are a brand, you have to ask why you are hiring the creator. You are hiring them to create content for you based on their creative talents. Why would you then restrict their ability to exercise that creative talent in their UGC ads? It makes no sense.
Creative freedom is something we love here at Find. We’ve seen the power it can have and the results it can drive for our brand partners. Here we’ll explore why we think creative freedom is the secret to success for all UGC ads and creator campaigns in general.
What is wrong with restricting a creator’s ability to create?
A lot of organic and UGC agencies still do this. Overly elaborate, creativity-sucking briefs are something we see far too often. Some agencies almost feel like they are trying to create the content for the creators themselves.
The biggest thing wrong with this is that you will get inauthentic, ineffective content from creators for your UGC ads.
Creators aren’t actors and shouldn’t be following scripts or huge multi-page briefs. By all means still provide briefs with some key talking points and perhaps some suggestions for creative direction, but make them concise. Give creators a chance to make something for you that feels true to them.
A hard truth that a lot of agencies don’t want to hear is that they are not better at creating content than content creators. Trust them to deliver the content you are hiring them to deliver.
What is the benefit to granting creative freedom to UGC creators?
As we’ve mentioned, you need to put some trust in the creators you are hiring. Clearly you like their content and saw enough from them to want to hire them to represent your brand in the first place.
The benefit of putting your trust in a creator is you will get a much more polished, authentic asset for your UGC ad campaign with increased engagement levels.
We as consumers can instantly tell when creator ads lack authenticity. It’s the key reason why 72% of creator ads are skipped within the first 5 seconds. Instantly you can tell the content is inauthentic and making a creator pack every second of their video with facts about your product is a sure fire way to make the viewer lose interest fast.
You have to remember that an ad is ‘interrupting’ the viewing of that consumer. No one is going out of their way to watch ads. It’s therefore vital that you serve them something interesting and something they’d be happy to sit through.
We find that nothing quite grabs the viewers attention in a UGC ad like authenticity and creativity. A creator doing something that feels authentic to them or highly-creative is the key way to instantly grab the viewers attention in that all important first 5 seconds. That is why hooks in UGC videos are so vital.
How to improve the chances of success on UGC ads?
Success, however that may be quantified for you, is the key thing we all bear in mind when formulating our UGC ads. In order to improve your chances of achieving the level of success you require, you’ll need to give UGC creators the power to create for all of the reasons listed above.
If your brand has been put off from working with UGC creators due to a lack of results in the past, it’s most likely due to the fact that the brief you or your partner agency provided was too restrictive, or your requested amendments to created content were too heavy.
This simply leads to inauthentic, boring content that no potential consumer is interested in sitting through.
The perfect formula to achieving success on your UGC ads is hard to find, but we think a good balance of clear but concise direction from you and creative freedom is the secret to improving your chances of success.
