Louise McGregor Marketing

User Generated Content

User generated content

In my last post I wrote about the Engagement Ladder, the top rung of which is user-generated content, I’ve been thinking more about this form of content and looking for some positive examples, here’s what I’ve come up with.

User generated content can be a great loyalty builder for brands, but there are some things to consider before you launch your campaign.

Is your brand ready? You’ll be giving up some control of your brand, if your marketing, legal, risk teams aren’t ready for that reality you’ll need to do more work internally.

Is your brand positively viewed? If you open up your brand for user input while your brand is in a crisis the blowback will be swift. Starbucks famously started a Christmas campaign in 2012 with the hashtag #SpreadTheCheer, a nice idea, and large screens were installed to display the messages in stores. Unfortunately the company was in the middle of a crisis around paying tax in the UK and the tweets focussed on that rather than the festive season.

Does your brand have a tribe? You need a group of your customers/clients to be engaged enough to want to build content for your brand, otherwise there’ll be no response.

Can you create a fair process? You need to respect the rights of the content creators, which may include offering fair payment, and you need to be clear on what you are promising to do with the work created.

There are three ways to elicit content from your customer groups.

Open Call

Publish a request for customers to submit content, sometimes this is done as part of a competition. It sounds generous, giving all customers a chance to contribute, and it can work, but your brand needs to be positively regarded and you need to be clear about what you’re planning to do with the work. One example of a celebrity crowdsourcing a design did generate a concept book cover, but also generated plenty of criticism from the designer community. The more open your make the call and selection process the more likely you are to get the backlash. However this may still be a good option for a shorter or local campaign. There are a number of companies using hashtag based selection on Instagram to share themed posts (#ThankYouAmsterdam for example), and the results are positive for both parties.

Selective Approach

Research who of your customers is already creating great content, or look for social media influencers whose work matches your brand. Invite them to contribute content.

Spotify are using some of their subscribers’ lists in ads, building on their existing fanbase, I’m sure they’ve researched the lists and contacted the subscriber before building the ad.

Existing Community

Your brand already has a group of committed fans, who are independently building content.

One of the best examples out there, demonstrating the loyalty and ingenuity of customers, is IKEA Hackers. Although at one point IKEA tried to close the site.  The site showcases ways that IKEA products have been repurposed; cabinets become a  bed base, vases become a bathroom wall, and a folding desk saves space. A smarter approach might have been to engage the IKEA Hackers and look for ways to support their activities to enhance the IKEA brand.

Lego have successfully built a community of super loyal fans,  their brand is based on the human needs of playing/building together and the pride of creation so their online platform Lego Ideas ties into the brand and gives their fans a chance to develop new lego sets – the best of which go into production.  They also support the robot building lego league, although it was not started by the company.

One of my favourite example of a personality doing this is the wonderful, Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o who uses #FanArtFriday on her Instagram account, the images are beautiful and reflect her career. She’s genuinely excited to share them.

user generated content

Three things to think about before you start;

  • company readiness
  • process including legal rights and payments
  • your commitment to using the final work.

Spotify and Lego show us that user-generated content can work for a company, but it takes brand commitment and a tribe.

Image:  Artist   |   M McIntyre   |   CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Louise McGregor Editorial, Innovation

Toy Stories

Two pieces of good news from the world of toys last week.

Barbie got a make-under

As iconic as Barbie is she’s been under fire for years for perpetuating an unrealistic body myth for girls and young women. Someone has gone to the trouble of calculating the probability of a woman having Barbie’s measurements; for Barbie’s neck measurement it’s one in 4.3 billion. For a long time doctors, teachers, parents and feminists have raised the issue of “the Barbie effect“.  She’s encountered criticism for her career performance as well, when cast as a computer programmer. Mattel have seemed reluctant to make big changes, but in 2013 sales dropped. 2015 saw the launch of some

Mattel have now launched a new series of Barbie dolls, the Fashionistas; with 4 body types, 7 skin tones, 14 face shapes and a myriad of hair colours.

Screen Shot 2016-02-01 at 15.12.17

This is just some of the range available.

I broke the internet rule and read the comments on this article from the Guardian.  Many commenters don’t believe this is an important step, stating that dolls are part of fantasy play. Yes, of course, but the dolls are our own avatars and it’s great that these dolls give children a choice that is more like themselves.

Legoland gets a wheelchair

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Lego, another toy brand that has been under fire for its designs in recent years, has launched a wheelchair that will fit any minifig as part of its “Fun in the Park” set.

It may be in response to the Toy Like Me campaign which seeks to have better representation of childhood toys with disabilities. They’re in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign right now, check it out and give them your support.

I’ve heard all the arguments about “it’s just a toy”, “kids don’t remember this stuff” and “changing toys doesn’t change the world”. To me this isn’t about creating a single memory, and I don’t believe changing how toys appear will change the world. But creating toys that demonstrate diversity could be part of a bigger change, it could widen our perception of what “normal” is, and it could be part of instilling pride in children who are outside the mainstream because they are in an ethnic minority, use a wheelchair, have glasses, use a walking stick or have red hair.

Children are very aware of the people around them and pick up on all sorts of nuances of people’s appearance. They’re also aware from an early age of when they’re invisible or excluded.  I’m sure that both Mattel and Lego have calculated the benefits of PR and profit from these moves, but I still applaud these moves to make their toys more inclusive.

 

Post Script; I didn’t have Barbie or Lego growing up, it’s the lack of Lego I regret.

header image:  toys via pixabay

Louise McGregor Editorial

“Boys’ Toys” Starts Early

I have just posted the following on the Facebook page of Online Toys Australia.

You have some great toys in your range but I won’t be shopping with you as long as you list 234 learning toys for boys and none for girls, and while no science toys of any description are listed for girls.

I adore my nephews and want them to have all the great fun in the world. But I also adore my niece and want her to grow up with all the same learning opportunities.

That’s six gifts a year I could be shipping from your site. And I’m a VERY generous aunt.

Let me know when you have stopped the extreme gender bias on your site and I may reconsider.

I think it’s mad to list toys by gender but I accept that it’s probably a helpful categorisation for many shoppers, but take a look at the difference in toys available.

Girls get Barbie, beauty & jewellery, dolls, food and cooking. I did play with dolls as a child, but I also played with meccano and building blocks. And Lego. In fact I’d still play with Lego given the chance.

Boys get action figures (which are really just dolls with uniforms), model kitss, outdoor toys, toy guns. Stereotypical boys’ toys. Plus 234 “Learning Toys”. Read the text; it’s essentially a “girls keep out” sign.

Learning toys include loads of cool science experiments; bubble science, magnet science and a volcano building kit.

In a world where we need more graduates in Science and Technology why is this manufacturer saying that these toys are not for girls?

I want better than this for my niece. I want better than this for my nephews.

I won’t shop with Online Toys Australia unless they change.

UPDATE:

Online Toys Australia responded professionally to my questions and have updated their site so that there is a category under “Girls’ Toys”  called “Science and Education” which has 88 items. I do give them credit for taking this step, and I recognise that re-organising content on a site is a complicated process (more in terms of information architecture and design than the technical aspect).

This is still less than half the learning toys listed for boys, the “Girls keep out” language remains on the boys’ toys page, and boys do not get to have “food and fun” so the site continues to perpetuate gender stereotypes.

However in one of their responses they did say “Listing or copying the entire boys category into the girls category would defeat the purpose of having gender categories. If we were to do this, we would seriously need to ask ourselves why have two identical categories?” So the light may be dawning.

POSTSCRIPT:

I’ve found a site with great toys and meaningful categories on their site. It’s called Flying Penguin, and they posted this image on twitter explaining how to tell if a toy is for a boy or a girl. They’ve just got a new loyal customer, and my first order was over 200 AUD.

 

image boys