A business wants a brand image that is authentic and top-of-mind to consumers. Various techniques have been attempted to master a relatable brand image that is appealing to a large audience. UPshow easily conquers authenticity and top-of-mind awareness with one simple solution: Consumer-generated content.
If you’ve been living under a rock (hey, we don’t judge, it’s been a rough year) then we will catch you up. Consumer-generated content is when the customer posts about the business on social media on their own platform by their own choice. Our UPshow screens blast that social media picture with the appropriate hashtags up on the screen so the consumer can have their 15 seconds of fame, while the business is reeling in online content.
The ultimate goal is getting your message to stick. If your business wants consumer attention you have to have the right message at the right time in the right medium. One way to get customers to start paying attention is to create an inviting and intriguing brand image. The most intriguing brand image comes from exactly what consumer-generated content can offer:
A Realistic Lifestyle:
Before social media, brands would push product into mediums such as magazine, with model friends grinning wide, lifting their glasses of sponsored vodka into the air with their manicured tips. Audiences would gaze at the glossy pages and imagine how life could be like that next time they found themselves swiveling in the bar stool. Today, influencers (normal people, yay!) showcase what “cool” is within what most consumers deem an affordable/more realistic lifestyle. A heck of a lot easier to obtain than to try to live like Kylie Jenner. The effortless nature of the influencer concept makes it one of the most personable when dealing with consumer-generated content. Besides, it’s not just consumers that are fed up with celebrity sponsored advertising hidden in Instagram posts.
Natural:
Consumers today are well aware of the efforts companies take to make content for social media. The staged photoshoots are just not natural and stick out like advertising rather than seamlessly streamlining into the social media user’s feed. Not everyone can afford the glamorous lifestyle staged on branded content. This makes the ad unreachable and unrealistic to most consumers you’re trying to convince to purchase the product. Instead, your brand image should seem natural to your consumer. When utilizing consumer-generated content, the posts of real people at your real business tell the social world that your business is popular but also approachable.
Trustworthy:
We take our friends shopping with us because it is their responsibility to tell us if those shoes look super-fly or super-lame. Now that friend has a blog, a Yelp account and 5000 followers on Instagram. Her responsibility has expanded to letting you know where to eat, shop and drink based on what she has to say online. The element of trust within consumer-generated content is like the trust of an old friend.
