Imperfect Content Is More Than Perfect

About the value of far-from-ideal user-generated content.

These days, content is definitely a burning topic. The biggest challenges are: what is a good content and how can it be delivered. With the young audience attention spans getting shorter and shorter, now about 8 seconds, and the fact that people change media channels almost every 2 minutes, brands need to understand what makes people push the play button, stay engaged and interact with content more frequently.

Young people’s desire for creative expression, their desire to share, as well as technology that makes everything instant, on-the-go and efficient— point to great opportunities for brands.

The fashion industry is a good example. In the past, it was dominated by controlled beauty shots, high-end videos executed with perfect cuts & style, impeccable aesthetics, perfect make-up and models. Recently, fashion brands began to share the director’s seat with audiences who document the shows and share them through their own channels.

Some brands take things further and live-stream fashion shows through available and popular channels. In the first four days of this year’s New York Fashion Week, designers shared 47 Periscope streams. Dior, at their most recent runway show, let their digital audience experience the event through an app that allowed them to see a 360-degree view of the whole show. This “letting go of control” let the brand expand their audience and accessibility.

Another area where the speed and “authenticity” starts to matter more is news and entertainment.

For a while now, Sky News Australia has been experimenting with a selfie stick for their reporters. The broadcaster has pioneered the use of an advanced selfie stick that lets their reporters attach smartphones and external microphones to the handheld device in order to film their footage. Almost immediately, via an app, the footage is transmitted back to the newsroom. Another TV station experimenting with reporting, is the Swiss Léman Bleu. The station’s reporters are outfitted only with an iPhone to shoot their stories. Reporters are able to go online anytime and from any location and upload their material straight away.

89% of GenZs need to stay creative to consider minutes valuable. As a great response to that, brands like Red Bull, Nescafé or GoPro are now reaching out to their audiences for their content and input.

Red Bull’s Clashem app, created by the LOOP Agency from Salzburg, lets users upload own videos and challenge other ones in battles judged by the community. That’s a great spin on user-generated content— easily shareable for creators, entertaining and engaging for spectators, and far away from overrated perfection controlled by the brand. As Red Bull promises:

Insane sports feats, paragliding dogs, stomach-churning show-offs, to cute kittens — you name it, we got it. No tags, no categories, anything goes. Judge or be judged.

Partly because of the popularity of their social media channels, Nescafé made a bold move to transforming their global portfolio of websites into a single Tumblr blog featuring user-generated content that re-connects with younger people and engages them in real conversations. According to the brand, “the dotcom is a reflection of talking to people and this approach is outdated. What works is inclusion and opening to conversations.”

GoPro is another example of a brand embracing real, unstaged, unscripted content. The brand is transforming itself from a hardware company and media channel to a content resource that allows third parties to purchase user-generated content for marketing, ND users, of course receiving a fee.

The final takeout?

Firstly, real-time of delivery is the new measure of experience.

Brands can benefit from instantaneously sharing by putting less focus on beautifying the output and speeding up the sharing process.

Secondly, user-generated content is important and it is available. Brands need to access it, and co-create in order to boost relationships.

The benefits are simple: conversion from “see” to “buy” increases from 4.5% to 9.6% when the content is user-generated.