How Entertainment Brands Are Killing it with User-Generated Content

 
User-generated content is one of the biggest trends in modern marketing, and it’s easy to see why. After all, UGC-based ads get a 4x higher click-through rate and a 50% drop in cost-per-click compared to regular ads. As if that wasn’t enough, more than 86% of businesses are already using UGC as part of their marketing strategy, which means that if you’re not getting involved, you risk falling behind.

 

UGC and the entertainment industry are a match made in heaven. After all, it’s much easier to get people excited about entertainment than it is in other industries, and yet UGC marketing has also been used successfully by B2B companies, equipment manufacturers and more. Any industry can be successful with UGC if they get their approach right, but entertainment brands have it easier than most.

That’s why in today’s article, we’re taking a little time to look at entertainment marketing, sports entertainment marketing, user-generated content and the interplays between them. Here are just a few of the best examples of successful UGC campaigns from across the industry.

 
 

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What is Entertainment Marketing?

 
Entertainment marketing is interesting because there are two different definitions, and each of them is equally valid:

 

  • The first definition refers to the marketing of entertainment products such as books, movies and music.
  • The second definition covers the use of entertainment to promote another product, such as when a clothing or consumer electronics brand sponsors an athlete or a musician.

 

 

Top 5 Entertainment Marketing Examples

 

1.      Netflix

 
Netflix is arguably the archetypal entertainment marketing company. After all, their offering revolves entirely around their streaming services, and they tap into this by relying heavily on UGC to get the word about their shows and movies. This is particularly important considering their increasing focus on creating original programming.

 

UGC is so successful for Netflix because it uses social proof to encourage people to check out new shows. The company also encourages the use of specific hashtags for different shows so that they can filter through conversations and track the overall buzz around their new releases. They can even use it as an indicator of how successful a show is likely to be before it launches.

 

2.      Spotify

 
As a music streaming service, there’s no reason why Spotify couldn’t have just copied the Netflix approach. Instead, they took a different approach, tapping into the data that they have on their users to create a personalised year in review reports and even revealing when real-world events caused specific songs to spike.

 

Another successful UGC campaign came about when they started highlighting some of the strangest playlists that their users have created, including the intriguingly named “Sorry I Lost Your Cat” playlist. One of the reasons why this campaign was so successful was that it was rolled out across multiple different channels, from real-world billboards to social media marketing and digital advertising.

 

3.      Crown

 
Crown is one of the largest entertainment groups in Australia, welcoming 29 million visitors per year at its flagship location alone. This makes UGC the perfect option, especially because there was plenty of it being created and consumed before they even launched their digital advertising campaign.

 

Their approach was to use the UGC to create a library of automated, super-relevant digital advertisements that were delivered through social networking sites. Better still, they were able to do this whilst also obtaining permission to use the photos from the people who took them. It was an approach that clearly worked, leading to 25% more likes and 21% lower CPMs.

 
 

Sports Entertainment Marketing Definition

 
Sports entertainment marketing covers the specific subsection of the entertainment industry which covers sporting events, ranging from snooker and pool to baseball, basketball, football and more. Pro wrestling counts too, as do events like the Olympics. If it’s sports-related and it’s marketing, it’s probably sports entertainment marketing.
 
Best Sports Entertainment Marketing Examples
 

4.      GoPro

 
GoPro is notable because it built its entire approach to marketing around user-generated content. The cameras that it makes are perfect for extreme sports, which is why they tend to focus on sports entertainment marketing and UGC.

 

A great example of this UGC in action is their “Photo of the Day”, which they share on Instagram. And when it comes to sports entertainment marketing, it’s hard to find a better example than their partnership with Red Bull and Felix Baumgartner, who skydived to earth from the edge of space and took a GoPro along for the ride.

 

5.      NYCFC

 
New York City Football Club turned to user-generated content to build an atmosphere at soccer games by using the stadium’s Jumbotron to display UGC on match days in real-time. The goal was to bring digital media and the real world together to make for a better match day experience.

 

Of course, the brilliance of this campaign is that as soon as people saw other people’s photos on the big screen, they wanted to get in on the action. This led to an uptick in the amount of UGC that was published and increased the team’s reach on social media sites. On top of that, NYCFC was able to build a library of user-generated content that they could use for other marketing campaigns.

 
The power of UGC Report
 

What’s Next?

 
It’s pretty obvious even to casual observers that user-generated content is going to continue to grow in importance. After all, social networking is taking up more and more of our time both as people and as marketers, and the importance of the voice of the customer is never going to go away.

 

For now, the main thing to do is to evaluate your existing marketing campaigns and to identify where they could be augmented by incorporating user-generated content. Do the same thing on your website, too. Pay particular attention to the point of sale because including UGC on product and checkout pages can be a great way to increase conversions.

Remember that UGC marketing isn’t the only option available to you, but it does work well as part of an overall marketing mix and it’s more powerful in the entertainment industry than it is in virtually any other industry on the planet. If you’re not taking advantage of it – or at the very least, experimenting with it and measuring the results – then you’re missing out. Get started with UGC today if you haven’t already. Good luck.

 
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