Over Influenced - UGC Reviews May Do Your Brand More Harm Than Good

With every scroll it seems that a creator is selling something. Even the pages you used to love to follow now have a commission link and are subtle pushing you to make a purchase. UGC, aka user generated content, has taken social media by storm. Is it on the way out?

Over influenced...that's the best way to describe it. UGC reviews may do your brand more harm than good this year solely because of saturation. What's real? What's sponsored? Now more than ever, people are searching Google for products and adding "real review" to the end of their query.

Here are our favorite ways to be authentic in your promotional content so your brand thrives. We implement these methods into our content creation to bring our clients success.

• Have a real live brand ambassador talk about your product and brand consistently on camera. Let one voice control your branding.

• Make more informational videos than you do review or "selling" videos. Show the product, tell the customers why you created the product, explain the features of your product, give details on your product, etc. You do not have to "sell" your customer in every piece of content.

• Post real UGC from real customers, without giving a script. You can still do UGC, you just alter how you are doing it. Every review will be unique. Your customers might even mention things you never thought to advertise.

• Let your brand ambassador interview customers on camera, to build trust in your brand.

Customers are losing trust in businesses because of the deceptive marketing through user generated content, paid reviews, and fake comments.

While there is some regulation, there's almost zero enforcement. Look at just one social media post for any decent sized brand that's posting heavy UGC. You will see just as many, if not more, negative comments than positive comments. You cannot please everyone, this is fact. Now go to that brand's website and we bet you'll see only 4 and 5 star reviews. Did you know most review apps automatically hide 1, 2 and 3 star reviews?

The health and beauty industry is a great example. Brands will find creators and send product in exchange for content. Now not only are they asking for video content, they're asking for reviews. For each deal that's made, brands send a script or at least a list of points. Everyone typically gets the same list, as this list becomes part of the marketing initiatives.

The easiest way to spot a paid review is to find the few things every review has in common. To a regular consumer, they'll think "wow this face cream must be really silky and smooth, because every person mentioned that." To a marketer, we roll our eyes and say "paid endorsement".

And it doesn't stop there. While testing an AI app for image generation, we saw dozens of "before and after" photo examples of body changes that were generated for a very, very popular health brand. The platform was using these images, with permission from the brand, to promote the capabilities of AI for UGC. Just another reason why AI is banned at Ambition. It had never crossed our minds to think that a brand would use AI to so severely alter an image to promote a product, but after thinking about it this is really not a surprise at all. This is the world we live in.

When you Work With Ambition, we manage your brand in the most authentic way possible. Real services, real experience, real results. We do UGC in a natural way, and it sets our clients apart. Contact us to get started!