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The Impact of UGC in PopSockets' Guerilla Marketing Campaign

PopSockets prides themselves on innovation and originality. The pioneer phone-grip brand devised a campaign that would project them onto some of London’s most iconic landmarks. To pull it off, they needed a collection of high-quality, user-generated content. 

  • Location: Tampere, Finland
  • Employees: 21
  • Industry: Consumer Goods
PopSockets Case Study  David Waddington
David Waddington
Digital and Brand Manager

Without Brandbassador this campaign would not have looked anything like it did as I think the UGC element is what makes it so visually interesting.

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A Tall Order

PopSockets' campaign would turn iconic London architecture into their own branded video screens. They planned to achieve this using state-of-the-art projection mapping technology. But before they could take over locations such as Knightsbridge, Oxford Street, and London’s Marble Arch, they needed the perfect content. 

The creative marketing team at PopSockets toyed with the idea of using brand-created content. But there were concerns about the legality of using it in such a unique manner. That’s when the team thought of their brand ambassador community.

 

Popsockets_UGC Marketing Projection Campaign

The Challenge

  • Wanted to create a splash with a campaign projecting their content on iconic architecture throughout London UK.
  • Needed to ensure they had full permission to use the content.
  • Content had to fit certain criteria and be high quality.
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Commissioning Content for Campaigns

User-generated content is more trusted than any other type of promotional content. Knowing this, PopSockets utilised one of their greatest assets - their vibrant community of brand ambassadors.

PopSockets believed that taking videos people are used to seeing on a 6-inch phone screen and casting them onto the sides of 100-foot tall buildings would be unique enough to catch the eyes of bustling pedestrians. Luckily, PopSockets’ ambassadors consistently provide high-quality creative content, through marketing missions on Brandbassador. This gave the brand a large collection of videos to choose from when building their campaign. 

This also solved the issue of licensing rights. When ambassadors join PopSockets’ program, they give permission for the brand to use the content they submit in any way.

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Collecting Quality Content

Using the Brandbassador platform, PopSockets collected tons of TikToks and Reels throughout the year from various Missions (creative marketing tasks). The content featured a wide range of their products, from PopGrip for MagSafe to licensed PopGrips like Harry Potter or Mickey Mouse. With a full library of content at their fingertips, PopSockets didn’t need to create a new Mission to curate content for their projection campaign. 

Instead, the brand had the challenge of shortlisting the content they did want to use. With 12 months’ worth of quality content, the difficulty became almost too much choice!

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The Right Support for the Job

Brandbassador’s award-winning Customer Success team partners with brands to help them achieve their marketing goals and get the most from their brand ambassadors. PopSockets’ Customer Success Manager works closely with the brand to approve ambassador content as it comes in, leaving PopSockets confident the videos they sifted through all had a high level of quality.

PopSockets’ relationship with the team at Brandbassador was a valuable resource, acting as a sounding board for the concept and continued support after the campaign went live.

The Results

The projection campaign received a fantastic reaction. Early figures show that a few thousand Londoners stopped in their tracks to watch. Dwell times suggested that the campaign held the attention of pedestrians for multiple watch-throughs.

Beyond brand awareness, PopSockets’ goal was to connect with the content creator community. They want influencers and potential brand ambassadors to see that they genuinely celebrate and appreciate the content creators they work with. Being a brand ambassador for PopSockets means they may do something big with your content - like project your face onto the side of a building for thousands of people to see! Click here to watch the campaign highlights video. 

Q & A

You used user-generated content for this campaign. How did you ensure you received high-quality content from your brand ambassadors?

We have a fantastic support team in Brandbassador who help us in our approval process for content so I was confident that any videos would be of a high level of quality. 

Projecting onto a building meant that there were certain criteria we needed to be conscious of, such as having no audio. This really directed our search through the content we had accumulated over time as it needed to work with no sound.

Did ambassadors know they would be featured prior to the launch?

No.

Did you get to see any ambassador reactions to the campaign? How was their response?

We have had some really excited and enthusiastic responses from ambassadors! It’s not every day you get to be beamed on the side of iconic landmarks in a capital city, so I think they were pretty excited to be featured.

What advice do you have for other brands looking to use UGC in ad campaigns?

I think everyone knows how the right UGC can have a massive impact on ad campaigns in creating a more authentic tone of voice. But personally, my advice would be to not limit yourself to what you can do with it. Maybe a simple ‘boost post’ within your social channel of choice will give you the results you want, and that’s great probably 90% of the time. But I think more and more people are looking to be engaged in interesting ways - to be entertained - so there are possibilities to take this same UGC content and do more with it. 

Whether you get a great piece of UGC and get inspired to come up with an innovative campaign off the back of it, or work the other way around and start with an unusual concept and then find the missing UGC pieces to fit it, it’s about asking what you can do differently to push the boundaries a little and get the maximum impact.

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