It’s Friday and you’re sitting in your office trying to come up with a spectacular and interesting way to get your audience engaged.

You have a great product and great content already, so what could you possibly be missing?

We all know that consumers decide what stays and what goes nowadays. They are more likely to buy when they see their friends use that same product or service. If you love your brand and you know your clients do too, what better way to showcase that than through user-generated content?Having consumers provide their own videos will encourage engagement through social media, create new usable content for your brand, and promote your company in an organic and trustworthy way which can lead to increased sales.

Cue the video competition era. Brands are learning more and more that clients love to showcase the things they care about. For example, everyone is familiar with the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” ad campaign. They chose a brilliant way to involve their target demographic, as well as anyone else who wanted to have video featured at the Super Bowl.

Not only were they getting lots of consumer-generated videos of their product, but they also had users engaged by voting on their favorite video! This ad campaign alone lasted them ten years and resulted in a multi-billion dollar profit.

Target gives us another look at a top marketing campaign that pulled consumers into the strategy. They have mastered the art of getting excellent content and using it in a way that not only involves their customers but also promotes their brand’s new ventures and ideals. Target created a fantastic and heart-warming video submission campaign asking high school students to showcase the moment they receive their college acceptance letter.


The company paired these gleeful and tearful videos with a commitment to donate funds toward education, resulting in a billion dollars given towards education.

Target extends their reach by employing home videos to advertise for their new website, SharetheForce.com, which serves as a place for fans to share their favorite Star Wars memories. By giving their customers a way to celebrate the things they care about, Target is branding themselves as People Centered—a core value we swear by, and push our clients to focus on for greater conversion!

One of our favorite companies, Function Point, kicked off their own user-generated content contest for a prize of $500! Since we have worked with them before and – of course – love their product, we paired with them to create content to help get people’s brains moving. We hope you enjoyed the flashback of our winning video-entry at the top of this blog post!

Having example submissions right off the bat can help encourage more users to participate.

Kick off your user generated video contest by clarifying the rules and expectations upfront, create a promotional sample submission, and encourage participants to be spontaneous!

If you love this idea and need help facilitating, we would be more than happy to discuss your video contest needs.

#marketing #film #corporatevideo #DHDFilms #branding #Dallas