Last Updated: December 1, 2020

In 2006, the Frito-Lay Corporation and its advertising partners found a way to leverage emerging technology to upend the TV commercial business. The company created the “Crash the Super Bowl” contest to bring a unique twist to the usually crowded advertising space during the most-watched American TV event of the year.

Instead of creating a commercial in-house, Frito-Lay asked consumers to craft a Doritos commercial on their own and submit it for a chance to win a million-dollar prize. The Crash the Super Bowl website received over 1,000 submissions and well over a million hits in just a few months.

Crash the Super Bowl was such a success that Frito-Lay continues to run the contest to this day. The increase in visibility of their leading product regularly results in higher sales, while the participatory aspect of the campaign generates free press coverage, high website traffic, and plenty of sharing through online video sites.

What is user-generated marketing?

Any marketing campaign that allows consumers to create advertising content or otherwise participate in the marketing process can be considered user-generated marketing. This strategy has become increasingly easy to use and popular with the advent of Internet technologies, involving social media, recommendation sites, and content sharing tools. (See also Interactive Marketing)

Marketers implement user-generated campaigns to create a more interactive and enaging experience for consumers. When Frito-Lay gave consumers an incentive to recommend Doritos to other consumers, they also making the resulting commercials more interesting because they came from a novel source. Though the winning commercial would eventually run in paid ad space during the Super Bowl and other TV shows, all other submitted commercials were available on the Interne and sharable through social media.

User-generated marketing can be as complex as the Crash the Super Bowl contest or as simple as integrating a customer review section on a product website. Whatever form it takes, this strategy is designed to make customers into partners in the marketing process, rather than just targets.

Who implements user-generated marketing campaigns?

User-generated marketing is cost effective and relatively easy to maintain, making the strategy useful for both larger and smaller companies.

Crash the Super Bowl is an example of a large corporation implementing a complex and relatively expensive user-generated marketing campaign. Frito-Lay not only created a special website and social media presence for the campaign, but also provided prize money to winners while still paying for advertising space during the Super Bowl. Their purpose was not to reduce the cost of advertising, but to increase the number of people who saw the advertisement.

Small companies benefit from user-generated marketing because it helps them establish a reputation that could lead to powerful word-of-mouth effects that increase business traffic.For example, small businesses, like local restaurants and private medical practices, advertise themselves on Yelp.com to give their customers a place to write reviews for them. Consumers visit Yelp to find local businesses and determine if other consumers approve of those businesses. If customers generally give a business positive reviews on Yelp, it increases the likelihood that other consumers will become that business’s new customers.

Nonprofit organizations use content to raise awareness about the organization’s cause and build a community around it. If, for instance, a nonprofit group advocating for more bike paths in the city of Boston wanted to start a user-generated marketing campaign, the group could write relevant blog posts and encourage reader participation in a comments section within the blog. Readers would not only visit the blog to read the articles posted there, but also to participate in conversations with other users that they are likely to share elsewhere on the Internet (i.e. through email, social network updates, and in cross-linking with other blogs).

Developing a user-generated marketing plan

While most marketing strategies begin with a period of research to determine a target audience, a user-generated strategy gathers that information during the actual campaign.

For example, if a new bakery opens and wants to implement a user-generated marketing element to its business, the bakery could start by soliciting feedback from customers. This can take many forms, such as comment cards in the store itself or a product rating system on the bakery’s website.

To this end, the bakery could also create an interactive menu on its website that allows customers to give one-to-five star ratings to individual items, as well as the option to leave comments.

The bakery could use this information to adjust its stock and improve its recipes, but it could also call attention to the best ratings. For instance, if several customers give a five-star rating to the bakery’s chocolate cupcake, the bakery could advertise it as a “Customer Favorite” or “Voted Five Stars by You on XYZ-Bakery.com.” (See also Consumer-Generated Marketing)

By developing a social media presence, companies develop reputations for user-generated marketing. To add a sharing component to its plan, the bakery could include social networking widgets to the menu rating page on its website so customers can spread their enthusiasm for their favorite items. The rating tells the bakery what products customers prefer, but the social networking component lets customers raise awareness about their favorite products and encourages others to make purchases of their own.

User-generated marketing can be an ongoing process. It is easy to assess the effectiveness and refine at any stage. Once the campaign starts, there is no reason for the organization that uses it to stop gathering feedback from customers.

Careers in user-generated marketing

Customers generate a lot of the content in user-generated marketing, so it is the goal of marketing professionals to encourage customers to contribute their thoughts. The following three careers can all facilitate communication between a company and its customers through user-generated marketing systems.

Public Relations Representative

Web Designer

Brand Manager

How can a marketing school help you succeed?

Few companies rely solely on user-generated marketing. It is a strategy best implemented alongside other methods, like informational marketing and promotional advertising (See also Informational Marketing). Marketing education programs teach the principles of modern marketing techniques, and introduce students to the tools necessary to develop functional marketing strategies in the workplace.

Marketing courses cover a broad range of topics that are essential to understanding the field. This includes classes in business financing and budgeting, team-building exercises to develop strong communication and time management skills, and branding classes to discuss the importance of marketing content.

Marketing courses in technology give students hands-on experience with web design software like Adobe InDesign and common code structures like HTML. These classes also explore the user-focused world of new media like social networking and mobile applications in the business landscape.

With a foundation of core marketing concepts and business tools, students will be given the chance to approach in-depth case studies of real-world marketing campaigns to learn how today’s most successful corporations and agencies interact with consumers. Students will also have the opportunity to participate in business simulations that require them to develop their own marketing campaigns.

A marketing program is a fast, efficient way to learn the ins and outs of a challenging field. It provides aspiring marketing professionals with a useful background that can serve as a springboard to a long and successful career.