Essie is turning to its fans for content creation.
The L’Oréal-owned nail polish company partnered with Olapic — a visual marketing technology platform that helps brands collect, curate, publish and analyze the impact of earned media, or user-generated content — to get the most out of highly engaged followers.
The first step, according to Rebecca Easton, interactive marketing manager at L’Oréal Canada, is earning the rights to use UGC.
When we see a photo that meets Essie’s brand guidelines, we send a comment to that user on their social channel, asking them to respond with a predefined hashtag #EssieFan. That allows us to use their content on or offline and in our marketing activities. Most are happy to give us access,” Easton said.
She added: “We have been able to scale this so significantly that now on our site, we have UGC-rights approved content on over 80 percent of our portfolio.”
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It has improved the engagement on the site, too. Thirty-five percent of returning site visitors are engaging with this earned media — and when they are looking at photos, they are viewing 10 or more at once.
Olapic is helping Essie leverage this content in-store, as well, and soon the brand will install digital screens in top retailer doors to help consumers select the color they wish to buy. A shopper will be able to scan a specific color and automatically see rights-approved UGC content displayed on the screen pertaining to that shade.
“It sounds like a no-brainer, but a lot of brands are using owned content of advertising assets on social,” said Joe Drennan, vice president, Olapic Inc. “We’ve seen that UGC consistently outperforms owned content when being used as assets for social ads.
Easton agreed. She said Essie compared Instagram ads featuring top fan photos and ones with branded creative content, and the UGC images generated 50 percent lower cost per click and 40 percent lower cost-per-thousand impressions.