ABOUT

The brief:
In early 2019, we carried out market research into our brand perception. We learnt that MADE's advertising imagery and packshot illustrated campaigns was at odds with MADE's relatable, inclusive voice and identity. As a result, we set out to create our first ever campaign built around UGC, aimed at increasing brand affinity by showing our products in the homes of real MADE fans, thereby making our brand more relatable. The end goal? To communicate our ambition of democratising design.

The solution:
An interactive concept, celebrating the MADE community. Starting in Spring 2019, we encouraged our audience to share pictures of their 'happy place' on Instagram, using our @madedotcom tag and #MADEdesign.

We used a third-party tool to obtain the commercial rights to said UGC, published with the tags @madedotcom and #MADEdesign.

After asking followers to show us their own homes, the response was so overwhelming that what started as a social first idea, was transformed into a fully integrated 360° campaign, called Design Your Happy Place, which launched in AW2019.

Our goals:
1. Put real MADE fans (and their homes) at the heart of our marketing communication
An integration of more authentic visuals from our followers' homes should reflect an increase in engagement and impressions across our social media channels. The goal we set was a minimum of +30% YOY, as well as a 50% share of voice in all markets (measuring against a subset of key competitors).

2. Align paid social with the MADE brand
Facing low engagement and click through rates, paid social was one of the key areas where UGC was to come into play. KPI was ROAS uplift of 50%.

3. Create an on-brand resource for SEO-optimised content
Though not directly tied to marketing objectives, UGC was to provide a new image bank for our editorial content. SEO content specifically (articles based on high-ranking search terms) had been tricky to keep on-brand visually.

Results:

1. Organic social
Curating and sharing UGC (and encouraging fans to do the same) resulted in a database of over 15k UGC images. That's a 139% increase in the second half of 2019, compared to the first half.

Through continuous optimisation of the UGC content we shared, impressions and engagement rate increased by 156% and 39% YoY respectively. Plus, we increased social SOV: +69% for Q3 and Q4 of 2019.

2. Paid social
We included customers' post captions and built an automated product feed showing UGC. The result: during a controlled test, we noticed a ROAS increase of 110% from automated UGC ads, compared to automated ads that featured packshot images.

3. Editorial content and SEO optimisation
UGC streamlined MADE's editorial content production, replacing labour-intensive shoots to create visual assets. As a result, our increased output of SEO-optimised articles contributed to a 43% increase in SEO sessions YoY.

4. Homepage and product pages
We activated UGC on our homepage and product pages through a 'Shop Instagram' gallery. We found that website users are twice as likely to make a purchase after interacting with UGC onsite, compared to those who haven't.