This is a page on a UGC marketplace telling you when not to buy UGC.
That is worth saying plainly, because the useful version of this advice cannot come from someone with nothing to lose by giving it. There are three situations where the format underperforms, and buying it anyway is the most common route to a brand deciding that UGC does not work.
Three situations where it underperforms
None of these are about the creators being bad. They are about the job being wrong.
When nobody has the problem yet
UGC is excellent at showing a person solving a problem the viewer already recognises. It is poor at explaining that a problem exists.
If your product belongs to a category people are not looking for, a creator saying it changed their routine lands on an audience with no slot to put it in. They are not unconvinced, they are unaware, and enthusiasm does not fix that. Category education needs explanation, comparison and repetition, and those are different formats with different lengths.
When the purchase is rare and heavily researched
Some things are bought once every several years, after weeks of comparison, often with somebody else involved in the decision.
For those, a short video from a stranger is a very early touch and almost never the deciding one. It can still be worth making, but judging it on conversion within the campaign window guarantees it looks like a failure. Brands in these categories routinely commission UGC, measure it as though it were a discount code, and conclude the format is broken.
When the product cannot be shown working
If the effect is invisible, delayed, or only meaningful in aggregate, the camera has nothing to record.
Financial products, some supplements, anything preventive: the creator can describe the benefit but cannot show it, and description without demonstration is an advert with a smaller budget. That is not a reason never to film. It is a reason to change what the video is for, from proving the effect to making the company feel real.
| The situation | Why UGC underperforms | What moves it instead |
|---|---|---|
| Nobody knows the category exists | Nothing for the viewer to recognise | Explanation, comparison, repetition |
| Rare, researched purchase | It is the first touch, judged as the last | Longer content, and patient measurement |
| Invisible or delayed effect | The camera has nothing to record | Proof, credentials, and time |
| The site or delivery is not ready | The video works, the next step fails | Fix the step, then film |
| No budget for more than one video | One piece cannot be tested | Wait, and buy three at once |
The last two rows are the expensive ones, because in both cases the content is fine and the campaign still fails.
What the small market adds
In Portugal there is a second cost that does not appear on the invoice.
A campaign that goes badly does not only waste the fee. It teaches a group of creators, who talk to each other, that working with you was disorganised, or that the brief was impossible, or that payment took months. In a market this size that reputation moves faster than any brief you send afterwards, and it makes your next casting harder in a way you will never trace back to this.
So the decision to buy UGC badly is more expensive here than the same decision in a large market, and the correct response to any of the three situations above is to wait rather than to spend a smaller amount.
What to do instead in each case
If the category is unknown, buy explanation first and UGC second. One clear piece of long content that makes the problem visible turns your later UGC from confusing to obvious, in that order and not the reverse.
If the purchase is rare, commission the content and measure it over a longer horizon, or accept it as an early touch and stop asking it to close. Both are honest. Asking it to close and then blaming the format is not.
If the effect cannot be shown, film everything around it: how the company works, who is behind it, what happens when you contact them. That is a real and useful job, and it is the one that works when the product itself is not filmable.
And if the answer is that today is not the moment, that is a legitimate outcome of reading this. The format will still be here when the situation fits.
Keep reading
- In Portugal Your Video Competes With the Calendar
- Saudade Is a Beautiful Word and a Bad Brief
- Hiring UGC Creators in Portugal: A Guide for Foreign Brands
- Building a First Portfolio Before Anybody Hires You
- The complete UGC guide for Portugal
Frequently asked questions
Is UGC ever wrong for a physical consumer product?
Rarely, if people already know they want the category. The failures in those cases are almost always about the offer, the site or the delivery rather than the content.
We tried it once and it did not work. Should we try again?
Look first at which of the situations above applied, and at whether one video was ever enough to conclude anything. A single piece with no variant tells you about that piece, not about the format.
What is the minimum worth commissioning?
Enough to compare. Three pieces that differ in one deliberate way each teach you something. One piece teaches you almost nothing, whatever the result.
Does this change if we are also selling abroad?
It changes the second situation most. Cross border purchases involve more hesitation, so the touch is even earlier in the decision, and the measurement window has to be longer again.