Blog
Tips, guides and stories about UGC and creator marketing.
Doing UGC without putting your face in it
The honest answer is not a simple yes. Start from what the brand is buying when it asks for a face, and it becomes clear what can replace it and what cannot.
The sound was in the app, so it is cleared
It is not, the moment the brand puts money behind the video. Where the video will run is the only thing that decides what it can sound like.
They are sending the box instead of the money
One message hides three completely different offers. Here is how to tell them apart, what to answer, and the rare case where taking the product is the right call.
You Already Paid for Them to Learn the Product
Part of the first invoice was a stranger working out what your product does. That is not a cost you have to pay twice, and most brands pay it every time.
The Question That Ends a Conversation You Were Winning
A client you have almost signed sends a supplier form. One line asks for your insurance details, and there is no good way to answer it late.
Somewhere in Your Company There Are Two Briefs
One written in Antwerp, one in Brussels, for the same campaign. Some of that duplication is necessary and most of it is not.
Your Best Sentence Is Probably Third
It is where people warm up, and it is where good footage goes to die. Editing UGC is subtraction, and almost every instinct in the timeline is additive.
What Goes in the Box
Everybody writes about the brief. Almost nobody thinks about the parcel, and what is inside it decides half the messages that follow.
The Line Missing From Most Belgian Invoices
Nobody would ask a creator to cross France for free. Crossing Belgium reads as nothing, and that is exactly why it costs you.
Most UGC Briefs Are a Mood Board and a Deadline
A brief is not inspiration. It is the list of decisions you have already made, and six lines carry almost all of them.
You Did Not Sell Them Views
The video did not perform and the message has arrived. What you say in the next hour decides whether this becomes your fault permanently.
The One UGC Brief Marketing Does Not Pay For
Hiring content is bought by a different department, judged by a different metric, and it answers three questions a job ad structurally cannot.
August Will Look Like Your Business Is Failing
It is not. The work did not disappear, it moved, and the expensive mistake is what you do in the third quiet week.
Improved by Everybody Who Saw It
UGC rarely dies in production. It dies in approval, and it dies by being improved, which is why nobody in the room can see it happening.
Three Foreign Markets Before Lunch
From most of Belgium you can be in another country in under an hour. Almost no creator here prices for that, and the mistake is always the same one.
The Brief Says Show How the Service Works
There is nothing to show. That single fact is why most service UGC turns into an explainer, and why the explainer does not work.
Two Creators, One Tuesday, Two Different Businesses
One sold footage. The other sold an audience. They used the same camera and the same product, and only one of them knew which business they were in.
For a Restaurant, Reach Is a Cost
Everything written about UGC assumes the product can be posted to the viewer. Yours cannot, and that inverts almost every rule.
The Only Thing You Cannot Fix Afterwards
A slightly dark image can be saved in the edit. Bad room sound cannot, and Portuguese flats are built to produce it.
Somebody Is Watching Your UGC Who Was Never in the Targeting
A retail buyer deciding whether to give you shelf space. They read the same videos completely differently, and almost no brand makes the version they need.
Nobody Has Decided Not to Pay You
Late payment feels personal and almost never is. In Belgium it has three different causes, and the message that unblocks it is different for each one.
When Not to Buy UGC
This is a page on a UGC marketplace telling you when not to buy UGC. There are three situations where it underperforms, and buying it anyway is how brands conclude it does not work.
Two Clauses Decide What You Earn. The Rest Is Furniture
Most UGC contracts run to a couple of pages. Two lines in there set what the work is worth to you, and neither of them is the fee.
The Sale You Lost Is Not in Your Analytics
It happened on somebody else’s site. In Belgium your competitor for the click is rarely another Belgian brand, and what it sells is not a price.