UGC Case Study: Sprite Films Challenge

This user-generated content case study focuses on the Sprite Films Challenge, which uses ambassador content to inspire user content, and which uses Instagram as the video submission platform.

Contents
1. Student Films As Ambassador Content
2. Diverse User Submissions
3. Keeping It Simple On Instagram
4. Finalist Aggregation

1. Student Films As Ambassador Content

To kick off the Sprite Films Challenge, Sprite leveraged their student films competition, in which students from film schools created videos in the celebratory spirit of Sprite for the chance to win a scholarship and a larger video project with Sprite, among other prizes. The winning student film, What We Need, and the other student finalist films were used by Sprite in communications promoting the Sprite Films Challenge, partly to help inspire and set the desired tone for future user-generated videos. The student origins of these high-quality videos lessened the perceived difficulty to create similarly high-quality content.

2. Diverse User Submissions

The student film challenge winner was picked in May, and then the public-facing instagram portion of the campaign began in late in July. As mentioned, the student film videos were prominently displayed on the Sprite Films Challenge page beside the submission instructions to help inspire users to create their own Sprite-inspired films.

Aside from the instructions to create a Sprite-inspired film, the content and theme of video submissions was up to the imagination of users, with manifestations such as the calming effects of Sprite to the face,

the strengthening effects of Sprite on a balmy summer day,

and Sprite playground love.

3. Keeping It Simple On Instagram

The simple submission process required users only to tag an Instagram video, meaning that content creation and submission could occur within a single application, allowing users to maximize attention on the content and spirit of their video instead of how to transport it.

Interestingly, the submission process of another current (as of posting) Sprite campaign, Change The Game, requires users instead to upload a video to YouTube, then log into Twitter and link to the video with #changethegame. Presumably, because this campaign has a more complex submission process and heftier submission requirement (90 – 180-second videos for Change The Game vs 15-second videos for Sprite Films Challenge), it also has a higher submission dropoff rate than Sprite Films Challenge.

4. Finalist Aggregation

According to the official Sprite Films Challenge rules, 6 finalist videos will be selected in early September, aggregated on the Sprite website, and then voted on by the public and official judging panel to determine the grand prize winner. As such, Sprite will leverage their user-generated content to support a whole extra phase of the campaign, another path to bring users back to the site and engage with the brand. This act of aggregating the highest quality user-generated content was also used by Ford in the Fiesta Movement campaign and New Belgium Brewing with their interactive Snapshot Wheat map.

Sam Blau contributed research.

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