16 User-Generated Content Examples That Work

User-generated content has always been powerful because people tend to trust other people more than polished brand messaging. The best UGC campaigns take that a step further: they give customers, fans, and creators a reason to participate, then turn that participation into brand awareness, social proof, and content that can keep circulating long after the original campaign ends.

That value is expanding as reviews, social posts, creator content, and online discussions increasingly influence how brands are discovered and represented in AI-generated answers.

The 16 user-generated content examples below show how brands across industries have created participation people actually want to join — and what marketers can learn from the campaigns that continue generating attention beyond the initial activation.

Contents

• What is user-generated content?

• Why does UGC matter for AI visibility?

• 16 user-generated content examples

• What to look for in a social listening platform for UGC

• FAQ: user-generated content examples

What is user-generated content?

User-generated content is any brand-relevant text, image, video, review, social post, or other content created by people rather than the brand itself. It can appear organically, such as a customer reviewing a product, or in response to a brand invitation, competition, challenge, or branded hashtag.

That range is part of what makes UGC useful. A product review, TikTok challenge, customer photo, community-built website, and personalized year-end recap may look very different, but all give audiences a more active role in the brand story. For a deeper introduction to the different formats and how they work, see our UGC guide.

Why does UGC matter for AI visibility?

UGC increasingly influences more than what people see while scrolling through social feeds. Reviews, Reddit discussions, videos, forum posts, creator content, and other public conversations can also become part of the information environment AI platforms use to answer questions about brands and products.

That makes the breadth and quality of a brand’s UGC footprint more important. In Meltwater research analyzing 9.5 million AI citations across B2B categories, user-generated platforms such as LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube accounted for 47.5% of citations in the source-type analysis.

The implication is not that brands should generate as much UGC as possible. Volume without relevance is still noise, after all. The more important question is whether customers and communities are creating useful, specific, discoverable content that gives both people and AI systems context about what a brand does, how its products perform, and how people experience them.

For a closer look at this shift, read Why User-Generated Content Is the New Visibility Engine and The Citation Layer: Why Specific UGC Wins in AI Answers.

16 user-generated content examples

1. Coca-Cola: #ShareaCoke

Few UGC campaigns demonstrate the value of personalization as clearly as Share a Coke. This is perhaps one of the most recognizable, ubiquitous UGC campaigns.

The 2025 relaunch generated 43.5K mentions and 4.9M engagements in with 43.9% of conversation scoring positive. But the more revealing part of the conversation was what people did with the idea: posts repeatedly centered on surprising friends or family with personalized cans, and turning the product into a marker of friendship, fandom, or shared memory. And people continue adapting the familiar format for names, fictional characters, celebrities, and events.

2. Aerie: #AerieREAL

Aerie built #AerieREAL around a point of view customers could participate in rather than simply endorse. That positioning is reflected in the data: Meltwater social listening found 3.1K mentions and 2.21M engagements in 2025, rising to 4.43K mentions and 3.08M engagements in 2026, while positive sentiment remained above 72% in both years.

The content itself goes beyond body positivity as a campaign message. Creators use Aerie in everyday moments, life transitions, friendships, seasonal routines, and posts about experiences that feel distinctly human — including moments they explicitly describe as impossible to replicate with AI. That makes #AerieREAL less about asking customers to repeat a slogan and more about giving them a consistent framework for showing what “real” means in their own lives.

3. Apple: #ShotoniPhone

 #ShotoniPhone turns product capability into creative proof. And though the campaign has been running since 2015, it remains popular. The hashtag has essentially become synonymous with posting iPhone video content that users are proud of and want to show off. The campaign saw 129K mentions and 127M engagements in 2025. Midway through 2026, mention volume was lower at 83.3K, but engagement actually increased to 144M — a useful reminder that raw post volume and audience response do not always move together.

The content has also evolved overtime, to include color-grading tutorials, mobile filmmaking workflows, action sports, and anything covering the broad spectrum of visual storytelling. Instead of telling audiences what an iPhone camera can do, Apple has created a format in which users continually demonstrate the capabilities.

4. Notion: #NotionFaces

Notion Faces shows that UGC does not need huge posting volume to become recognizable brand language. The hashtag generated only 28 mentions in 2025 and 42 in 2026, yet estimated reach increased from 263K to 2.39M.

More importantly, by 2026 the conversation had shifted beyond simply promoting the avatar maker: Notion Faces was being reused as a recognizable profile-picture and branding motif, incorporated into community events, and discussed in relation to the human illustrators behind the designs. That persistence demonstrates an important UGC signal: a successful activation can leave audiences with a visual asset or behavior they continue carrying forward after the initial launch moment has passed.

5. Webflow and Contra: #WebflowChallenge

The Webflow × Contra challenge presents a particularly useful UGC model for B2B companies because every submission can function as creator content, a portfolio piece, and demonstration of the product all at the same time. Meltwater social listening identified 767 mentions, 2.4M in reach, and 6.85K engagements in 2025 around the selected Webflow and Contra terms.

Using the hashtag, creators share their works in progress, finished submissions, motion experiments, 3D effects, and discuss the realities of building under tight deadlines, all the while offering credible demonstrations of what the platform makes possible.

6. Framer: #FramerChallenge

Framer takes the build-in-public model further by connecting product use to a measurable creator goal. Participants do not simply share what they have designed; many publicly document earnings, template launches, client work, and progress toward revenue targets.

The volume of conversation remained remarkably steady across the two years analyzed — 20.4K mentions in 2025 and 19.5K in 2026 — while engagement climbed from 104K to 538K. Meltwater social listening analysis also found that the community participating in the challenge took it upon themselves to exchange templates, components, technical experiments, advice, and milestone updates.

7. Figma: #FigmaMakeathon

Figma’s Makeathon turns experimentation with the product into the campaign itself — and the conversation expanded considerably across the period analyzed: 1.41K mentions, 9.65M reach, and 8.17K engagements in 2025; in 2026 those figures rose to 4.09K mentions, 42.4M reach, and 65.1K engagements.

The projects also became a proof point for the breadth of the product. Entries ranged from practical workflow helpers to games, shared canvases, collaborative memory walls, interactive art, and other experiences that people could continue contributing to.

For B2B brands, that is an important UGC lesson: sometimes the strongest advocacy is not a dry testimonial about what your product can do, but users showcasing creative ideas in real-time.

8. LEGO: #BuildToGive

The core mechanic behind LEGO's #BuildToGive campaign is simple: build a LEGO creation, and share it using the #BuildToGive hashtag. By doing so, you help support the donation of LEGO sets to children in need. Meltwater's AI-powered social listening analysis repeatedly surfaced the key themes of family participation, holiday builds, tutorials, in-store activities, and posts emphasizing how easy it was to join.

In 2025, while the campaign was active, it saw 646 mentions, 68.2M in reach, and 161K engagements.

Results were still resurfacing into 2026, often resharing older Build to Give creative, including content tied to the 2018 program. However an important caveat to keep in mind is that “Build to Give” is also a phrase used outside LEGO, so the broader volume figures should not be treated as campaign-only performance.

But the continued circulation of recognizable LEGO campaign content shows how UGC can keep extending an idea long after its original activation.

9. Spotify: #SpotifyWrapped

Spotify Wrapped sits slightly outside the traditional UGC model because Spotify creates the personalized data story for its users to share. And over the years, a certain language and community has sprung up organically as users share their Spotify Wrapped year-end summary.

During the 2025 Wrapped cycle, Meltwater social listening captured 2.25M mentions and 119M engagements. Users turned their results into self-roasts, fandom debates, status signals, personality jokes, club identities, and group comparisons. The format has become so recognizable that people also adapt the Wrapped aesthetic to journals, scrapbooks, workplaces, gyms, games, and other communities.

That is the real strength behind this UGC idea: Spotify provides the raw material, but users decide what their results mean and how the story gets told.

10. Doritos: #DoritosCrash and #DoritosCrashTheSuperBowl

Doritos takes co-creation literally. Crash the Super Bowl invites consumers to make the advertising, handing creators both an unusually high-profile brief and the possibility of seeing their work air on one of advertising’s biggest stages.

Across the combined #DoritosCrash and #DoritosCrashTheSuperBowl search, Meltwater social listening recorded 1.1K mentions and 6.25K engagements in 2025, rising to 1.76K mentions and 13.6K engagements in 2026. Those totals also capture conversation about the unrelated Doritos Crash Course video game, so they should be read as a broader signal around the tracked terms rather than pure campaign participation.

The campaign-specific conversation is nevertheless revealing: even after the latest contest concluded, creators continued discussing winning entries, submissions, behind-the-scenes production, community voting, and the experience of having their work recognized. That longevity gives the campaign a greater cultural life than the media placement alone.

11. Maybelline: #MaybellineCompetition

Maybelline turned one of its most recognizable brand assets into a creative prompt with the “Maybe It’s Me Maybelline” jingle competition. Meltwater social listening captured 504 mentions and 245K engagements in 2025, when the campaign invited people to remix or perform the familiar jingle for the chance to appear in a commercial or campaign.

Miley Cyrus provided the attention-grabbing starting point, and subsequent user entries ranged from a cappella interpretations to group performances and other personal takes on the line. Rather than treating decades of brand heritage as something audiences should passively recognize, Maybelline made it raw material they could reinterpret for themselves.

12. Adobe Firefly: #HowIFireflyContest

Like most UGC campaigns, Adobe’s #HowIFireflyContest makes product use inseparable from participation: creators make something with Firefly and share the result. However there's an even larger story here when it comes to UGC strategy.

The contest itself was a targeted, self-contained UGC push to promote Adobe Firefly and it's capabilities. Participants had a chance to win a cash prize of $5,000.

But, whether fueled by the contest or independently, creative Firefly users still tag their work with "Adobe Firefly" when posting to social media. The broad Firefly conversation analyzed by Meltwater generated 12K mentions and 264M engagements in 2025, followed by 10.3K mentions and 8.35M engagements in 2026.

Anything from text effects and playful experiments to moodboards, home-design planning, short films, and production workflows are connected to the tag. Thereby continuing promotion for the product and generating massive name-recognition for the brand. For a product-led UGC campaign, that variety is immensely valuable: every creation shows a different reason someone might want to use the product.

13. Gymshark: #Gymshark66

Gymshark used a clever tactic to prolong and build engagement by giving their community a 66-day long story to tell rather than a single post to create. Participation grew sharply across the period analyzed by Meltwater: 2.87K mentions and 2.59M engagements in 2025, increasing to 13.8K mentions and 7.04M engagements in 2026.

Long-running challenges are useful for generating more varied UGC than a one-off contest. During the Gymshark campaign, people document training routines, running goals, nutrition, postpartum recovery, setbacks, jokes, missed workouts, and incremental progress — not simply polished before-and-after transformations. That served to bring the community together, with relatable content and gives participants more reasons to keep posting throughout the process.

14. POV Beauty and Sephora: #povbeautyxsephora

POV Beauty and Sephora made personal perspective the creative brief, asking participants to share beauty content around their own experience with the products.

The campaign generated only 113 tracked mentions in 2025 (and just 14 in 2026), but those 113 posts produced 274K engagements and 81.4% of the scored conversation was positive. Meltwater found that creators spoke about all manner of beauty-related topics including the less glamorous ones. Conversations covered skin prep, hydration, makeup wear, breakouts, specific skin needs, all tied back to the excitement of the Sephora experience.

That specificity is what makes the UGC useful: each participant gives prospective customers real-world context in which to not only understand the products, but the emotions they evoke.

15. Govee: #LitByGovee and #GoveeFanFest2025

Govee’s UGC works particularly well because lighting products become more persuasive when potential customers can see how they look in other peoples homes (rather than perfectly displayed in a show room or product photo). Meltwater social listening tracked 375 mentions and 379K engagements around #LitByGovee and #GoveeFanFest2025 in 2025, followed by 255 mentions and 201K engagements in 2026. Positive sentiment also increased from 47.7% to 62%.

The content spans reading corners, gaming rooms, music setups, Halloween displays, Christmas decorations, family movie nights, outdoor spaces, and even cosplay projects. Rather than producing another polished product photo, customers continuously supply Govee prospects with new environments and use cases — effectively expanding the brand’s creative library.

16. Cetaphil: #FaceOfCetaphil and #WeDoSkinYouDoFashionWeek

Cetaphil connected skincare with the larger creative territory of fashion and personal identity, giving participants more to work with than a straightforward product demonstration. Meltwater captured 301 mentions in 2025, with 61.1% of scored conversation positive.

Across the wider #FaceOfCetaphil conversation, authenticity and personal transformation repeatedly emerged as attention drivers, including creator stories built around self-expression, confidence, and long-standing relationships with the brand.

That makes the campaign mechanic more useful than simply asking someone to show a skincare routine: it gives creators a narrative in which the product is one part of a larger personal story.

17. (Bonus!) Amazon customer reviews

Amazon customer reviews are not a conventional campaign, but they are nevertheless a form of UGC worth talking about. Reviews are an always-on UGC system built directly into the purchase journey: shoppers can assign a star rating, describe their experience, and add photos or videos showing a product in use. That gives prospective buyers specific, contextual information at the moment they are evaluating a purchase.

For marketers, Amazon is also a reminder not to define UGC too narrowly. Posts attached to a branded hashtag may be easier to interact with on a wider scale, but customer reviews can contain the detailed product experiences, comparisons, questions, and language that reveal what audiences actually care about.

What to look for in a social listening platform for UGC

Finding UGC is relatively easy when people use the hashtag you gave them. The harder part is understanding the wider conversation: people who mention a product without tagging the brand, reviews appearing outside social platforms, community discussions on Reddit or forums, and emerging formats or phrases that were never part of the original campaign plan.

A strong social listening platform should therefore give you broad enough coverage to see UGC across relevant social, news, review, and forum sources; enough historical context to tell a sustained pattern from a temporary spike; AI-powered analysis that helps surface themes, sentiment, and shifts quickly; and reporting that makes those insights usable outside the social team.

Increasingly, that picture should also include AI visibility. If reviews, creator conversations, and community discussions help shape what AI platforms surface about brands, teams need to understand both the UGC itself and how that wider public information environment is influencing brand visibility.

Meltwater social listening brings social, news, forums, Reddit, and other signals into one connected platform, with AI-powered analysis and executive-ready reporting designed to move teams from what is being said to why it matters and what to do next. That is the difference between collecting more UGC data and having intelligence you can act on.

Book a demo of the Meltwater platform to see how social listening can help you identify the conversations that matter, understand what is gaining momentum, and put those insights to work.

FAQ: User-generated content examples

What is user-generated content?

User-generated content is brand-related content created by customers, fans, employees, creators, or other community members rather than by the brand itself. Common UGC examples include social posts, photos, videos, reviews, forum discussions, product demonstrations, challenge entries, and other content based on a person’s experience with a brand or product.

What are the best examples of user-generated content?

Some of the strongest UGC examples include Coca-Cola’s #ShareaCoke, Aerie’s #AerieREAL, Apple’s #ShotoniPhone, Spotify Wrapped, and LEGO’s #BuildToGive. Each works differently, but all give audiences a clear, relevant reason to create or share content rather than simply asking them to promote the brand.

How does UGC improve AI visibility?

UGC can improve AI visibility by creating independent, publicly accessible information about a brand across reviews, social platforms, forums, videos, and community discussions. These sources can give AI systems additional context about real experiences, product attributes, sentiment, and comparisons when generating answers about brands and categories.

Is UGC still effective in 2026?

Yes. UGC remains valuable for social engagement and customer trust, but its role is expanding as discovery shifts toward AI-generated answers. The opportunity is no longer simply to generate more posts. Brands need relevant, specific UGC that helps people understand the brand and creates useful signals across the channels where discovery now happens.

What is the difference between UGC and influencer content?

UGC is defined primarily by who creates the content and the experience it represents, while influencer content typically involves a formal relationship between a creator and a brand, often with agreed deliverables or compensation. The categories can overlap, but paid influencer content is not automatically UGC, and much UGC is created without a formal creator partnership.

How do brands get permission to use UGC?

Brands should confirm usage rights before republishing customer or creator content. A hashtag or tag does not necessarily provide blanket permission to reuse a post. Campaign terms can establish usage rights for contest entries, while organic content may require direct permission from the creator. Clear attribution should also remain part of the process.

How do I find UGC about my brand?

Start by tracking branded hashtags, direct mentions, product names, common misspellings, campaign language, reviews, and relevant community discussions. Social listening can expand that search beyond posts that tag your account, then help you compare engagement, sentiment, themes, and conversation trends to identify the UGC that is genuinely resonating.