Acme Watches hires four creators to film a 30-second unboxing each from the same brief: open the box, put the watch on, say one thing that surprised you. Each video costs $250 plus 90 days of paid usage. Two become the brand's best prospecting ads, and their footage later becomes eight iterations with new hooks.

UGC works because it matches how people already use social apps: someone talking to camera reads as content, not an interruption. It is also cheaper and faster than a studio shoot, so you can test more creators and angles. Its weakness is sameness: when every brand runs the same unboxing format, the style alone stops being an edge.

Brief the message, not a word-for-word script, so creators sound natural. Test several creators on one angle, since the person often matters as much as the words. Get usage rights in writing, and recut strong UGC with new hooks or run it as a partnership ad before replacing it.