0:00 Hello, everybody. I'm Dave Summer. And, no, I'm not in Gen Z or or Gen Alpha, but I too look at UGC videos, and they influence me. 0:09 And and Jade was asking me before the show. She was saying, you know, what's something where you got sucked in with the UGC video? And I said, blazers. You know, the blazer I have on today is not my best. 0:17 I just looked at seventeen different UGC videos. What's coming for the next show? You're it's gonna blow you away. It's got zippers. It's got pockets. It's got a place for my phone. 0:26 Just shows you the power of user generated content. How about you, Jade? Tell us a little bit about yourself and if UGC video has ever impacted you. Yeah. Hey, everyone. I'm Jade Simon. 0:36 I'm a lead client success manager on our enterprise team at Bazaarvoice. And a couple experiences I've had recently are really with clothes. 0:46 I don't know if there's any smaller petite women in the audience here, but I really struggle with pants, specifically jeans. So UGC really helps me identify how these jeans are actually going to look on a five foot two or shorter woman. 1:01 So I know that favorite daughter just launched petites and I am scrolling through those influencer videos, seeing who is five two and below and how those jeans fit so that I don't have to get them custom tailored again. 1:14 I love that example. And as you can see, we're gonna be very authentic. That's another key aspect of user generated video is is being authentic. And that's just how Jade and I naturally are. 1:23 We work together all the time. I'm an SVP who leads some of our large partnerships and strategic partnerships. Jade, do you look after for Bazaarvoice? Yeah. 1:31 So right now, I'm managing the strategic relationships for some of our global enterprise clients. And I am really that point of contact that helps you get the most value out of your Bazaarvoice programs. 1:44 Perfect. Okay. Well, today, we're gonna talk about how brands can drive relevance with Gen Z and Gen Alpha through video UGC. No surprise. That's kind of where we started already. 1:53 And we'll be looking at why traditional brand led content is no longer enough on its own. It's good, but it's not enough. And why customer led video is becoming such a powerful way to build credibility and how brands can use real customer experiences like Jade looking at different influencers in jeans or me looking at people in blazers, and create stronger connections across the shopping journey. 2:16 So, Jade, take us to slide two. Yeah. So, Dave, I think what's really important right now is that being seen isn't the same as being relevant. 2:25 And younger shoppers are discovering brands everywhere, whether it's social media, PDPs, retailers, now LLMs, but they're choosing the brands that feel real, useful and worth the attention. 2:44 Oh, Dave, you're on mute. See, I was just being authentic there. One of the big challenges is not just being seen. 2:52 It's how do you make it relevant and not just being visible. So you can be in the feed. You can pay to be in the feed. You can be on the digital shelf. 3:01 You can be in search results. You can be on the product page. But that doesn't automatically mean a shopper feels connected to your brand. Younger audiences, like my children, I I mentioned earlier, I've got one who's in Gen Z, and I've got three that are actually in Gen Alpha. 3:14 So I know about this. They're constantly being shown new products and pages, but how do they connect with them? How does it feel real? How does it feel useful? How do they actually use it? How can they trust it? 3:25 So those are some of the questions, Jade. Yeah. And those are the right questions to be asking as a brand because that's exactly what the customers are asking themselves before they make a purchasing decision. 3:35 And that's where relevance is really changing. It's no longer built through these big singular campaigns or overly polished brand messages. 3:45 Really, it's built through smaller, more frequent moments of proof, the kind that help people understand whether a brand fits into their life. And that's the shift we're going to explore today. 3:56 Cool. So to be clear, this isn't saying brand content doesn't matter anymore. It absolutely does. 4:04 Brand teams still need to do strong strong storytelling. They need to have clear positioning, distinctive creatives, and a consistent point of view. 4:14 But brand content can't necessarily carry the whole customer experience on its own. Yeah. As we've mentioned, consumers are becoming more selective about what they actually believe. 4:25 They're used to seeing polished, highly produced content from brands, and then they know they're being marketed to. So in fact, we conducted research that shows there's a twenty, like you see on the slide, a twenty three point lift in relevance over traditional ads when UGC is used in traditional ad containers. 4:42 So when it shows up, still could be paid, but it's UGC that's actually the creative content. Yeah. And what really cuts through is something that feels more human. 4:51 So a real customer showing how a product works, talking about why they bought it, the use cases, and sharing what it looks like in their everyday life. 5:01 This is the kind of content that brand led content often can't achieve. It really brings in that peer validation and social proof, and shows the brand through someone else's experience that maybe a future shopper can relate to. 5:15 Yeah. And that's why Bazaarvoice is becoming more and more of a strategic partner to these brand marketers because it's an important shift that's going on. The opportunity isn't to replace your brand voice with UGC. 5:26 It's to make your brand feel more relevant by bringing real customer consumer voices into the story. Because increasingly, what others say about your brand, that's a what others say is a term we hear a lot now, what others say about your brand is just as important as what you say about yourself. 5:43 Yeah. And to drill down, this is where video becomes increasingly powerful. We're not just seeing a small shift in content preference. 5:53 We're seeing a much bigger shift in how people discover, trust and choose brands. The global video commerce market is projected to grow from around six ninety five billion back in twenty twenty three to three point seven trillion in twenty twenty nine. 6:08 So that gives you a sense of how quickly video is becoming central to the shopping experience. Yeah. Those are huge numbers, Jade. 6:17 And it matters because online shopping has always had a gap. Shoppers can't pick up the product like you were saying. You can't try on the jeans. I can't try on the blazer. 6:25 They can't feel the texture. They can't size it. They don't know how it works in real life. And static images and written reviews, of course, they help, and they've always helped. 6:34 And we were the pioneers in that. But video, which is just another evolved form of a review or UGC, that gives you that authentic content. 6:42 It gives you the credibility. It shows the product through a genuine experience and not just through the own the own brand's lens. And so super, super powerful. 6:51 And I'm really proud that our company has pushed so hard into that direction, and and we're the leaders in that space also. Exactly. And that's why video in particular is becoming so important when we think about brand relevance. 7:02 It helps brands show up with proof across the shopper journey, from social discovery to product pages to LLMs and beyond. 7:12 All right. And I should have mentioned this earlier. We're gonna get to q and a later so you can start thinking about your questions. But on this slide, again, we've established why video UGC is nonnegotiable for winning over Gen Z and Gen Alpha, my kids of the various ages. 7:27 But for most brand teams, the real roadblock is execution. And if video is gonna move the needle, you need a steady pipeline, not just a few one off hits. 7:36 Yeah. Exactly, Dave. Being relevant means showing up consistently. So you need a repeatable framework that does two things really well. Number one, it sources a healthy mix of voices. 7:47 And two, it activates them exactly where they'll make the biggest impact. Again, depending on where your shopper likes to purchase products. 7:55 And remember that different tactics serve different needs. So a creator video might spark top of funnel discovery on social well, and everyday shoppers review video builds that bottom of funnel confidence right on your product page. 8:09 And when you design your pipeline, decide which goal each tactic supports, then make sure the content flows to the places that shoppers need the proof. 8:20 Perfect. So now you might already have a few organic videos floating around on social. Like, that happens for most brands. But to really scale your pipeline, you need to lean on communities or cohorts. 8:33 And we usually look at it as a healthy balance between three groups. So content fluid creators who make high quality content, social native videos that reach audiences of all sizes, drive discovery and cultural evidence. 8:48 Your everyday shoppers, which are another group, and we've got eleven million active everyday shoppers on Influenster so they can give you authentic, unbiased experiences, plus your ambassadors. 8:58 So the three groups are content fluent creators, everyday shoppers, are influencers, and your ambassadors who are loyal customers who love your brand and give you exclusive high credible content. 9:08 And you kind of bring them all together to drive what you need to for your brand. Yeah. And to think about this from a more practical lens, what you could start doing, maybe you're already running sampling campaigns with Bazaarvoice today, include a CTA for that same Influenster member not only to write a review, but to post a video on Reels or TikTok. 9:30 What's really cool is that our Influenster members and creators can help you reach massive social audiences. Plus, later this year, we're launching custom campaign briefs in the sampling programs to help members generate even higher quality visual content on social. 9:47 Excellent. And once you have the content, place it where shoppers want the answers to their questions. So take note that you need review galleries, you need on your brand site, you need on the retailer site, but they all have different workflows. 10:02 So all the places the content needs to travel to. So review videos, which are like written reviews, but but videos, should flow directly and unfiltered onto your product pages to preserve authenticity. 10:14 And they're moderated by, in our case, a team of professionals. We are the best at making brand safe content that you don't have to worry about. And that unbiased, honest content helps shoppers understand real world use and reduce doubt. 10:27 It'll also answer the practical questions that static images can't. Yeah. And moving into the middle section here, on the flip side, social commerce galleries are all about curation and inspiration where we're pulling in that vibrant content from platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. 10:46 But normally keeping those galleries fresh means scrolling for hours, DM ing creators for rights, and praying your tracking spreadsheet doesn't break. 10:55 And as we mentioned earlier, we solve that problem by giving you direct access to an entire pre vetted community ranging from high impact content creators to everyday members who love trying products through our sampling programs. 11:08 And with our everyday shopper community, the reviews and video content they produce comes with built in usage rights in perpetuity. So you can repurpose them for all of the channels that matter. 11:19 Instead of having to manage these content streams and silos, we help you manage it all in one centralized ecosystem. And what's really cool is that our content library handles the heavy lifting from there. 11:31 So the content you've generated from Bazaarvoice communities is already pre populated. You can then easily source organic at mentioned and tagged content and select the on brand videos that you want to put display on your sites, as well as tag products and secure rights in bulk. 11:48 Or just turn on our automated rights request feature and let us handle the entire process on your behalf. From there, it's just the click of a few buttons to push this content to your site. 11:58 So it's really an effortless way to keep your galleries flooded with authentic video without the administrative or legal headache. Yep. And then moving on to the last one. 12:09 Remember, this doesn't have to end at your own website. Through Bazaarvoice's global syndication network, those videos don't just live in your content library. They can be scaled across your key retail partners with minimal effort, placing that content in more places that actually convert into sales. 12:25 So we found that when shoppers interact with our immersive video galleries, people talking about your products, ecommerce sites, and retail. So three places, video galleries, ecommerce sites, and retail. 12:35 We see average order values go up, so the basket size is bigger, deeper engagement, and up to two hundred and ninety two percent increase in conversion. 12:44 Right around the corner, we're making this entire step effortless by launching agentic. Yes. I said it. Agentic content creation. So an AI agent will handle the screening, the product tagging, the moderation, and the rights request for you. 12:58 And your only job will be to look at a clean dashboard and hit accept. So really excited how we're gonna put that to work for you. Loving the innovation that's coming from our product roadmap. 13:09 Thanks, Dave. And now we're going to pivot away from slides here and just have a more candid conversation about what this looks like in the real world. 13:19 So we'll talk about how leading brands are responding to this shift, where customer led video is making the biggest difference, and what brand marketers should be thinking about next. 13:30 Great. And before we jump into the q and a, and I've got some hot questions for you, Jade, I'm I'm looking forward to ask you, we're gonna do a poll. So the poll is gonna come, I think, in just a second, or maybe it's already coming up for some of you. 13:43 If you click on the poll button, for me, on the left side. Go to the polls tab. Do I do that? Okay. Yeah. You go to the polls tab. 13:52 Where is your brand finding it hardest to maintain relevance with this younger demographic, Gen z and Gen alpha? Go ahead and put your answers in. 14:07 I put mine in. Did you put yours in, Jade? I did. All right. All right. It looks like the AI is tabulating this. 14:19 I think I see the answers on the left. Anybody? Last minute people putting in? Alright. Let's see. I can share it on the screen, I think. 14:28 Oh, perfect. Thanks, Dave. Yeah. Hey. I'm savvy. I don't just pick out blazers. So the number one answer on the board was social media, thirty three percent. 14:40 But behind that, there was also retail sites, nine, brand sites, and product pages. So lots of different places where it's hard to reach them. 14:50 And the good news is our system, our platform helps you in all of those places. You know, when I talk to clients, that's where they're often most surprised. They think, oh, yeah. I knew Bazaarvoice, your ratings and reviews. 14:59 What they don't realize is that we're video to all the places they wanna go, to social media, to brand pages, to product pages, and retail sites. So okay. 15:07 I'm gonna ask Jade some questions now while you guys formulate your questions, and you could probably start to put them in q and a because maybe I'll surprise everybody and go off of our questions and look at some of yours. 15:18 Is that cool with you, Jade? Absolutely. Okay. Let's get into it. And I think that we can probably take this poll down. Do I have to take it down? Yep. 15:26 I Or stop here? Stop sharing here so you can see our faces. Hey, everybody. Nice to see you. Alright. So we've talked about video becoming a bigger part of how people discover and trust brands. 15:38 Jay, are you seeing that shift show up in conversations with the leading brands you talk to? Yeah. Absolutely. I think what's really important to understand, and we've been seeing this shift, but the lines of commerce are really blurred. 15:53 We can shop from almost any digital channel now. So social has dominated over the last few years, but even with AI commerce, you can see that LLMs are even starting to prioritize media now, especially YouTube as a platform. 16:07 And I think it's really important that we're speaking to the fact that video provides this rich context that static imagery and text can't. 16:17 And LLMs are now picking up on things like the captions in the videos and the transcripts. So being able to capitalize on generating more of this content and distributing it in the places where your customers are shopping is going to be more increasingly important. 16:32 That's exactly the conversations that I'm having with some of the largest brands that I work with today. Okay. And and what's changed in the most the way the brands are thinking about customer content over the last few years, months, weeks? 16:46 Like, what are some of the subtle changes you're seeing? Yeah. And I think tying back to my first answer, it's really contextual relevance. That's really the biggest shift. 16:55 So it's not just about getting the five star review and then the video that says, I love this product, but it's telling shoppers and AI crawlers who this product is for, what the purpose is and the value it provides so that other shoppers can resonate with past customers and purchase for maybe the exact reason that they did. 17:17 Got it. And then how about if we narrow it down to these younger shoppers a little bit? Like, Is that changing the brand's approaches? And it's funny. I was reminding myself. 17:27 So so Gen z, right, digital natives. Gen alpha, kinda screenagers. So how are brands thinking about those two groups differently? Yeah. 17:35 I think there are some things that have changed, but one thing kind of remains constant. When we think about the platforms brands wanna be on and how they wanna reach consumers, the demographics that they're hyper targeting for influencer and creator campaigns, the marketing messaging that they're using, even keeping up with all the Gen Z and Gen Alpha lingo. 17:56 Dave, I'm sure you're hearing it at home and in your text messages from your kids. I think that has absolutely shifted. But I think what remains the same is that brands want to bring the authentic voice of their consumer to light. 18:10 And again, I think they can really achieve that by amplifying video in particular. Okay. Yeah. 18:18 And then another topic we've hit on, but I I love it when you elaborate on these things. So where do you feel brand led content is still playing the most pivotal role? And where does, you know, UGC add something that the branded content maybe can't do alone? 18:30 Yeah, of course, we can't, you know, abandon brand led content altogether. For me in particular, I think it's still extremely relevant for educating customers. 18:39 We need to know why this is a really high performance running shoe and the tech behind it. We need to show what clinically backed ingredient is driving this skincare product and why I should be paying one hundred and fifty dollars for it because of the impact of those specific ingredients within it. 18:58 So when it comes to educational content and the messaging behind the value of the product, absolutely brand content needs to be there. 19:07 I think where UGC comes into play is layering in that validation and social proof for shoppers to relate and resonate, again, with other customers who have purchased that product in the past. 19:20 Alright. Well, not to put you on the spot, but can you think of a particular brand, you know, with UGC that made their brand story kinda come to life? I think when I talk to clients, they're always like, yeah, give me an example. 19:30 Who's doing it well? So Yeah. Who's who's doing it well? Couple brands that come to mind. If you go look at some of Under Armour's product pages, they have incredible carousels of visual UGC where they're showing the product in action, same with Peloton apparel. 19:47 Some other brands I particularly love stocking per their marketing campaigns and how they incorporate UGC our base, which is a travel band by Shay Mitchell, GoPro, and Airbnb. 20:00 You look at their Instagrams, and eighty percent of it is user generated content. And I think they do a really good job at storytelling through the lens of their customers and featuring again, tons of that UGC throughout their marketing channels and campaigns. 20:15 And brands that do this well are making the customers feel like they're a part of their brand community. They are shaping the development of the products. 20:26 Very well said. And I've been kinda watching this play out for years. I remember before Bazaarvoice, I was at Meta for eleven years. And I think brands always struggle with, should they give up the control of highly polished brand communication for UGC? 20:40 So how should they think about that piece? Yeah. I think, you know, if there's overwhelming themes, negative themes about a product or service, there is likely a problem and the customers are calling it out, but they're giving you free real time product r and d. 20:58 And beyond that, giving up a little bit of that control is exactly how you build credibility with your customers. Gen z and Gen alpha have a built in what we call BS radar for hyper polished curated brand scripts. 21:13 Have you ever listened to a creator video and they're just clearly reading off the script, don't know anything about the product or brand and don't really have an affinity with it. 21:23 Like that piece of missing authenticity really bleeds through. Gen Z and Gen Alpha don't want this, you know, long drown out monologue, they want a conversation. 21:35 And our data shows that almost half of shoppers actually distrust creator and brand content if it feels overly promotional or really hide the cons. 21:44 So brands shouldn't look at UGC as losing control of the narrative. They should look at it as gaining an army of authentic advocates who speak the language that their future customers are using to search for products. 21:59 Super. And it looks like there's quite a few people now on this webinar. So I'll start to look for questions coming in through the q and a. You can see we have an authentic expert here in Jade. 22:09 But like, what's a common theme for brands who are doing it well? Like a thread that goes through all of it. Yeah. I wanna pull this back to the concept of storytelling. 22:17 I think that brands that do this well highlight videos that tell a story. So they're curating videos of their most loyal customers talking about their product, or they're collaborating with a creator that actually loves and uses the brand regularly. 22:33 And wasn't just paid to get tons of reach and views. Again, it's easy to spot when an influencer doesn't have an affinity for a product or brand. 22:42 And so I think having the ability to highlight videos that tell an authentic story, a customer use case, and speak to why they purchased the product and how it impacts their life is the common thread between successful visual UGC and non successful visual UGC. 23:03 Excellent. Yeah. And I talked earlier about kind of our special sauce. Right? People thought of us as ratings reviews. Now they think of us as all types of content that travels to all the different places. 23:12 So to social media, TikTok, Instagram, to their brand site, to the product pages, even to our retailers and retail media. So it goes all the different places. 23:20 Where do you think that they're seeing the most impact of all the places the content travels to? Or is that kind of a funny way to ask the question? Yeah. I think the level of impact depends on the KPIs that you're looking at, maybe what team you sit on and and what you care about the most. 23:34 So social is pretty much undefeated for reach brand awareness and discovery right now. Although AI search is probably creeping up there, especially when we think about short form formats like TikTok and Reels. 23:48 But where we see the highest impact to conversion is really that product detail page. Gen z and gen alpha demand movement on a PDP. 23:59 If they hit a silent text heavy product page, they're really gonna bounce back to social. They wanna see the product in action. So bringing in that short form video directly onto the PDP or even retail, PDPs really helps remove that friction. 24:15 And it bridges the gap between finding a product and trusting it enough to hit buy now or even add to cart. Excellent. 24:24 And I'm already starting to see some questions come through, Jade, and I'm so savvy with this thing that I can see them. I'm doing it. The first question, do you guys have any recommendations for a starter budget for a small or a mid sized brand? 24:37 And the reason I bring up that question is because I think it ties to what you were just saying about your KPIs. Right? If you're just trying to hit a minimum level of reviews or video reviews to drive conversion, you know, we can kinda help you with that. 24:49 We can benchmark you versus competition. But if you really want to make a big splash and have big reach on Instagram or TikTok and be able to measure it, maybe it's a little higher. 24:59 But again, that's what Bazaarvoice is here to do. Jade, what how would you answer that question? Besides the saying, you know, millions and millions of dollars, you can tell I come from sales. 25:07 But, yeah, how would you answer? You're not in sales. Yeah. Depending what tools and resources you have at your disposal and maybe what solutions you have in contract with Bazaarvoice, I would tap into some social listening and figure out who are the customers that are already out there talking about my brand. 25:24 They might be willing to work with me just for a free product or even a discount code. I think that brands can really tap into their loyalists. 25:35 So even reaching out to your CRM, your existing CRM, and saying, Hey, we are onboarding some ambassadors. 25:43 If you love this brand, we'd love to see you post with this hashtag or mention us. Start collecting that library of content, of course, set up appropriate Ts and Cs, so you have the usage rights and then begin reposting and repurposing it. 25:59 So if you get this one amazing video from even an everyday shopper, Gen Z and Gen Alpha also don't need to be professional creators to produce really high quality content. 26:08 Have you seen the new iPhone cameras? So your everyday customers are already likely posting a lot of great content. You can tap into them and then leverage that content in different channels. 26:20 And then Bazaarvoice also has this everyday community of eleven million plus shoppers that are super eager to participate in sampling campaigns. 26:28 And they generate really rich, high quality content. In addition to reviews, you can easily add a social CTA to have them post on Instagram or TikTok in addition to their review. 26:40 So you really get the best of both worlds there. Cool. And I know in our prep conversations, you and I were talking about how like, in some cases, need to lower their standards, which sounds really weird. 26:50 But if you're a brand manager and you're used to, like, everything being perfect and and shiny and just the way you want it, say a little bit more about that because I think it's relevant to this question, and then we'll go to the next question. 27:00 Yeah. So, you know, as as you just said, I think when it comes to looking for and sourcing for large volumes of content, you can't get it perfectly curated and at the highest quality every time. 27:14 Again, we want it to be authentic. And what I mean by this is don't worry about the studio lighting and just start kind of enticing your community to generate quick, honest videos of their unboxing or their daily routines of the product. 27:30 And this could be in the forms of maybe a sweepstakes, a loyalty program initiative, or as I just mentioned, a CTA that is included on a social post or CRM email. 27:41 And then second, don't filter out nuance shoppers trust a balanced perspective. A video that acknowledges a product's pros and cons is infinitely more believable than just a flawless script. 27:54 And lastly, of course, amplify your content. So don't let that video just sit in one silo on a social feed, and then eventually get pushed down to the bottom of that creator's profile. 28:07 Put it on your site, syndicated across your retail network, and make sure that you're distributing it in front of the shopper at the exact moment that they're planning to make that purchasing decision. 28:18 Excellent. There's gold in that answer. And also, don't forget if you look on the right hand side of your screen, there's a docs tab where you can actually download an ebook that has some of this wisdom. 28:28 It's not as good as Jade, but it's got some of the same thoughts in there. And we'll continue to flesh that out. Alright. Another question. Victoria asked, what about companies that are wholesale companies? 28:38 Right? They don't sell themselves DTC. What should their goals be? And I think I saw it in the chat maybe asking about how do you build awareness. 28:46 I mean, what I would say is most of the partners we work with are not DTC. Certainly, have a bunch that are. But the beauty of Bazaarvoice, and we were one of the first to do it, is that we syndicate to all the the retailers. 28:57 And not every single one, but we're working on getting all of them, and the ideas that will help you convert in all those places. Jade, thoughts on that one? Yeah, I think, of course, it can always be tricky when you're in that b to b space and you might not have a large social following or CRM presence. 29:17 But that's where you can really start investing and tapping into the communities that we have. That's where we're really specialized. Again, we have that community of eleven million plus, so we can really hyper target a demographic that makes sense to you guys and can communicate and educate end users on who your brand is, what the product you sell is. 29:41 So in addition to tapping into your existing resource pool, we have community members that can help you depending on the size and scale and type of business that you have. 29:53 Excellent. And I think before we go into the future, and I ask you questions about where we're going in UGC, Jade, I just put a question in the chat. If you can figure out the chat functionality, I said to the audience, what's one product that you bought? 30:05 Oh, I forgot the t, because you saw a video. Jade talked about jeans. I talked about blazers. I think we've all had that experience. Anybody have something top of mind? 30:13 Go ahead and just put that in the chat while we're talking. Great. What about if you're selling a d to c medical product where you need to be concerned about users making false claims. 30:28 Oh, that's a bit more technical. I'm just gonna throw that one right over to you, Jade. I'm sure you've dealt with products like And I think we deal with that with health care also. 30:36 Yeah. I've actually worked with, McKesson before, so maybe this is a similar industry or competitor. 30:45 I think, of course, you have to have additional caution when you're thinking about video content. 30:54 I think consulting with your legal team and prepping an internal strategy with marketing and social and all of the people who are going to be either reposting or repurposing those videos and setting up those guidelines would be in a really important first step. 31:10 What can we say and not say? I also think it's important to be able to work with creators and influencers who have mastery or lots of experience with the product. 31:20 Maybe you're hyper targeting healthcare professionals and tapping into them as influential and educational creators, and also briefing them appropriately. 31:31 You know, these are for legal reasons, the topics we can and can't talk about. The authenticity will still bleed through given the credibility and the background that that person has, but you won't be putting your brand at risk. 31:44 Hope that helps. No. Those are great. And I'm seeing some great action in the chat too. People who bought makeup or foundation, people who bought a specific brand, Neutrogena. 31:53 Excellent. Alright. So while that's continuing to unfold and people are kinda pop corning ideas about things they've seen videos and bought, Jade, where do you think UGC is heading next? 32:02 Like, take out your crystal ball and Yes. Get some ideas. I don't think we can talk about the future without talking about AI, so I'm gonna place my bet on LLMs. 32:15 I think they are going to continue to prioritize video content for product recommendations, again, just because of the additional contextual richness that they contain. 32:25 So I think they're also going to be surfacing more videos in their responses, already seeing YouTube links. I use all of the LLM apps today, chat GPT, quad, Gemini, perplexity, and I'm seeing YouTube just become more important. 32:44 And I think that as we think about the other channels, it's going to be Instagram, TikTok, etcetera, pulled in. We know that they're already processing video frames, transcripts, captions, and some of the alt text hidden behind the videos. 32:59 So they're just getting smarter. And further, I think shopping agents, I think they're going to be able to help us purchase directly from UGC videos and find us the best size based on what they know about us and the best price by doing some shopper price comparisons across all of the retailers and ecommerce sites. 33:20 What about you, Dave? I mean, I see the same thing. Like, when I talk to CMOs at big companies, they're all very interested in LLMs. 33:28 And they say, again, how does Bazaarvoice fit with this? And I have to kinda build that bridge. And I say, okay. We've always been the trusted partner for content. Right? Starts with ratings reviews, and it was photos, then it was so all kinds of UGC. 33:40 And then I said our special sauce is that it goes to all the places. You know? It goes to TikTok and Instagram, social media. It goes to your brand galleries. It goes to retailers, all the big retailers. 33:49 And now it also goes to the LMs. That that's the key. And they're like, wait. So you can actually see what how we're showing up in LMs before we ran a big program with Bazaarvoice, then you can see kinda how we are afterward? 34:00 And I said, absolutely. And we can even kind of run a test for you. So I think I think the execs I talked to, they're surprised. They think they need to go to a totally new company to create something that they haven't thought of yet. 34:11 And what they don't realize is authentic content is the answer to showing up well in our lives. So in a good spot. It's one of the reasons I'm so excited that you and I sit here at Bazaarvoice. 34:21 Yeah. Alright. Another question. And some of these I haven't read all the way through yet. What are some mistakes you've seen in the past that new brands do? 34:30 Or that new brands should look at and avoid? You wanna try that one? Yeah. I think mistakes are, again, leaning into an influencer creator that maybe has a million followers spending all your marketing budget, thinking that I'm gonna get all of this awareness and reach. 34:49 And sometimes that is the case. If anyone can land Alex Earl, congrats to you, you can probably retire. But if they don't have, again, an affinity or connection to the brand, or they don't really understand the product, they're not going to communicate it in an authentic way. 35:08 And there's going to be a BS monitor. I can give a great example. I actually follow a really big influencer and reality TV star embarrassingly on social media. 35:19 Her name is Paige D'Sorbo and she is all about high fashion. And she started doing ads, I think it was for TJ Maxx. 35:29 And I'm sure she got a big check for doing those ads, but people were even noting in the comments, Paige, we know you're not wearing TJ Maxx. And there's just things like that where we've gotten smarter. 35:39 We know that a lot of these influencers and creators are getting a paycheck to read a script. And so I think the mistake you make is that if I just go with the influencer with the most followers, I'll get the most reach, which will turn into conversion. 35:56 And I think you will be surprised by those nano creators and even everyday shoppers who can go viral all of the sudden because of their authenticity that resonates so much more. 36:11 Excellent. All right, maybe one more from the the q and a section, and then we'll just kinda go to one more question and wrap up. Time is flying when we're having fun, Jin, and being both in creating content together. 36:22 So somebody asked, do paid influencer partnerships, because we do do those as well, feed into LMs, or is it just UGC type content? 36:30 With paid influencer, I refer to those that have the hashtag ad on the caption on the content. Interesting question. Can answer You go first. You usually got a better answer. 36:43 You know, we don't know exactly how all of the LLM algorithms work. We know that they are able to pull content in from Instagram and TikTok. 36:54 I have an understanding from the LLMs that they while paid content is still important, there is a slightly higher prioritization on organic content. 37:05 So I think it's important for brands and retailers to think about that content mix and having a healthy balance of both. 37:13 That said, again, since LLMs can pull from the transcripts, the captions, and things like that, that contextual relevance, even if the whole video itself isn't pulled in, the contextual relevance from that video can be fed to LLMs when they're making a product recommendation. 37:31 Let's say I'm looking for a product for people with flat, dry, thin hair like me, a hair mask and a creator video is talking about how they have the exact same type of hair. 37:41 They purchased this product. It worked really well for them. That information can definitely be fed in for the product recommendations that AI search is is making to customers. 37:53 Yeah. I was gonna say something very similar. I mean, clearly, the AI models know what it's UGC versus paid, like and they they do rank it accordingly. 38:02 I also should have said this earlier, but Bazaarvoice, as we expand, we've always been a distribution network, right, to all the big retailers, to social media. We're also plugging in direct pipes into all of the LLMs. 38:14 So already, if you work with us and you've got Google clipped on, for example, all of your content that you built up, your huge library of Bazaarvoice content, all the videos, it's all going into Gemini and helping you win on Gemini. 38:26 We're working on similar deals with all of them. So as we meet with you one on one in strategic partnership meetings, we'll tell you more about that. But we couldn't be more excited about being the partner that helps you win in LLMs. 38:38 And we think we're just in a very unique place to do it. So on that note, Jade, how do brands get the most out of working with Bazaarvoice? 38:47 Yeah. I think the most important thing to take away here is think of us as a strategic partner, lean on your CSMs like me. 38:55 And we're a content ecosystem, not just a software tool. So we're here to listen to your challenges and come up with solutions to help you reach the right audience, to extend your content to the right channels. 39:08 And we have the communities to source the right mix of content that you need, as well as the distribution channels, Dave, as you mentioned, to put that content in front of your highest intent consumers, where they like to shop. 39:21 Excellent. And Jade, if you want to put up the checklist, maybe if we have time, we'll react to things we're seeing in the chat. 39:30 But I'll just say to wrap things up, here's a really practical checklist to get the ball rolling. So you you pick your objective. You run run one creator brief and one targeted sampling campaign that encourages video UGC. 39:43 That's really key. And I don't know why you wouldn't try to do that. Prioritize your fans and your ambassadors for credibility. That makes sense. 39:51 Push the videos to all the places, to your PDPs, to your galleries, and get ready to pilot this agentic curation because it's happening. 40:00 We're already plugging in directly into all of the LLMs and helping you win. And do these small repeatable experiments and then scale it into a steady system, a content supply chain so that you're ready to win in this world. 40:13 And we're super excited to partner. We're excited about where things are going. You can see that the way we like to interact, as always, we're a very fun company. 40:23 We try to keep it authentic. We don't have every answer about where things are going, but we are here to partner with you. So I hope you've enjoyed this. I'm sure they'll ask you for some feedback. 40:32 Jade, in closing, anything you wanna say to the folks who joined us today? Just wanna say thank you so much for joining. I hope you learned something valuable today. 40:41 We're always here if you have any other questions. And if any of you put questions in the chat that weren't answered, we will definitely follow-up with you. I really appreciate your time and hope you have a great rest of your afternoon. 40:53 Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.
