STABILO is one of the leading manufacturers of writing utensils in Europe. This case study shows how STABILO used UGC to show its own customer community the appreciation it deserves, to strengthen customer loyalty, and to reinforce its brand image.
The Situation
The STABILO International GmbH is part of the German Schwanhäußer Industrie Holding GmbH and one of the leading manufacturers of writing utensils in Europe. For over 160 years STABILO has been producing high-quality stationery in the categories of writing, painting & drawing and highlighting. Today, STABILO products are available in 180 countries. The brand itself as well as its customers are characterized by constant curiosity and a sense for upcoming trends.
With its wide product range, STABILO not only appeals to creative minds, but also to pupils, students and business people. From the iconic Fineliners and BOSS highlighters, to colored pencils or felt-tip pens, a STABILO product can be found on almost every desk. In addition to colorful and multi-facetted products, the STABILO brand further stands for quality and innovation.
The Challenge
Looking at the content that appears under #stabilo on Instagram, the company quickly realized how extraordinarily active the STABILO customer community is on the social network. This immediately resulted in the challenge: How can the vast amount of User Generated Content be adequately evaluated and used? Given the fact that almost 1,000 new pictures appear under the hashtag #stabilo per day, it soon became obvious that a manual management of the content is not an option.
However, STABILO still wanted to be able to offer the many creative works of their customers a stage on the website. For this reason, the brand decided to work with squarelovin’s User Generated Content management tool. The overall goal behind this was to show existing customers appreciation for their creativity, while at the same presenting the great versatility of their products to potential new customers. STABILO’s customers see themselves as a creative community, which is why the focus was ought to be put on them.
The Solution
The collaboration with squarelovin enables STABILO to collect all User Generated Content in one place and automatically request essential usage rights. All images that go into the squarelovin collector are filtered in advance by a moderation service tailored exactly to the needs of STABILO. In this process, among other things, all images and videos are removed in which no STABILO products can be clearly identified or products from direct competition appear. This way, squarelovin has already sorted out over 180,000 images for STABILO in advance.
Most importantly, however, this method has already curated more than 26,000 high-quality customer artworks in the STABILO Collector. STABILO can easily view the content from there and, with just two easy-clicks, request essential usage rights to eventually publish the pictures and videos to their website. This has made it much easier for STABILO to find relevant content and effectively use it for marketing purposes.
In addition to collecting and filtering customer generated content, squarelovin also takes care of integrating UGC to the STABILO website. By embedding the colorful and creative content, STABILO now offers their customers the stage they deserve. The note that claims »[…] with a bit of luck we will repost your image«, implies that a selection-process takes place and not all images with the #stabilo automatically appear in the gallery. While customers whose works of art appear in the gallery feel particularly valued, this further results in a great motivation for others to share more high-quality content themselves.
In order to constantly keep the creativity and high commitment of the customers up, STABILO organizes Instagram-campaigns and competitions on a regular basis. For each event a specific hashtag is established through which the squarelovin UGC Management Tool filters all contributions separately, thus making the evaluation significantly easier for STABILO.
The Result
Through working with squarelovin’s UGC management tool, STABILO has been able to sort and adequately evaluate the large amount of user-generated content connected to their brand. The prominent publication on the website conveys appreciation to the creative minds within the community, while at the same time strengthening customer loyalty through the associated sense of community.
With regular campaigns, STABILO keeps the customer community active and, by only displaying selected content, ensures that users continuously aim to produce content of high quality and great effort. As a result, the content generated by STABILOS customers at this point clearly reflects what the brand stands for: creativity and quality.
Q&A
How important is User Generated Content concerning the purchase of writing utensils?
That always depends on the product. When it comes to drawing products, we consider User Generated Content to be very relevant, as inspiration and credibility play a major role in this field. Our customers get the appreciation they deserve for their creativity through our use of UGC and inspire each other every day!
What is your main use for UGC?
With User Generated Content, we provide our customers with an additional source of inspiration on our website and in the online shop. Furthermore, we use the content for our social media channels.
What do you think is the biggest advantage of UGC?
Our customers are mouthpieces for the brand, their artworks are authentic and draw the attention of new customers. We are able to express to value our customers and in return we always have enough content available for our marketing purposes. Including UGC also fuels the sense of community among our customers.
Which tasks does squarelovin take care of for you? Do we expedite your work?
squarelovin filters the relevant content for us and automates processes that we could no longer handle manually. In addition, squarelovin controls the legal situation for us so that we can focus on other tasks.
Frank Hanauer | Head of Digital Solutions & eCommerce Operations | stabilo.de
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