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Case study - Home goods
How Purple Mattress turned customers into a UGC engine
Purple's ambassadors submitted more than 500 images in six months and generated close to $300,000 in earned media value, from content the brand did not have to produce.
Results in six months
The problem
Why shoppers trust customer content more than brand ads
Ad skepticism is the starting condition, not the exception. Roughly three out of four consumers say they do not believe or trust advertising at all. For a mattress brand that lives or dies on considered, high-ticket purchases, that is the whole problem.
Purple did not have a reach shortage. It had a credibility ceiling: the more polished the creative got, the less it read as evidence.
The brand already had the answer sitting in its customer base, people photographing their own beds unprompted and posting them. What it did not have was a way to ask for that content at volume, license it, and know what it was worth.
The goals
The three goals Purple set for the program
Scale word of mouth
Prompt customers to create and post with campaign-specific briefs and incentives, instead of hoping they would.
Amplify social impact
Put content in front of each ambassador's own network, where a recommendation still carries weight.
Repurpose everything
Feed the collected content back into paid social, the site, and email rather than letting it die in a feed.
How it works
The difference between a hashtag and a content pipeline
Purple launched an ambassador program on Roster built for one output: a steady, licensed, attributable stream of customer content. Roster identified the customers already advocating for the brand and gave them a single place to see active campaigns, submit content, and claim rewards.
Campaigns ran continuously, so there was always an open ask and always a reason to come back. Because submissions came through the platform, every image arrived with usage rights attached and attribution to the ambassador who made it.
The results
500+ images and close to $300K in earned media value
Six months after launch, the program was producing more usable creative than Purple's internal studio, at a fraction of the cost per asset.
More than 500 user-generated images were submitted by ambassadors, generating close to $300,000 in earned media value, alongside hundreds of social posts published by the ambassador community to their own audiences.
Roster streamlined the management of our ambassador program. Organic marketing grew exponentially. Purple Mattress Marketing team
The compounding part
One submission, three channels
The program's value did not stop at the ambassador's own audience. Content came back into Purple's owned channels on a continuous loop.
Ambassador photography ran in Purple's Instagram feed alongside brand creative, appeared on product pages as social proof at the point of decision, and stocked the library that paid social pulled from. One submission could serve three channels, and the cost of the asset was a reward and a campaign brief rather than a shoot.
Key takeaways
What made the difference
- Polish was the problem, not the budget. The more produced the creative looked, the less it functioned as evidence for a high-consideration purchase.
- Licensing at submission is what makes it a pipeline. A hashtag gives you images you cannot legally use. Roster attaches usage rights and attribution on arrival.
- Always-on beats campaign bursts. Continuous campaigns meant there was always an open ask, so submissions did not spike and fade.
- The asset cost is a reward, not a shoot. One submission served Instagram, product pages, and paid social.
FAQ
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