u/Mikazuki-Tokei

I’ve spent the last 3 years creating Beauty content, working with everything from small skincare brands to larger campaigns. Looking back, there are so many things I learned through trial and error that would have saved me a lot of time if someone had explained them when I started.

1. I spent too much time worrying about growing my account when I should have been improving my portfolio. Brands hiring UGC creators are often looking at the content itself, your delivery, concepts and whether you can make their product look natural on camera or not
2. Don’t wait for a perfect portfolio, use products that you already own to create sample videos. You don’t need 20 paid campaigns before you can start pitching. A few strong examples showing different formats are enough to demonstrate what you can create.
3. Learn usage rights early, ngl This is something I wish I understood from the beginning. A brand using your video organically is different from using it for paid advertising, and the duration and platforms matter too. Always ask where the content will be used before agreeing to a price.
4. One mistake I made was stopping outreach whenever I had a few projects. Then those projects finished and the pipeline was empty. Keeping some outreach going makes the workload much more predictable.

If you told me a month ago I’d be getting paid to film Twix and Snickers bars on my desk, I wouldn’t have believed you. Like most creators, I was fully conditioned to think UGC only existed for skincare serums, apps, etc. I genuinely thought big FMCG chocolate brands only did multi-million dollar TV commercials, so seeing an agency reach out for IG reels was a total plot twist.

What blew my mind once I started working on it is how completely different the ad strategy is compared to standard DTC products. Chocolate is 100% impulse-buy territory. Nobody buys a candy bar because of its ingredients, they buy it because of immediate visual and audio triggers.

FMCG and snack brands suffer from crazy creative fatigue on IG because these visual impulse ads burn out fast, meaning media buyers are constantly hungry for fresh raw assets. If you're feeling stuck in a rut pitching the same cosmetics or gadgets, I definitely recommend looking into impulse-buy niches.

It was definitely a wake-up call that UGC is way broader than what we usually see on X creators. In the sweetest way possible, I'm hired-hired.