How to run a UGC competition that fills your gallery, online and in-store

Why does a competition beat asking nicely?

The mechanism is simple. An incentive plus a deadline drives volume. Volume gives you choice. A rights request at the point of entry makes the best pieces legally reusable. The gallery puts them back on the product page, where the next shopper is deciding. Visual proof from real customers is consistently one of the strongest trust signals on a PDP, which is why the same content that wins a contest also lifts UGC conversion rate once it lands on the page.

The proof: Leroy Merlin

Leroy Merlin ran an ongoing competition on Idukki with a winner picked every month. The volume was the headline: more than 1,900 pieces of customer content. The surprise was the channel mix. Alongside hashtag entries online, they collected UGC inside physical stores using QR codes, and that in-store route worked unusually well, because the aisle is where the product is in someone's hands.

Learn from the brands that nailed it

The famous campaigns are worth studying, less for their budgets than for their mechanics. Each one made the ask clear, picked a format native to where its audience already posts, and offered a prize that fit that audience.

Five formats you can run

• Monthly hashtag contest: a small recurring prize keeps a programme alive all year (the Leroy Merlin shape).
• In-store QR collection: a code by the product, at the till, or on the packaging, leading to a branded collection page.
• Review-with-photo: entries are photo reviews, which lift PDP conversion more than text alone.
• Launch or seasonal: a themed hashtag, a hard deadline, one hero prize.
• Always-on "tag to be featured": no prize budget, the feature is the reward (the GoPro shape).

How do I word the entry and rights ask?

Steal these. Each one names the product, the prize and the deadline, and the rights request is folded into the entry itself so consent and entry happen in the same tap. For the legal detail behind that consent line, our UGC rights and permissions guide covers what a defensible grant needs to say.

Rights and fair play

• Capture consent to reuse at the point of entry.
• Write plain-language rules: dates, eligibility, how winners are chosen, the prize.
• Credit the creator everywhere the content appears.
• Honour the platforms’ promotion rules.
• Give people a way to revoke their content.
• Never invent or inflate your own entry numbers.

What should I measure?

• Entries collected (the headline number).
• Rights secured (reusable pieces, not just total posts).
• Cost per usable piece (prize value divided by usable entries).
• On-site lift where the gallery shows: engagement, add-to-cart and conversion.
• Repeat entrants month over month, a sign of real momentum.

How Idukki runs the whole loop

The point of doing this in one tool is that the loop never breaks between apps. Collect from a hashtag, tagged posts, reviews, and a branded QR page for in-store. Score on a leaderboard. License and reward with rights requests and winner selection built in. Display the winners as a shoppable gallery on your homepage and PDPs. Competitions are included on Pro and Enterprise; the Starter plan runs one live competition at a time, which is plenty to prove the loop.