The year of 'Ugly' content: here's your business can benefit
Content marketing is undergoing a transformation (isn’t it always). Brands are embracing a new approach that prioritises genuineness over gloss, rawness over refinement.
This emerging strategy artfully combines brand messaging with entertaining delivery, creating what industry insiders call "advertainment."
It could just be called “raw and authentic”. Don’t worry about polished feeds. It is about “getting it out there”.
What is “Ugly Content”?
TikTok has fundamentally altered our relationship with content. The crafted, professionally produced material that once dominated our feeds is now giving way to something far more authentic and relatable.
We're seeing this ripple effect across all social platforms, with each one abandoning conventional practices to serve up what their audiences truly desire – content that honestly reflects their own imperfect, unfiltered realities.
The message from consumers is crystal clear: we've grown weary of overly polished, excessively edited material.
What we crave is substance – content that entertains us, teaches us something valuable, and delivers genuine insights without unnecessary embellishment. The demand is straightforward: skip the glossy façade and simply deliver meaningful content.
Where “Ugly Content” works
This unpolished approach particularly shines in video format – everything from direct-to-camera and authentic user-generated clips to candid product demonstrations and tutorial content.
Simply grab your mobile, capture spontaneous, concise footage, apply minimal post-production touches, and you're ready to publish almost instantly.
With visual design, we're witnessing a significant shift as brands increasingly abandon meticulously crafted graphic arrangements in favour of straightforward, minimally produced visual elements that feel more genuine and approachable.
The casual collection of images, or "photo dump," has made a remarkable resurgence.
These authentic snapshots can be presented as interactive carousel posts or compiled into animated GIFs, offering a refreshingly unstructured and captivating showcase of visual content.
Ultimately, the objective is to connect with your audience by presenting material in formats that align with their platform-specific expectations and preferences, creating a seamless experience that feels native to each digital environment.
How to create “Ugly Content”
Let's look at some ways brands have embraced the 'ugly' content trend and why it works:
Raw TikTok demonstrations: A creator got famous redoing logos for big brands horribly using Microsoft Paint. THIS is the ultimate Ugly Content.
Employee-generated content (EGC): Showing staff using your products creates authenticity.
Unpolished authenticity: Brands posting content that looks like it was "made on Canva in 10 seconds" for major sales events.
Casual behind-the-scenes: If you have a team, if you don't, you are your team. Can you talk a little bit more about yourself, about your journey?
Standing out in the AI era
One additional benefit of 'ugly' content is how it helps you stand out in an increasingly AI-driven world. If everyone's using AI... how can you then do things that AI can't?
Raw, unpolished content gives you an edge because AI is going to look a lot more polished. So think about how you can outshine AI... we're thinking about ugly content, selfie-type talk-to-camera stuff, have your phone on the table, just talk over.
This purposefully imperfect approach helps your content feel more human in a landscape increasingly populated by AI-generated material.
Final thoughts
None of us are perfect. So let's stop pretending to be and enjoy a simpler, less strenuous, more authentic way of sharing ourselves and brands with the world.
The 'ugly' content approach isn't just a passing trend - it's a response to what audiences genuinely want: real connections with the brands they follow. By embracing this more authentic style, you're not lowering your standards - you're actually raising them by prioritising what truly matters to your audience.
Resources
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