What is user-generated content (UGC)?

UGC stands for user-generated content: any content people create off their own initiative about a product or brand, without being paid or asked. A Google review, a photo of new running shoes on Instagram, a Strava run tagged with a hashtag — it all counts.

The principle sounds straightforward, but the marketing industry has stretched the term considerably. What started as spontaneous public behaviour has become its own discipline, with brands running campaigns designed to replicate that spontaneity. The result: much of what the market calls "UGC" today isn't user-generated at all. It's directed content from paid creators who mimic the unpolished aesthetic of UGC. Authentic in appearance, transactional in origin.

Sunday Squad sits somewhere different. Our athletes aren't paid to create content — they receive the product, use it, and post because it fits what they already do. That's close to the original definition of UGC, but not quite accurate either: the content is invited, curated, and synchronised. We'd rather call it what it is: creator content from amateur athletes, structured and activated as a squad.

The real distinction isn't in how the content looks — it's in where it appears. UGC that a brand reposts on its own channels loses its context: a photo of an athlete on a brand page has become a brand photo. That same photo on the athlete's own account, surrounded by their training log and their community, is something else entirely. The viewer sees the perspective of someone they follow, not a campaign from a brand trying to sell them something.