Spartan Race: How Spartan Doubled Their Ambassador UGC

Context

Spartan is the fastest-growing participant sport in the world. Its Instagram presence was growing fast, and UGC (user-generated content) was quickly becoming the best way to promote its races — digital word of mouth from the people actually crawling under the barbed wire.

Spartan already had passionate ambassadors. What it didn’t have was a way to run the program at scale:

• Manage and automate the brand ambassador program
• Focus and incentivize ambassadors to produce more high-quality content
• Measure ambassador contributions to sales and marketing
• Drive awareness and create high-quality content at an unprecedented scale

Solution

Spartan partnered with LoudCrowd and put real incentives behind ambassador posting. Ambassadors earned rewards for posting about Spartan and tagging the brand on Instagram, and every post had to meet content requirements Spartan set — so more volume didn’t mean lower quality.

Results

Immediately after announcing the program, posts, impressions, and repeat posting all jumped. Ambassadors published 900+ posts in the first month, posting 2.3x more frequently than before, and doubled Spartan’s ambassador UGC overall — $63K in generated UGC value.

Because these are authentic posts from real racers, with engagement rates to match, that content is worth more than the equivalent spend on paid Instagram ads, influencer posts, or brand posts.