So we created M&M’s & Friends, the first ever user-generated social comic strip. We used our own fans’ personal Instagram pictures and created a comic strip out of them every week. Our characters interacted with their content as we created a timely and topical comic series not just for our fans, but with our fans.

We took an old idea like the Sunday newspaper comics and gave it a modern twist for today’s youth. Every week, we picked a photo posted by one of our 700k Instagram friends, then turned it into a comic strip and reposted it as the newest edition of M&M’s & Friends on Instagram. Since it’s a weekly occurrence, it allowed us to be current with what was going on in that specific week. From big events like the MLB All Star game, Winter Olympics, or Christmas, to smaller cultural topics like back to school, Friendsgiving, or even wind energy, we used our fans’ pictures and created comics that related to those moments. Fans could even post pictures with #mmsandfriends to specifically become a part of the series. Since we were sourcing from all of our followers’ existing free content, we didn’t even need a budget to create our weekly series.

Not only were we able to be timely, but we also created a whole new form of content that our target actually wanted to participate in. Our Instagram friends liked our comics and tagged their friends, which helped us gain over 200k new friends along the way. That’s a 40% increase in followers just from using our own fans’ free content. Not bad for an organic social campaign that will continue to rise as we continue to post more comics every single week.