UGC talking-head

The default UGC ad: one creator, front camera, arm's length, talking straight into the lens about the product. It is shot to look like footage a real person filmed in their own room rather than anything a crew was involved in.

When to use it

Reach for it when you need volume — this is the format most brands run first and test most hooks against. It carries a spoken argument better than any other format, which makes it the right pick when the product needs explaining rather than just showing.

The beat structure

Hook to camera, then the turn — why it matters, or the problem it kills — then the product lifted beside the face with the label forward, then the payoff and sign-off. Adjacent beats must differ in camera distance and action, or the cut reads as a morph rather than an edit.

The thing to get right

The signature moment is the lift: the creator raises the product beside their face with the front label toward the lens and holds it a beat. An ad that never does this reads as a person talking about nothing in particular.

The format at a glance

• Output — a video ad.
• Structure — 3 beats, each one a separately planned shot.
• Family — Creator & UGC video.
• Recipe id — ugc_selfie, which is what you name when you ask for it by hand or from an agent.

Does the creator have to hold the product up?

At least once. The lift is the one frame where the label is large enough to read, which is also why this format benefits from a real packshot more than its beat count suggests. Without the lift the ad is a person talking, and the viewer never learns what about.

Related formats

Formats built around a person on camera — the talking-head, the unboxing, the try-on, the demo. These are the highest-volume paid-social formats on TikTok, Reels and Shorts, and the ones where realism matters more than polish.

• UGC unboxing — a creator excitedly opening/unpacking the product
• Green-screen reaction — a creator green-screen composited over a full-bleed on-screen element (a review/article/product screenshot) they point at and react to — hook-first talking-head
• UGC tutorial / demo — a creator demonstrating how the product works, step by step
• Transformation — a before→after video transformation — space, skin, hair or outfit — with the reveal as the payoff beat
• UGC try-on / haul — a creator receiving, trying on or using the product (fashion/beauty/lifestyle)
• Podcast clip — a viral podcast-clip ad — two people at a mic'd table mid-conversation, one telling the product story as an authentic sit-down excerpt, captions-forward

The full catalog is on the creative recipes index.

Models that render it

This format is rendered by a video model. The plan picks one unless you name it, and Seedance 2.5 is the default pick. You can ask for another by name, such as Seedance 2.0, Gemini Omni 1.1 or Gemini Omni. All three render native sound, so a voice comes out of the same take as the picture. The video models page compares every option.

Hermoso plans and renders an ugc talking-head from your brand rather than from a prompt you write, composites every on-screen word after the render so the copy comes out exact, and exposes the same format to an AI agent over MCP. How Hermoso renders a format covers all three.