Chute helps clients take the best content created by a brand’s most loyal customers, people who create content that features their brand, and use it in marketing and ad campaigns with the customers’ permission. Chute scours the Web for user generated content of all types — text, photo, music, video — that celebrates a client’s brand. Using both online metrics and human screening, they select the best examples of content: selfies holding a favorite drink, a post about a store experience, a fake commercial for a favorite car, etc.

Chute’s client looks at the material and tells Chute which of the UGC that they are interested in using. Through a simple yet auditable process, Chute asks each creator of the UGC content for permission for the client to use their content for advertising and marketing. If the creator says no, then nothing is done. If the creator says yes, then the UGC becomes a resource for Chute and the client.

Chute will work with the client to develop a multi-platform ad campaign. Or the client is free to work on their own to create billboards, video commercials, and other material with the cleared UGC. Chute has a content management system with content tracking and analytics capabilities. They hope clients find it easier to publish through their system than via other vendors or solutions.

Chute’s customers include NBC, ESPN, The New York Times, Starbucks, Red Bull, Ritz Carlton, Coca-Cola, and many others. For Starbucks they supported a campaign called #sipface, built around permitted use of customers’ selfies of them sipping a Starbucks Frappuccino.

Chute is one of the companies participating in the SPROCKIT program.