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Part 25 of 33Edit Demo — Clone a UGC Testimonial8 min read
Edit demo — clone a UGC testimonial

Clone a UGC testimonial ad for your own product

Take a creator's winning "talking to camera about a product" ad, and re-shoot the exact same beat for your product with an AI creator. VidFarm builds a character card, a storyboard, then the final video — you approve each step.

Copies the whole guide — prompts, next steps & all — for your AI agent
Watch this chapter
The advanced demo: import a skincare UGC testimonial, hit Copy Prompt, hand it to a desktop coding agent, and watch it build a character card and storyboard before generating the final AI video — reviewed side-by-side with the original. Watch this one on YouTube

Key takeaways

  • A UGC testimonial (a creator talking to camera about a product) is the hardest format to clone because there's no clip to reuse — it needs AI-generated video, the priciest of the three paintbrushes .
  • The fast path is Copy Prompt on the ad's Discover card — it hands a whole recreation brief to a desktop coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI…).
  • The agent works in visible stages: it builds a character card (the AI creator) → a storyboard → the final video, and you approve each artifact before it spends on the next.
  • You steer the look in plain language — "put her in a professional actress prep room" — before the expensive generation runs.
  • You keep the ad's structure and beat (hook, product reveal, benefit line) and swap in your product and your creator — you never republish their footage.

Why UGC testimonials are the "advanced" clone

A recaption or a raw-clip remix reuses footage that already exists. A UGC testimonial can't — the whole ad is a person on camera saying your pitch, and that person has to be generated. That puts it on the third and most expensive paintbrush.

Quick recap of how VidFarm keeps videos affordable: there are three paintbrushes — reusing existing clips, HyperFrames motion graphics (code-drawn visuals), and AI-generated video. The first two are cheap-to-free — you can land videos for free or a cent. AI video is the one that needs your own AI keys and runs a few cents per second. A UGC testimonial leans hard on that third brush, so it's the priciest demo in the course — but also the one that used to require a real creator, a real shoot, and a real product.

The strategy is the same as copying competitors : you borrow the structure — the hook, the product reveal, the benefit line, the pacing — and pour your own offer into it. What's different here is the mechanics: instead of swapping captions on borrowed footage, you re-shoot the whole thing with an AI creator, which is why it goes through a character card and a storyboard first.

Recommended walkthroughThe fast path: Copy Prompt → your desktop agent

The cleanest way to run this is to let a desktop coding agent do the heavy lifting. Every ad card on Discover has a Copy Prompt button that copies a durable, agent-directed recreation brief — you paste it into your agent and it walks itself through the whole build.

  1. Find a UGC testimonial that's winning

    Grab a creator ad that's clearly performing — the "hey guys, this has been my new obsession" format reviewing a product. Import it into your Discover feed via Add New (TikTok / YouTube / Instagram / X, or an upload up to 200 MB), same as any other competitor clip.

    Open the Discover feed

  2. Copy it, name it, hit Copy Prompt

    On the imported ad's card, copy it to a new draft and name it something like "UGC testimonial". Then click Copy Prompt — this copies a full recreation brief (the ad's viral DNA transposed to your product, with all the mechanics delegated to VidFarm).

    Paste it into your desktop agent's draft. You can either paste the brief directly, or — cleaner — give the agent the link to the draft so it pulls everything itself.

  3. Tell it what to promote

    Point it at your product. Something as short as "recreate this and promote my skincare product" is enough — attach or link your product's image/URL so it has your packaging and brand to work from. The original might be a bamboo panthenol cream; yours becomes whatever you're selling.

  4. Let it cook — then approve the character card

    The agent's first artifact is a character card: the AI creator who'll deliver your testimonial, built to match the original's aesthetic. It stops and asks you to review and approve before spending on anything downstream.

    This is your cheap steering moment — image gen is inexpensive, so iterate freely: "put her in a professional actress prep room", "warmer palette", "a bit older". Approve when she's right.

  5. Approve the storyboard

    Next it produces a storyboard — the shot-by-shot plan for the recreation, style-matched to your character card. Review the beats (hook → product reveal → benefit → sign-off), tweak any panel in plain language, and approve. Locking the plan on cheap images before the pricey video keeps the reuse-first spirit of the three paintbrushes .

  6. Generate the final video & compare

    With the card and storyboard approved, it generates the final AI video. Pull it up side-by-side with the storyboard: it should be a close match to the original's structure, now selling your product with your creator.

    Not perfect? Ask for a targeted change — a re-generated shot, a new line read, a different ending — then render and approve it into a shareable post .

A character card for the AI creator generated to match the source ad's aesthetic — a reference sheet of the same person from several angles, saved so every storyboard panel and generated shot stays on-model.
Step 4 — the agent's first artifact is a character card: the AI creator who'll deliver your testimonial. You approve (and steer) her on cheap image gen before any video is generated.
What it costs This is the expensive band. Reused clips and HyperFrames motion graphics are free-to-a-cent, but AI video generation runs roughly a few cents to $1–$10+ per clip depending on length — which is exactly why the agent approves the character card and storyboard on cheap image gen first, and confirms the video cost before generating. You'll need a BYOK image/video key (Gemini, OpenAI, or OpenRouter); the free nvidia "lite" key is text-and-vision only and can't generate media.
Tip Approving each artifact is the whole trick. The character card and the storyboard are your two cheap checkpoints — get her look and the shot plan right there, and the one pricey step (the video) lands on the first try instead of burning budget on regenerations.
Note You're re-shooting the ad with an AI creator, not compositing over the original creator's footage — so this is a fresh clip, and the ethical line is the same as copying competitors : you borrow the format and beat, never the original person's likeness or footage. Keep the character card clearly your own invention.

Where to go next

The character card and reference-image discipline here powers every generated shot you'll ever make. Go deeper on keeping a creator on-model, or on swapping just one actor into an existing template:

Clone your first UGC ad

Import a winning creator testimonial, hit Copy Prompt, and let a desktop agent build the character card, storyboard, and final video — approving each step. AI video needs a BYOK key and confirms cost first.

Open the Discover feed