How Brands Use Social Proof to Win
Retail buyers and consumers trust the same thing: real people talking about real products.
Join YSpace and Butterly at this webinar, where we’ll discuss how early-stage brands can use authentic consumer content, reviews, and social media to build credibility, generate demand, and support retail growth.
📅 Date: Tuesday, July 21st, 2026
⏰ Time: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
At this session, you'll learn:
🔥 Why social proof is one of the most powerful growth engines for emerging brands.
🔥 How to generate authentic content without relying on expensive influencers.
🔥 How to turn customer experiences into marketing assets that drive sales.
🔥How reviews and social content support conversions at both online and retail points of purchase.
🔥How consumer advocacy can help you get listed, and stay listed, at retail.
If you’re a founder or brand leader looking to grow your brand through community and authentic advocacy, this session will give you a practical playbook for turning real customers into your most powerful marketing engine.
About the speaker:
Andrew Ratte is the Strategic Partnerships Lead at Butterly. He helps build mutually beneficial partnerships that drive meaningful growth for both brands and businesses, like distributors, brokers and more. Andrew connects Butterly’s consumer advocacy platform with complementary partners to create scalable programs that deliver authentic reviews, impactful user-generated content, and measurable sales results.
About Butterly:
Butterly is a Canadian consumer advocacy and UGC platform that helps brands build trust, credibility, and real sales by turning everyday consumers into their most effective sales engine.
Born from ChickAdvisor, Canada’s first product review site founded in 2006, Butterly evolved from nearly two decades of community-led expertise into a leading platform for authentic reviews, social content, and consumer insights.
Today, Butterly partners with both global leaders and emerging brands to support product launches, retail sell-through, and long-term growth by delivering high-quality content created by real customers, not influencers.
Through a highly engaged advocate network, full-service campaign management, and real-time performance reporting and insights, Butterly helps brands build trust at the point of purchase, drive conversion, and make smarter marketing decisions.
About YSpace
YSpace is York University’s pan-university entrepreneurship and innovation hub supporting startups and entrepreneurs from a variety of sectors and communities. Our programming spans across scaling innovative technologies through customer and investor capital to scaling agri-food businesses into mass retail to diversity-focused initiatives like **ELLA powered by Desjardins** for women-led businesses and Black Entrepreneurship Alliance (BEA) for Black-led businesses. Additionally, with our Start-Up Visa program, we are building a robust ecosystem, driving positive change and empowering entrepreneurs to shape the future. We are also home to two physical hubs in the City of Markham and the Town of Georgina
Media Consent
Please be advised that this event will be photographed and recorded. By completing your registration, you acknowledge and consent to the possibility of your image and/or voice being captured and used for promotional or archival purposes.