Engagement Labs Secures Contracts with One of the Largest U.S. Media Companies; CEO and President provide Q&A in Response to Increasing Interest from The International Investment Community
Engagement Labs Secures Contracts
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. and MONTREAL, July 31, 2019 /CNW/ -- Engagement Labs Inc. (TSXV: EL) (the "Company") announced today that it has successfully secured two contracts valued at CAD $187,149 with one of the largest US-based multinational media and entertainment conglomerates. The contracts are valued at CAD $187,149, and the engagements are for the remainder of the 2019 year across multiple networks.
The Company extends its recent growth and momentum in the broader entertainment industry with its recently announced addition of its first video game company. The Company's entertainment client base and domain expertise includes a diverse group of companies including gaming, over-the-top (OTT) companies, global news and entertainment media brands and television channels.
"Media is a highly conversational category. With ever more choices about what to watch, when to watch it, and on what device, consumers generally seek out advice and recommendations from others. With the rise of cord cutters, in order to be successful in this environment it is critically important to know which entertainment programs break through the clutter and become part of the cultural conversation, as well as what drives people to talk and how best to spark conversations," said Ed Keller, CEO of Engagement Labs. "Brands are discovering the power of consumer conversation to amplify their paid advertising, which is also the logic behind our recently announced partnership with MRI-Simmons."
Keller concluded, "We are pleased to be continuing our partnership with this industry leader to provide powerful data on social influence to drive their business forward and look forward to continuing our work together in the years to come."
To learn more how to improve your marketing ROI and increase sales through social intelligence, reach out at: [email protected].
CEO and President provide Q&A in Response to Increasing Interest from The International Investment Community
What is Engagement Labs?
Engagement Labs is an industry-leading data and analytics firm that delivers TotalSocial®, a unique social analytics platform that helps Fortune 500 companies strengthen their brands, accelerate sales, and improve marketing ROI by leveraging the power of consumer conversations and social engagement.
Among the hundreds of social analytic offerings in the market, TotalSocial is the only one that captures and analyzes what consumers are saying about brands every day, in both their online and offline conversations. The platform also features predictive analytics based on this proprietary data that forecast sales growth, media effectiveness, brand health, and other marketing outcomes.
What's the business model?
Engagement Labs is a Platform as a Service business model where most customers commit to a multi-year contracts. Since the TotalSocial platform was launched in 2016 the company has signed contracts of over $12M and has experienced a customer renewal rate in excess of 80%.
What is Engagement Labs customer footprint?
Engagement Labs' sweet spot is Fortune 500 companies. We have been very successful in securing several contracts with large, multi-national organizations. The part that has particularly excited us about our success is the wide-ranging industries in which the TotalSocial platform resonates, our customers span across Telecom, Sports/Media, Financial, Retail, Tech and consumer goods sectors such as Beverages and Beauty.
How does Engagement Labs differentiate itself from other marketing data and analytics pace-sharing marketplaces?
There are a few things that make us unique.
The TotalSocial platform is the first and only product in the market that combines offline and online data. The platform is a patent-pending technology and database architecture which has artificial intelligence/machine learning for powerful, fast predictive models and diagnostics to guide client decision making. Also, it is the only product in the market with predictive analytics that are used forecast future sales.
Can you please explain what you mean by offline word of mouth data and how that adds value?
The company has the first and only product in the market with 10-year database of proprietary brand, industry and competitive intelligence which holds social data for over 1000 Brands across multiple industries. This complements online data for the same brands. Using this data, we are able to provide our customers with analytics they can use to predict future performance.
The vital importance of the two in tandem is that analytics demonstrate that online data can predict about 9% of a brand's sales, while offline can predict an additional 10%. Further, there is no correlation between the two, so only when a marketer has both offline plus online data can they get a full and complete view. Social media without offline creates a very real chance that the wrong decisions will be made.
Has the platform been recognized in the marketplace?
Engagement Labs has been highly cited and validated by well-known industry experts and publications highlighting the Company's technology including Harvard Business Review, New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Also, we received recognition and citation of Engagement Labs' analysis as evidence in Hillary Clinton's book, "What Happened." Engagement Labs was also the winner of the 2017 Best Paper Award from the Advertising Research Foundation and the winner of 2017 Wommy Award.
What was your role Ed before Engagement Labs?
I was CEO and founder of a company called Keller Fay Group that focused on offline word of mouth measurement. And prior to that I was CEO of Roper ASW, one of the world's largest and most prestigious market research firms.
What was your role Steve before Engagement Labs?
I have been in the digital industry for more than 25 years and spent the last 10 working with SaaS and PaaS based companies. I was most recently the Chief Revenue Officer of Viewlift and SVP of Neulion. They are both leading PaaS companies.
What attracted you to join Engagement Labs?
[Ed]: What attracted me to Engagement Labs was the opportunity to take Keller Fay's offline data and integrate it with social media data and deliver it via a technology platform. The TotalSocial platform we created together is the vision I had when we joined Engagement Labs.
[Steve]: I began to see Fortune 500 companies begin to use social to solve problems and grow revenue. Most companies are focused on social listening which is interesting but does not accomplish these goals. When Ed walked me through the TotalSocial Platform, I knew we had something that Fortune 500s needed.
What's the opportunity for Engagement Labs?
The total addressable market (TAM) is very large. Our focus during these initial two years has been to secure contracts with leading brands across a range of verticals. With those industry-leaders in hand, we are now actively pursuing other brands in each vertical and believe as a result our growth can be exponential.
Are there any significant partnerships the Engagement Labs can leverage for growth?
Engagement Labs has a significant opportunity with a partnership that we have with Kantar under the WPP umbrella who are the world's second largest market research and data company. The partnership includes a two-year licensing agreement for the exclusive rights to sell Engagement Labs' TotalSocial platform in the United Kingdom and the creation of unique Kantar/TotalSocial products to take to market in the US. After a thorough assessment of the industry, Kantar found TotalSocial to be the most innovative and highly differentiated platform in the marketplace.
In addition, we recently announced a partnership with MRI-Simmons, the leading provider of insights on the American consumer and their media behavior. Launched as a joint venture in 2019, MRI-Simmons is co-owned by GfK and Symphony AI Group, with GfK as the majority partner. This deal is part of the overall growth strategy of Engagement Labs to accelerate its client base and revenue.
What's the most surprising use of Engagement Labs technology thus far?
One of our customers in Telecom has aggressive growth targets with ambition to become the #1 brand in its competitive set and sees advocacy as key. They needed to identify new marketing channels and target consumer segments to grow the brand. TotalSocial helped our customer in the following ways:
1) Provided them with Consumer Insights to help them understand the drivers of new customer acquisition and growth levels for existing customers
2) Helped them identify new target market demographics, including age, socio-economic and cultural factors
3) Provided a recommendation to create a lower price-point product which the company launched
4) Provided a recommended messaging and media platform to launch new product which the company adopted
What are your priorities for 2019?
2019 priorities are sales and revenue growth through direct selling, expansion of partnership opportunities to accelerate that growth further, and building out activation partnerships that power our clients to reach the right consumers based on the data and analytics that TotalSocial provides.
Interview with:
Ed Keller, CEO Engagement Labs
Steven Brown, President Engagement Labs
About Engagement Labs
Engagement Labs (TSXV: EL) is an industry-leading data and analytics firm that provides social intelligence for Fortune 500 brands and companies.
To learn more visit www.engagementlabs.com
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
For media inquiries please contact:
Vanessa Lontoc / Ed Keller, CEO
Engagement Labs
[email protected] / [email protected]
SOURCE Engagement Labs
Share this article