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:
totalsocial@engagementlabs.com.
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
vanessa.lontoc@engagementlabs.com /
ed.keller@engagementlabs.com
SOURCE Engagement Labs