INSIGHT: Demand for influence–credible/3rd-party content–is growing globally as consumers continue to seek out/trust recommendations from 'influencers' over brands.

•92% trust recommendations from individuals (even if they don’t know them) over brands. Source--Nielsen

But only soft metrics are being applied to influence like reach and shares--even the most sophisticated marketers are unable to link its impact to business ROI metrics at scale.

•78% said determining ROI of influencer marketing will be a top challenge in 2017. Source--Adweek/Dec 2016

The inability to apply ROI to influence is preventing marketers from disrupting their tried-and-true marketing techniques. Until we can prove business ROI--the 'holy grail' of PR-- we won't be able to harness influence’s full potential at scale.

Our intention was to crack through the wall between PR and other disciplines with an innovation that changes how marketers/communicators think about PR/influence by building on existing advances from outside the world of PR.

C2C is a global influence-to-impact performance platform that helps brands harness the power of influence/(PR) to drive brand lift/commerce and measure BUSINESS IMPACT. Our multi-discipline/global development team built new methodologies/technologies to break apart PR/marketing barriers that existed for 75 years.

CONTENT IDENTIFICATION SOFTWARE--Identifies relevant content--articles/videos/influencer--within minutes of posting (any language); customizable with existing API feeds to provide holistic view of influence.

CONTENT QUALIFICATION CRITERIA—Researched/developed/validated content selection criteria that doubles brand/sales impact.

EARNED CONTENT UNIT FORMAT--Innovative hybrid between native/display--validated globally with IP counsel.

CONVERSION SOFTWARE—Instantly converts content into Earned Content Units in English/Spanish/Portuguese/French/Chinese. Customizable.

E-COMMERCE--Industry-first test of performance of earned influence on Amazon.

MEASUREMENT METHODOLOGY--Created a discreet choice task methodology that enables us to measure the brand lift and simulated sales of the content/earned content unit/brand ad, pre-/post, anywhere in the world.

CONVERSATION2CREDIBILITY—Launched reputation methodology for various non-marketing uses.

FIVE-STEP PROCESS WITH ALWAYS-ON OPTIMIZATION LOOP—1/Strategy--2/Identify+Qualify--3/Convert--4/Target+ Scale--5/Drive Impact.

In-market client tests across numerous use scenarios/geographies met clients' marketing/reputation goals:

•Mass retailer – new product

•Crisis/reputation restoration

•Oral care technology product on Amazon (U.S.)/Tencent (China)

•Beauty product promotional tests

•Neuroscience laboratory test

Our program puts PR at the center of the evolving integrated communications landscape with cutting-edge solutions that drives measurable business results.

LATEST C2C DATA--in every category/location/touch point/metric, earned media outperformed paid digital. While initial client/users requested confidentiality, feedback is outstanding.

•Sequencing earned/paid yields significantly higher engagement/+130% and conversion/7x

•Earned content units/ECUs consistently outperformed brand ads--a neurospychology test found they doubled the "look time"

•Our methodology consistently delivers 10%+ more media efficiency

•Our e-commerce methodology yields substantially greater engagement/+20% and commerce/+40%

•Mass retailer test--Earned content units drove 450% increase in transactions/30 days and significantly more engagement (.08 vs. .0019)

•The combination of ECUs+earned articles radically improved implicit measures of purchase intent and brand lift over other content based on a neuro-science learning test

We’ve also driven a meaningful change in how we plan across our ad/media-buying agencies.

C2C's impressive initial results have differentiated us from competition and helped drive our business--in PR and throughout our holding company--in winning significant competitive assignments/accounts from important new clients.

2017 revenue projections--$10 million.

Influence is big business. Marketers spent $15 billion on PR/influence in 2016 alone, but there is a growing problem--measurement. Even the world’s best marketers haven’t found a systematic solution that enables them to overcome barriers to truly harnessing the power of influence–scale, targeting, longevity and business ROI. To solve this, we put together a multi-discipline global team to work across agency barriers to build a global end-to-end influence-to-impact offering--Conversation2Commerce. The team dissected every element of the process creating new ad formats, measurement methodologies, earned qualification criteria, a neuropsychology understanding of content and even a patent-pending influence identification and conversion technology.

We recognized the need to quantify how earned influence drives results: sales/behavior change/reputation lift. With integration sweeping our industry and our agency, our solution was Conversation2Commerce and Conversation2Credibility. Both are influence-to-impact performance platforms that surround PR/influencer expertise with best-in-class services/technology from creative/digital/PR and media agencies, enabling us to better identify/qualify/create/amplify/target/measure the impact of influence in driving brand preference/sales.

Our platform enables us to quickly identify usable earned content in nearly any language via our dashboard. We developed criteria to qualify/select the content to drive maximum brand and sales lift. Using patent-pending software, we convert the content into a new ad format--earned content unit-- that links to the original/highly-credible earned content. The units are served with precision to targets across programmatic display/native/mobile/social and e-commerce platforms. Using a variety of methodologies we can accelerate consideration and sales, change brand preference and deliver education.

We invested $1+ million to develop our solution.