Title	CONVERSATION 2 COMMERCE
Brand	MSL Group
Product/Service	EARNED MEDIA INFLUENCE
Category	E01. Use of Integrated Media
Entrant	MSLGROUP New York, USA
Idea Creation	MSLGROUP New York, USA

Name	Company	Position
Erin Lanuti	MSLGROUP	Chief Influence Strategist

The Campaign

The firm closely monitored the increasing power of influence created from social media -- new formats for ratings and reviews, recent trends such as Instagram posts of restaurant meals to tweeting on everything from products to politics and the rise of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and more. We saw how peer-to-peer recommendations drive about twice the amount of sales as paid advertising. Our insight was that earned content, the bread and butter of public relations, stays relevant for days, weeks and months after it first appears. Using only PR tools, PR professionals have never been able to capitalize from this benefit because of an inability to scale and target it to the right person at the right time. So we looked beyond just a PR solution to create C2C.

Creative Execution

DESCRIBE THE EXECUTION. (20% of vote) In mid-2016, our global CEO and Chief Influence Strategist personally presented a chance to beta test C2C to select clients and prospects in the U.S., China and France. When a client accepted, we customized C2C to meet their specific needs. The results far exceeded our expectations; data consistently proved C2C delivered better performance than paid media alone and accelerated the path to purchase. We quickly moved to launch publicly and globally. We next offered the C2C platform to clients more broadly across MSLGROUP, Publicis Communications and Publicis Media. Herbette and Lanuti also presented C2C in select new business pitches across our network knowing that C2C could be a compelling decision driver. In mid-September, we went 'public' globally. Key elements included: • A Ted-Talk-style video • An e-book, co-authored by Campaign (affiliated with PR Week) putting the C2C innovation in the context of the evolution of influence • Media relations campaign • Internal communications to inform and educate employees on the new platform • Participation in the Holmes IN2Summit panel • Three pieces of content created by Campaign, PR Week, and our firm were distributed globally.

To date, hard data from the C2C model has shown that in every category, location, touch point and metric, earned media outperforms paid digital. While most of the initial companies using C2C requested confidentiality for now, the feedback is outstanding. "This raises the PR bar very high. We have always been able to achieve great results in terms of impressions. We can now prove that the millions of impressions we achieve translate into business impact," said a client communications director. Our firm has also seen C2C's impressive initial results differentiate us from the competition and drive our business. Herbette says C2C played a pivotal role in the success Publicis Communications had in winning many large pitches in the last quarter and helped MSLGROUP win a competitive piece of business from a large new client.

Public relations earns credibility and trust. Through earned content in the form of news articles, broadcast coverage, social posts, ratings and reviews and of course influencer commentary, “influence’ has become PR’s currency. It is priceless, but it also has limitations: a short shelf-life restricted by the publisher's reach, the influencer's power, the time frame in which it appears, and imprecise audience targeting. Along with the business-driving and sales potential of earned content, PR agencies have been challenged to address these issues to clients. Because of these difficulties, earned content and influence has been largely underutilized and undervalued in the marketing mix.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Our next challenge was to make earned content and influencer commentary work better, smarter, more effectively - and prove it drives marketing and sales. We scaled the software for global use, enabling it to work in English, Spanish, French and Chinese with the ability to add additional languages as needed. We worked with our sister agencies to develop measurement methodologies, such as Earned Plan Lab, to pre-test earned content and to project brand and sales lift from influence. With all resources within the newly transformed Network available, we assumed the role as lead agency in developing the platform, working in conjunction with sister communications and media firms. Its leadership of C2C helped our firm connect to a unique vision called “Power of One” as 'cutting edge,' 'expert marketers,' and 'business drivers' within the evolving integrated public relations landscape. Our key strategies included: • Demonstrate the new Publicis Groupe business model of interdependent services working closely together drives tremendous innovation and business success. • Promote the firms importance and leadership role within the transformed global communications framework. • Elevate the role for "influence" by giving it the state-of-the-art scale, analytics and control it traditionally lacks.