PR is extremely powerful, delivering priceless earned advocacy and influence in the form of news articles, reviews, and influencer commentary. Of course, it also has its traditional limitations: a short shelf life, imprecision in terms of audience targeting, and it’s difficult to measure.
This has caused many marketers to underuse and undervalue earned influence in their marketing mix, despite the fact that earned content delivers seven to ten times the ROI of paid media in mixed models. Brands and agencies have never been able to capitalise on its true value by giving it scale and directing it to key target audiences at key points of decision-making.
In response, MSLGROUP, in conjunction with Publicis Communications and Publicis Media, has launched an influence-to-impact performance platform, to better realise the potential of influence to drive brand reputation and commerce. Called Conversation2Commerce, or C2C, the offering puts MSLGROUP’s expertise in earned media and influence at the core and surrounds it with best-in-class services and technologies from Publicis Communications and Publicis Media.
Watch as Erin Lanuti, MSLGROUP’s chief influencer strategist, joins me to explain C2C:
MSLGROUP’s C2C represents the PR revolution. It takes the very best earned-media content from your PR activity, and uses advanced digital advertising tools and techniques to ensure those articles, blog posts, videos, or reviews are read by the intended target audience. The C2C platform converts media articles into innovative digital ad units and uses programmatic targeting technology to ensure the target audience reads them. It has multiple applications, from driving sale conversion to reputation management.
As the barriers between the disciplines in communications continue to erode, this platform is one of the best examples of how true integrated thinking can bring new value to clients. C2C is integrated by birth: as one of the most integrated, complete agencies, we have worked together with our paid, shopper, advertising, and digital sister agencies inside Publicis Groupe to develop the platform.
While the expertise of PR professionals is critical to strategising, developing, and placing the kind of earned content that will have the desired impact, the media team brings the advanced analytic tools and platforms to optimise targeted distribution and generate predictable and measurable results. Together, we’ve been able to reshape how we think about and leverage influence at scale. This is our revolution. But, more importantly, it is the kind of integrated solution clients are looking for. It’s what advances our capabilities and our profession.
To learn more, contact Lanuti at Erin.Lanuti@mslgroup.com.
Guillaume Herbette is the global CEO of MSLGROUP, responsible for overseeing all MSLGROUP entities worldwide.
