Engagement Labs Continues Strategic Expansion Into US and UK Markets With Acquisition of Leading Conversation Market Research Firm Keller Fay Group

TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - Jul 24, 2015) - Engagement Labs is pleased to announce that today it has completed the acquisition of 100% of the stock of Keller Fay Group, the global leader in measuring consumer brand conversations, with offices in New York and the United Kingdom.

A key objective of the acquisition is to combine Keller Fay's industry-leading offline word of mouth measurement with Engagement Lab's industry-leading social media analytics and technology platforms. 

"We will offer an integrated point of view and one-stop-shop for clients seeking to understand how a brand's customers and prospects are engaging with the brand and with each other. This unique powerful integration allows for a much needed perspective on the power of conversations regardless of where they occur and how they affect brand and purchase behaviour," said Bryan Segal, CEO at Engagement Labs.

The combination of the Keller Fay Group with Engagement Labs will result in the delivery of a gold standard toolset for Chief Marketing Officers and marketing professionals to measure their Total Social marketing performance. 

"Keller Fay's proprietary industry leading research and data quantitatively measures offline social conversations and the impact they have on purchasing decisions. Combined with Engagement Labs' proprietary eValue™ scoring tool, that measures digital social media marketing performance, marketers will for the first time, be able to assess the online and offline impact of their marketing investment in a single integrated fashion," said Segal.

Keller Fay was founded in 2006 by industry leaders Ed Keller and Brad Fay. The company works on behalf of brands such as AT&T and Toyota, media such as CBS and ESPN, and agencies such as Omnicom and Universal McCann.

Ed Keller, co-founder and CEO of Keller Fay, is a bestselling author and one of the most recognized names in conversational marketing. The publication of his 2003 book, The Influentials, has been called the "seminal moment in the development of word of mouth." Keller's most recent book, The Face-to Face Book (co-authored with COO Brad Fay), was named 2013 Best Book in Marketing by the American Marketing Association. In awarding them the prize, the AMA noted, "Ed Keller and Brad Fay in their book The Face-to-Face Book provide us with strong evidence that in today's high tech digital world, face-to-face real relationships matter most. This book with its simple and compelling message, does not so much as take us back to the basics but into the future of marketing with the basics." 

"We are excited to be joining forces with Engagement Labs as we believe the combination of our respective proprietary online and offline social media measurement capabilities is a game changer, satisfying a growing need and filling a void in the global marketplace," said Keller. "Our combined ability to measure different channels, as well as our ability to provide actionable insights from such data and research is of significant value to marketing professionals. We will empower businesses to derive the maximum efficiency and effectiveness from their marketing investment through social amplification, both online and offline."

"We have already collaborated and mapped out our thinking around the plans to launch a SaaS (software-as-a-service) offering, that will feature the data and analytics derived from Keller Fay research and will complement our eValue SaaS tools and solutions," added Segal.

Upon closing of the acquisition, Segal will be joined on the executive team by Keller and Fay who will become President and Chief Research Officer of Engagement Labs, respectively.

In addition, Mr. Bryan Segal, CEO, and Mr. Ed Keller, President, have been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Company. 

Engagement Labs Chairman G. Scott Paterson said, "We are delighted to add Ed Keller and Brad Fay to our Executive Management team and welcome the entire Keller Fay employee group to the Engagement Labs family. This business combination is a key piece of our larger strategic plan to position the company as the global leader in social media measurement. eValue measures the efficacy of a brand's owned social media properties (including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter) and Keller Fay measures the impact of a brand's earned social media activity." 

About Engagement Labs

Engagement Labs' eValue™ Score is the global benchmark for social media scoring. eValue Analytics Pro, an enterprise-grade social media analytics platform, scores brands between 0-100. eValue measures brands' social media and digital marketing efforts. It's composed of a series of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), including Engagement, Responsiveness and Impact, which is benchmarked against 100,000+ handpicked and verified brands.

The eValue score is composed of Engagement, Impact and Responsiveness metrics. Engagement is the level of interaction content receives on a specific social network, Impact is the unique reach content receives on a specific social network, and Responsiveness measures how much, how fast and how well a brand responds to actual conversations amongst its users.

Engagement Labs offers intelligent social data, analytics and insights for organizations that are actively engaging on social networks. Offered as a SaaS or through an API, the eValue™ analytics platform allows brands to measure and maximize the effectiveness of their social media marketing campaigns, as well as measure that of their competitors across major social networks Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Engagement Labs maintains offices in Montreal, Toronto, Paris and New York. www.engagementlabs.com / www.evaluesuite.com