5-hour ENERGY shots influencer campaign’s return on ad spend is more than six times higher than average social media food campaigns
CHICAGO — May 1, 2019 — IRI®, a global leader in innovative solutions and services for consumer, retail and media companies, and Influential, a leading artificial intelligence influencer technology, Social Intelligence™ firm and IBM Watson developer partner, today announced the results of a third-party study by IRI on behalf of Living Essentials LLC, the makers of 5-hour ENERGY® shots, that proves the power of using social media influencers in consumer packaged goods marketing.
The campaign, which ran and was analyzed August through October 2018, involved 15 Instagram posts promoting 5-hour ENERGY® shots by three influencers who each attended a Dierks Bentley country music concert. Influencers created and posted content before, during and after the show promoting the official 5-hour ENERGY® sponsorship of Dierks Bentley and the 2018 Mountain High Tour. Influencers were sourced via Influential’s IBM Watson Technology, which selects the most appropriate influencers via context (keyword usage) and the brand’s chosen Watson Personality Insight Traits (this campaign included Excitement, Activity Level, Friendliness and Cheerfulness).
The campaign drove a short-term return on ad spend of $6.11, which is more than six times higher than the $0.92 average of all IRI measured social media food campaigns. The campaign succeeded in generating an incremental $1.2 million in sales.
The campaign had 22.9 million impressions, and the response was positive. The sentiment of user-generated comments was 100 percent positive or neutral.
“Foot traffic and sales attribution is the holy grail of influencer marketing, so we are both proud and excited to have teamed up with IRI to help make this possible for our clients,” said Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential. “We appreciate the forward-thinking team at Living Essentials for trusting us to execute this trailblazing new technology with their products and we are happy with the results.”
“Influencer marketing is an incredibly valuable tool that brings word of mouth to life in today’s digital world,” said Nishat Mehta, president of the IRI Media Center of Excellence. “Innovative campaigns like these allow marketers to go beyond basic measurements like post engagement and impressions and dive into more sophisticated metrics like sales lift, return on ad spend and halo effects — which paint a true picture of just how valuable influencer marketing can be for the CPG industry.”
About the IRI Partner Ecosystem
IRI fundamentally believes that delivering differentiated growth for clients requires deep, highly integrated partnering with a variety of best-of-breed companies. As such, IRI works closely with a broad range of industry leaders across multiple industries and sectors to create innovative joint solutions, services and access to capabilities to help its clients more effectively collaborate and compete in their various markets and exceed their growth objectives. IRI is committed to its partnership philosophy and continues to actively enhance its open ecosystem of partners through alliances, joint ventures, acquisitions and affiliations. The IRI Partner Ecosystem includes such leading companies as 84.51°, Adobe, The Boston Consulting Group, Clavis Insights, comScore, Data Plus Math, Edison, Experian, GfK, Gigwalk, Google, Ipsos, Jumpshot, Mastercard Advisors, MaxPoint, MFour, Omnicom, One Click Retail, Oracle, Pinterest, Research Now/SSI, Simulmedia, SPINS, Univision, Viant and others.
About IRI
IRI is a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and forward-looking insights that help CPG, OTC health care organizations, retailers, financial services and media companies grow their businesses. A confluence of major external events — a change in consumer buying habits, big data coming into its own, advanced analytics and personalized consumer activation — is leading to a seismic shift in drivers of success in all industries. With the largest repository of purchase, media, social, causal and loyalty data, all integrated on an on-demand, cloud-based technology platform, IRI is empowering the personalization revolution, helping to guide its more than 5,000 clients around the world in their quests to remain relentlessly relevant, capture market share, connect with consumers, collaborate with key constituents and deliver market-leading growth. For more information, visit www.iriworldwide.com.
About Influential
Influential is an AI social data and conversion technology, as well as a developer partner of IBM Watson and a Facebook marketing partner. Utilizing a network of over 300,000 social media influencers as a tactic for distribution, Influential runs both native and paid campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube for Fortune 500 brands including Walmart, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Nestlé, General Mills, Toyota, Samsung, Sony Pictures and many more. Influential is the only company that can track deterministic one-to-one in-store foot traffic and sales attribution from paid influencer posts, as well as TV tune-in lift and attribution. Influential is a strategic partner of WME and Oracle’s Moat and has offices in Beverly Hills, New York City and Las Vegas. (www.influential.co)
About 5-hour ENERGY®
5-hour ENERGY® is a liquid energy shot that provides a feeling of energy and alertness that lasts for hours. It contains a blend of B vitamins and amino acids, zero sugar, four calories and caffeine comparable to a cup of the leading premium coffee. Extra Strength 5-hour ENERGY® shots contain caffeine comparable to 12 ounces of the leading premium coffee. It is available at retail outlets in the United States and Canada.
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IRI Contact:
Shelley Hughes
Email: Shelley.Hughes@IRIworldwide.com
Phone: +1 312.474.3675
Influential Contact:
Chris Detert
Email: cdetert@influentiall.co