MRI Simmons and Engagement Labs in Word-of-Mouth Deal

New York-based consumer insights specialist MRI-Simmons has announced a partnership with New Jersey social media metrics and off-lne word-of-mouth specialist Engagement Labs, helping marketers to activate their off-line brand advocates and influencers and 'seed' new conversations.

The partners aim to uncover links between consumer conversations and specific media audiences, segments and product owner groups. Engagement Labs' TotalSocial database of off-line social media data will be combined with MRI's Survey of the American Consumer, which captures in-depth information on media choices, attitudes and consumption of products and services across nearly 600 categories.

This 'MRI/TotalSocial fusion' allows agencies to plan for media most likely to spark brand or category conversations; and help media owners sell advertising based on the word-of-mouth influence of their properties. In addition, the firms say clients will be able to use the fusion to identify demographic segments that are already talking about a brand, target media audiences that are more inclined to talk about a certain category; and encourage positive messages among those individuals more likely to have word-of-mouth influence.

Maureen Doherty, VP for Partnerships at MRI-Simmons, says the combined data sets deliver a unique, real-world tool for unlocking a powerful - but often unreachable - element of branding. Ed Keller, CEO of Engagement Labs, adds: 'Our partnership with MRI allows us to collaborate with an industry leader to create and take to market the first and only offering that empowers marketers to direct their paid ad messages to those media and target consumers that are best able to amplify their messages through their real-world social networks'.

Web sites: www.simmonsresearch.com and www.engagementlabs.com .