MONTREAL, QC--(Marketwired - April 05, 2017) - The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) announced today that Engagement Labs Inc. (TSX VENTURE: EL) is a finalist for its prestigious "WOMMY" Award in the research category. The recognition is for research based on the company's patent pending TotalSocial™ data and analytics solution.

The WOMMY Awards are the premier industry recognition of word of mouth marketing. Engagement Labs is recognized for a new analysis titled, "Social Media: Tip of an Iceberg that Does Not Predict What Lies Beneath," based on the Company's TotalSocial measurement system, which continuously measures the most important drivers of brand performance with respect to social media and word of mouth conversations. The key insight obtained from the analysis of TotalSocial data is that there is little to no statistical relationship between what consumers say about brands on social media and during offline, "water cooler" conversations. This underscores the need for marketers to focus on both offline word of mouth as well as social media conversations to best drive marketing ROI via social influence.

The analysis looked at week-by-week data for social media and offline word of mouth conversations for more than 500 brands over the course of a year. According to Engagement Labs, "While there is a modest correlation between online and offline conversation volume, such correlations are too infrequent to be relied upon by researchers and marketers. Correlations are near zero when it comes to other metrics such as sentiment, sharing of brand content, and engagement by influencers. For marketers and researchers alike, this implies that if you rely on social media conversations alone, you are only listening to a fraction of what consumers are saying about your brand, and that it would be misguided to draw conclusions based on this as to consumer conversation writ large."

Engagement Labs' report titled, "How Word of Mouth Conversations Explain the Trump Victory," has also been named a finalist.

The winners of Gold, Silver and Bronze prizes in each category will be announced at a WOMMA conference taking place on April 26 in New York, NY.

WOMMA is the official trade association dedicated to word of mouth and social media marketing. Founded in 2004, WOMMA is the leader in ethical word of mouth marketing practices through its education, professional development, networking opportunities, and knowledge sharing with top industry marketers. WOMMA's membership is made up of the most innovative companies committed to progressing the word of mouth marketing industry through advocacy, education, and ethics.

This is the second recognition the Company has received in 2017. Recently, Corporate Vision Magazine named Engagement Labs CEO Ed Keller as the "2017 New Jersey CEO of the Year," which was announced in its March 2017 issue.

About Engagement Labs

Engagement Labs (TSX VENTURE: EL) is the world's first TotalSocial™ company, offering intelligent data, analytics and insights for marketers. We are leaders in tracking, measuring and benchmarking the impact of conversations happening around a brand and industry -- both online and offline. Consumer conversations are a proven driver of critical business outcomes, including sales. The patent pending TotalSocial data solution provides brands with unique insights and powerful analytics to understand online and offline social impact and drive business results. TotalSocial demonstrates to marketers how their online and offline conversation compare and contrast and helps identify areas of competitive opportunity or significant emerging threats. TotalSocial is an "always-on" proprietary scoring system, based on the most important drivers of brand performance: Volume, Sentiment, Brand Sharing and Influence. TotalSocial was built on the pillars of Engagement Labs' patented social media measurement tool and the world's only offline word of mouth tracking system for brands and tracks 500 brands within the U.S. across 17 major industry categories, and 350 brands in the UK.

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