BENlabs was nominated for the 2023 Streamy award for Agency of the Year 2023. The thing is, we’re not an agency. Or at least, “agency” doesn’t really capture who we are.
Yes, we do deep brand integration for our clients. We power incredible creator (AKA influencer) campaigns, we empower brands to shine in the spotlight in big-budget and indie films, in streaming and linear TV. We bring brands to life in music videos and artist integrations.
We help Durex shine in powerful music video integrations, we made sure that Barbie’s Dream Car is a Corvette. We linked 1800 Cristallno tequila indelibly with hip hop, we helped Bloomingdale’s connect with the next generation of shoppers… we could go on.
But we don’t operate like a typical agency. It comes down to this basic point: agencies tend to be about instinct where BENlabs is about insight. An agency challenges clients with bold, creative ideas, BENlabs challenges clients to go where the data leads and uncovers the brand integration and creative strategy that will get results.
An agency says “trust us.” BENlabs says “trust the data.”
An agency concentrates knowledge at the top. BENlabs creates AI tools — always learning over more than 30,000 campaigns — that lets everyone tap into that knowledge to create memorable, successful campaigns.
An agency keeps its formulas secret. BENlabs is hard at work to put its AI tools and models into the hands of brands and marketers directly. More on that exciting development and next chapter in BENlabs’ over 40 year story very soon.
Blasting to #1
When Gel Blaster was facing mounting pressure in the water bead shooter category it effectively created, the brand came to BENlabs looking to break through.
The original ask was to build out a creative brand integration strategy that would capture the attention of adventurers, outdoor, and paintball enthusiasts. A typical agency would take that and run with it, putting its best creative minds to work. They’d come back with mood boards, color schemes, concepts, and pithy copy.
BENlabs AI took a step back, performing deep audience cluster analysis that challenged the brand’s long-standing assumptions about its ideal audience.
BENlabs AI insights were clear; lifestyle, family vloggers, moms, and couple lifestyle audiences were where Gel Blaster’s break-out opportunity lay. These were the audiences that would shoot Gel Blaster to #1 in market share.
From there, BENlabs AI surfaced the most influential creators among these audience clusters and worked with them on creative to share Gel Blaster’s “go play” message. Top-performing organic content became the creative for an AI-driven paid strategy.
Long story short, this data-driven creative campaign drove a 3.13x overall RoAS and shot Gel Blaster to #1 in market share, capturing 49.98% of total sales at Walmart in the all-important holiday shopping window.
Changing Buyer Behavior
Turo offers a new take on car rentals with vehicle sharing. Renters enjoy a smooth rental experience and a wide selection of vehicles. The challenge for Turo was to build the kind of “sticky awareness” that would change vehicle rental behavior down the road, when someone was getting ready to rent a vehicle. That’s where BENlabs comes in.
Turo’s content creator influencer campaign, led by BENlabs and its AI tools, led to a 305% awareness lift with 46% of exposed audiences considering Turo for their next rental, and 39% brand recall four weeks after exposure. The campaign “stole” 44 points of awareness from vehicle rental industry leaders (a key KPI) with 37% awareness stolen from the category leader.
Scalable Content Ambassadorship
Overwolf improves the games players love with in-game app overlays and mods for over 1,500 popular games. These apps enable everything from streaming gameplay with chat and events, in-game guides, esports tournaments, stats, analytics, replays, highlights and much more. BENlabs and Overwolf teamed up to build a creator program that would scale up to over 100 streamers a month sharing Overwolf with their audiences in authentic streaming moments.
In 2022, Overwolf creator ambassadors streamed over 5,000 hours of content creating 2,932 individual pieces garnering 99,202,727 views. 517,975 clicks drove more than 152,393 installs.
None of these successful examples, or thousands of others, would be possible with an “agency” as we define it.
We’re honored to have been nominated for the Streamy Awards Agency of the Year for 2023 alongside agencies we respect and admire. But we’re not an agency… and we just needed to say all of that 🔝
It's Dangerous to go Alone... Take This 🗡️
Don’t go it alone. Tap the BENlabs team and AI tools make your next influencer campaign smart, scalable, and successful. From finding the perfect content creators, automating A/B testing, and surfacing clear, predictive analytic insights early, when they can make the most difference, BENlabs helps smart marketers make every influence campaign a success.
