/EINPresswire.com/ -- NEW YORK, NY --(Marketwired - May 18, 2017) - When it comes to getting people to talk about their brand, Dove is staying fresh. In a new, first-of-its-kind analysis of combined offline and online consumer conversations, Engagement Labs identified Dove as the number one TotalSocial® personal care and beauty brand among top U.S. performers in the category. The rankings are based on Engagement Labs' proprietary TotalSocial data, which continuously measures the most important drivers of brand performance with respect to social media and word of mouth conversations.

Yet for a category that invests heavily in online marketing strategies, more conversations take place away from digital screen. In fact, the personal care and beauty brand category has the highest offline scores among all of the 17 sectors tracked by TotalSocial, while the category's online scores are about average.

While Dove takes the lead as the top personal care and beauty brand on TotalSocial, several of its peers also show strong performances in both categories -- on- and offline -- including Bath & Body Works, Sephora, Neutrogena, Nivea, and L'Oréal. These brands have managed to strike up a meaningful conversation online as well as offline.

"Dove is a standout because it performs well both offline and online. The brand has sustained its marketing success over the years through promoting positive self-image and highlighting issues surrounding the media's depiction of women, which spark conversations," says Ed Keller, CEO of Engagement Labs. "Dove's campaigns are larger than beauty tips and tutorials, which is why the brand has been so successful."

Bath & Body Works, the number two TotalSocial personal care and beauty brand, uses its retail stores to build an emotional connection to its customers. Designed to evoke pleasant memories from the past -- such as the scent of a holiday candle or a favorite fragrance -- the stores are designed to feel like home. In addition, the brand has carefully cultivated relationships with in-store customers, which in turn leads to offline conversation.

P&G's Gillette, which has faced serious challenges to their business model from competitors like Unilever's Dollar Shave Club in recent years, is the only male personal care and beauty product to make the top ten. To hold onto its 60 percent share of the $15 billion market, P&G has invested in both online and offline marketing and advertising strategies, including a web-based shave club and advertising partnerships with major movie franchises.

"What sets personal care and beauty brands apart from brands in other categories is that they are in a space where consumers rely heavily on recommendations and advice as skin and beauty care is extremely important," notes Keller. "As marketers, brands in this category need to appreciate that and continuously strive for ways to remain part of those conversations, as well as to make even more effective use of social media as so many brands in the category now do. However, the data clearly shows that a focus on social media at the expense of word of mouth is at odds with how consumers behave today and thus an integrated approach is essential. The success of brands such as Dove and Gillette underscores just how important it is to capitalize fully on consumer conversations."

To learn more about Engagement Labs or TotalSocial insights and how to increase your brand's word of mouth in real life and online, reach out at: totalsocial@engagementlabs.com.

To learn more about brands, like Dove, that go against the grain, download Engagement Labs' latest e-book, Lessons from the Leaders of Social Influence, here.

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.

To learn more visit www.engagementlabs.com / www.totalsocial.com.

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