Buzzoole is the “AdWords” of Buzz Marketing.
Business name: Buzzoole
URL: http://brands.buzzoole.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Buzzoole
Sector: Media
Based in: Naples (IT), London (UK)
Regions covered: Italy, United Kingdom, United States, Poland, Switzerland, France, Spain
Founders:
Fabrizio Perrone (https://it.linkedin.com/in/fabrizioperrone)
Gennaro Varriale (https://it.linkedin.com/in/gennarovarriale)
Luca Pignataro (https://it.linkedin.com/in/lucapignataro)
Luca Camillo (https://it.linkedin.com/pub/lucacamillo/2b/204/b93/pl)
What do each of you do?
Fabrizio Perrone – CEO
Gennaro Varriale – CTO
Luca Pignataro – Art Director
Luca Camillo – System Integrator
Who are your major backers?
R301 Capital
Digital Magics
What’s the track record?
Fabrizio Perrone (CEO) – Serial start-upper since 2007, founded Fan Media in 2008. In 2010, among the first people in Italy to start dealing with Buzz Marketing.
Gennaro Varriale (CTO) – Developer, hacker, startupper. Founder of Pingram.me and Buzzoole.
Luca Pignataro (Art Director and CoFounder) – Has been working in web and graphic design since 1998. Some of his work was published in Web Design Index by Content 05.
Luca Camillo (Developer) - Programmer and system engineer with more than 10 years of experience. Owner at Play s.r.l.
What’s the elevator pitch?
Buzzoole is an influencer marketing platform that allows brands to automatize the entire process of managing valuable influencer marketing campaigns.
What does this mean?
Buzzoole has developed a property technology that analyzes online conversations that users – who had previously registered to its platform – have on their social media channels. Through a semantic module, Buzzoole is able to categorize conversations and to identify the topics users are mostly influential in according to its property algorithm.Taking in consideration the quality of the enagement, their social graph, their reach and relevance, the technology assigns a specific value.Users are then invited to take part in different campaigns via gamification, getting Buzzoole credits in return. Invitations to campaigns are only sent to those users whose characteristics exactly match the requirements of the campaign. This means selection, negotiation, and management of influencers is fully taken in charge by Buzzoole’s platform. This allows brands to reach specific influencers in their niche market in a completely automatic way.
What makes your company different from its competitors?
Three reasons make us unique. First of all, our business model.Indeed, brands pay on the basis of posts generated by the influencers. This CostPerPost model allows us to offer all sizes solutions. From startups to top brands. Working with Buzzoole can save companies up to 70% compared with cooperating with external agencies, which is usually a lengthier, more complicated and more expensive process.
Secondly, technology. Indeed, once users have logged into our platform, the algorithm is able to anylise their online conversations on their social media channels and to categorize these conversations into topics of discussion through semantic module. The algorithm doesn’t only assess reach (as the other platforms solely do), but through semantic module it assesses the quality and relevance of engagement users produce, and of their network, measuring then users’ real influence. In addition, users who are invited to participate in campaigns are selected by matching the campaigns requirements and the users’ influence in their specific niche market. This allows us to go beyond the concept of popularity (reach) and aim at influence (relevance, reach, engagement, social graph). We believe high quality engagement does not only come from interaction with celebrities, but from users who are particularly influential in specific topics.
Thirdly, our platform is not a market place, but it represents a community where users interact and engage via gamification,joining campaigns and getting Buzzoole credits in return. Users are then not paid in cash, but in Buzzoole credits (convertable into Amazon credits). Our platform is then completely automatized; this makes Buzzoole enjoyable for users, and easytouse for brands.
Who are your clients?
Our clients are both brands and intermediary business actors like media centres and agencies. Just to name a few: GroupM, StarCom, MediaCom, Simple Agency, Publicis, Ceres, Red Bull, Ferrero, Danone, Wind, Tim, Ford, Nissan, Toyota, Original Marines, L’oreal, MCSaatchi, among others.
How will your company change the world?
Buzzoole encourages interconnection between brands and users in order to make them cocreate contents, messages, and brand image. Consumers do not trust brands advertising, Buzzoole paves the way to a new mode to approach and communicate with potential customers.
Moreover, Buzzoole pushes towards the importance of peer influence over celebrity. High quality engagement does not only come from interaction with celebrities, but from “average” users who can be particularly influential in specific topics, and who are perceived as authorities by their peers.
Who do you compete with?
Buzzoole has 3 types of competitors: 1. Digital PR agencies, which are focused on a manual process involving only top influencers. 2. Brands like Klout and Peerindex who have a comparable technology but a completely different business model based on consultancy approach and focus on matching top brands with top influencers. 3. Brands like Mylikes who have a similar business model, but have no technology to choose specific publishers and also have a more aggressive approach as they pay cash to their influencers.
Who should be worried?
Companies like Traackr, NeoReach and similar competitors, as what makes us unique is the highly sophisticated technology through which we assess users’ influence in a more heterogenic, complete and diversified way.
If you could choose any investor globally who would it be?
Global Founder Capital
If you could poach any member of staff from any company in the world who would it be?
Sean Ellis, Growth Hacker (https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanellis)
