How Collider startup Yoke decreased CPI by over 20% in 2 months with Blossom

Collider startup Customer Case

Collider startup Yoke, founded in 2018, is a leader in TikTok influencer performance marketing. Unlike traditional marketing agencies, Yoke’s primary focus is driving long-term results using historical data, tangible insights, and consistent testing. Using the power of social, they have helped hundreds of apps build their user base, drive installs and hit their CPA targets. Here is one of their many success stories of the past year. 

Blossom is a plant guide app that shows people how to be better plant parents and wants to drive brand awareness of their app during peak plant months, showing off the latest premium features in their subscription package. Yoke offered to help them with this all whilst maintaining an element of performance with a CPI cap.

Yoke selected TikTok influencers based in the US to create engaging plant-related content using Lifestyle and PlantTok verticals. General Lifestyle TikTok influencers created practical and easy, daily use cases for the general public. However, more niche PlantTok TikTok influencers were also selected to create more in-depth content catering to their established plant-loving audience.

Yoke’s team of influencer, content, and TikTok experts were able to efficiently implement a Brand Awareness campaign that converted into actions. By understanding Blossom’s new app features and learning each month of the campaign, Yoke was able to develop a bespoke campaign strategy that drove millions of views for Blossom. Drove huge reach and secondarily installs at scale for Blossom by producing content tailored for 2 unique audiences (Lifestyle & PlantTok). The results were a 20.5% drop in CPI in just 2 months, which is a massive win.

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How Pact enjoyed a 4x growth after partnering with Collider startup Green Story

Green Story partnered with Pact, to accurately quantify the environmental impact of their supply chain, leverage LCA data to communicate Pact’s favorable water savings through relatable metrics, as well as additionally adopting Green Story’s carbon neutral program.

About Pact
Pact believes that the planet, and the people on it, should always come first in fashion. They set themselves apart by focusing on three main pillars: Organic, Fairtrade, and Carbon Neutrality to drive their sustainable business. Pact is committed to using organically farmed cotton to avoid the introduction of toxic chemicals into the ecosystem and reduce water consumption. They also work with Fair Trade certified factories, which provide safe working conditions for employees and support local communities. 

The Challenge
Pact wanted to be able to understand from a data perspective what their impact really looked like and show their customers why sustainability matters. They were looking for a tool that simplified their product sustainability data into bite-sized, digestible information along the customer journey, helping consumers understand where they are making a difference. Besides knowing and communicating their impact, Pact wanted to take responsibility for their supply chain Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions by measuring and offsetting their products’ carbon footprint at all stages of their life cycle.

The Solution
Green Story partnered with Pact to help them understand the environmental impact of their supply chain. Using the Know Your Impact solution, a robust Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was performed by Green Story to accurately quantify the footprint of their products. Then, the LCA results were translated into easy-to-digest, accessible information and visualized in a customer-friendly format – impact metrics.

Since starting the partnership with Green Story in 2018, Pact’s business has grown four times its size in terms of revenue with no signs of letting up.

Thanks to this success, Pact extended the partnership with Green Story by using the Simplizero Ecommerce solution to offset the unavoidable carbon emissions of their products, through third-party verified carbon projects.

Pact has a robust wholesale business in addition to its online consumer channel. The brand has also utilized Green Story’s Simplizero B2B feature to offset the carbon emissions of its wholesale orders. This highlights Pact’s holistic commitment towards sustainability irrespective of the sales channel. 

In the year after implementing Simplizero, Pact is expecting its revenue growth to exceed 40%

Collider Startup Greenstory raises €1.1M, moving closer to the goal of empowering 1 billion consumers

As part of the 2019 Collider cohort, Green Story is experiencing great growth and setting new standards in the fashion industry, making a big impact on sustainability. Now the startup announced that it raised $1.1M, led by main investor 4impact.

According to McKinsey, the fashion industry emits approximately the same quantity of GHGs per year as the entire economies of France, Germany, and the UK combined. Traditional practices have proven to have a negative impact on our planet, and consumer sentiment has changed. Consumers are demanding sustainability and deeper transparency. Furthermore, global anti-greenwashing legislation is emerging, requiring that brands provide proof of their sustainability claims. Most fashion brands don’t know where to start.

Green Story is working to achieve an ambitious vision of empowering 1 billion consumers to know their impact and make choices that are better for the planet and for generations to come. Green Story does this by supporting fashion brands to measure and share with their customers their environmental and social impact. This enables the brands to become more sustainable in the way in which they do business. Green Story has raised €1,1 million, with 4Impact as the lead investor, to accelerate the growth of the business and move closer towards this goal.

Akhil Sivanandan, Co-founder, Co-CEO and CCO of Green Story: “We hope to set new standards in the industry, providing accurate data and a bigger focus on transparency and credibility. For our customers, we aim to support them in turning sustainability into a growth driver rather than a compliance measure.”

Green Story is a sustainability platform that enables fashion brands to measure and communicate the positive impact of their products in a credible and relatable way, and make them carbon neutral by offsetting unavoidable emissions. By combining Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology with interactive data and impact visuals, and carbon offsetting platform, Green Story enriches the customer experience with a brand’s sustainability narrative throughout the customer lifecycle, enhancing transparency and educating consumers to understand the impact of the product they buy. At Green Story, they believe that we all want to do the right thing but we need to know, and feel, the positive impact we’re making.

Already Green Story has achieved tremendous impact. By the end of 2021, the company had enabled 1.4m carbon neutral products and offset 100M+ kg of, equivalent to 12,000 homes powered. Green Story partners with hundreds of sustainable fashion brands including renowned material science company PANGAIA, leading second-hand platform thredUP, pioneering rental platform Rent the Runway and multinational clothing company Hanesbrands.

Navodit Babel, Co-founder and CTO of Green Story: “We designed the Green Story solution to make it easy for our customers, the fashion brands, to calculate and share their sustainability credentials. By using relatable data points and measurements, we support our customers in communicating to end consumers, guiding their understanding of the positive impact of sustainable products.”

“Every fashion brand that has a sustainability story wants to tell its customers, but it’s not always easy to do this without risking being caught by greenwashing regulations. A credible third party that delivers a robust measurement and communication tool is a hugely valuable service for the fashion retailers”, says Kate Mullord, partner at 4impact capital. “We are excited to support Green Story’s growth plans, as they build on their world-class expertise in Life Cycle Analysis, expand the communication toolkit for their customers and ultimately drive change in the fashion industry. Akhil and Nav bring enormous integrity and professionalism to their business and we are pleased to be able to contribute our resources and expertise to their mission.”

Our congratulations to the whole team of Green Story for this funding round and for all the amazing work they are doing - setting new standards in the fashion industry and enabling brands to share sustainability credentials in a relatable way to end consumers. We can’t wait to see what the future holds!

UK Collider Startup Good-Loop Closes $6.1M Series A Round, Accelerating US Expansion Plans

UK Collider startups Good-Loop, a global ad tech company that converts people's attention to ads into donations to good causes announced today it has closed a Series A round of $6.1M (£4.5M).

The funds will be used to accelerate the company's product roadmap, including the development of new solutions aimed at reducing digital advertising's substantial carbon footprint. The company also plans to expand its international teams, including opening new offices in New York and Chicago to serve its growing US markets that currently comprise 33% of total revenue.

The round was led by New York-based investment fund, Quaestus Capital Management (QCM), with additional backing from Scottish Enterprise, impact investor SIS Ventures, European ad tech fund First Party Capital and investment raised on the crowdfunding platform Seedrs - bringing total investment into the ad tech for good platform to $8.2M (£6m) since it was formed in 2016.

Good-Loop, a B Corporation that runs campaigns in over 18 markets around the world, is on a mission to make the connection between brands and consumers more meaningful by delivering respectful ads that have real social impact - while also driving significant business and brand uplift for advertisers.

The company's unique ad formats motivate people to watch an entire ad online by allowing them to 'unlock' a free charitable donation at the end of each spot. This strategy allows advertisers to receive more meaningful brand engagement, while appealing to consumers' goodwill by providing a cost-free means of philanthropy. This results in an average ad recall 4.5X higher than the industry standard. Designated charities receive 50% of ad revenue. Current clients include Unilever, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Levi's, adidas, NBC Universal and Nike.

Good-Loop CEO Amy Williams, who founded the company alongside CTO Daniel Winterstein, said: "At the heart of our industry is an inherent value exchange between advertiser and consumer, and I'm on a mission to harness that value as a significant force for good. Through our respectful, positive ad platform, brands can treat people online as partners - rather than targets - united by a desire to have a meaningful social impact. Backing from industry experts like QCM and FirstPartyCapital, social impact investors and, indeed, the general public, will help to supercharge our growth whilst keeping us true to our values at every step along the way."

Austin Davis, CEO at QCM said: "Good-Loop elevates advertising and conscious-minded business to an entirely new level and will become the industry Fairtrade Stamp. The business model solves many longstanding issues in the sector and is the paradigm shift that has been needed to regain consumer trust in transparent and ethical advertising that not only provides superior results to advertisers, but does it while making great contributions to the world through philanthropic giving. It is a win-win for all parties. Ultimately, Good-Loop proves doing good is truly good for business - it is not a trade-off. I'm genuinely honored to have led their Series A, and to be working with such an exceptional company and team."

Good-Loop, which has offices in London and Edinburgh, has also launched a suite of solutions to help advertisers measure and offset the carbon cost of their digital ad campaigns, including its Carbon-Calculator and Green Ad Tag - a 1x1 tracking pixel that enables brands and agencies to track and offset the carbon cost of their digital advertising in real time.

Demand for Good-Loop's ad programmatic solutions has grown 180% in the last 12 months, while its purpose-powered ad formats have also now raised more than $5M for charities around the world, including Save The Children, WaterAid, Feeding America and the WWF.

We are excited about their growth and success and are looking forward to the next big announcement of Good-Loop.

The wide range of Influencer Marketing

TikTok - the social media phenomenon has been downloaded over 2.6 billion times worldwide and has more than 1 billion active monthly users.

Initially, really popular with the younger generation (10-19 years old), the platform's user base is aging up. The account retirementhouse, for example, is an account of Peaches, Mabel, Hubert, and Eugene, all seniors living together in a retirement house, taking a humorous spin on popular Tik Tok trends and showing their daily lives. 

Still, the predominant group is Gen Z, with around 60% of TikTok users being Gen Zers - which will be the largest generation of all in 2022. But influencers on TikTok are not only doing dances anymore - they are talking about mental health, investing, feminism, and offering educational content and insight to pretty much every topic. 

This gives room for multiple brands to engage with potential customers and since influencer marketing is often not perceived as advertising to consumers, this results in engaged and convinced audiences. According to Civic Science, 14% of 18 to 24 year olds and 11% of millennials bought something within the last six months because an influencer recommended it. 

While superstars were the traditional influencers, now influencers with niche content and a smaller audience can yield high engagement rates within their community. And even the average user is engaging in the campaigns of brands. Like in the viral #GucciModelChallenge where the high-end fashion brand called out creators to build their own Gucci-approved fit, obviously featuring the iconic headscarf and sunglasses style. This challenge has led to thousands of people posting videos, with a sum of over 7.9 million views. 

Influencer marketing was a $10 billion dollar industry in 2020 and is only growing. Especially brands that are offering consumer goods like fashion, beauty, travel, food, and beverages are benefiting from influencer marketing, but also financial and insurance companies are entering the domain. 

So, all the more reason for brands across all sectors to include TikTok and Influencer Marketing in their media mix! However, for marketers it can be quite tricky to find the influencer with the goal-matching reach, audience and relevance. Our startup YOKE offers the world’s largest network of influencers, offering brands just the right one for their campaign. Find out more about YOKE here: https://www.yokenetwork.com

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