Tesco Dunnhumby Reveals Why It Bought BzzAgent In 2011
In 2011 Tesco Dunnhumby bought BzzAgent for $60 million. The synergy of a word-of-mouth marketing network and an analytics company now reveals itself.
With the official release of the analytics dashboard BzzAgent Pulse by Dunnhumby USA, the synergy now reveals itself. Same for the strategy behind the acquisition. Intersting to see for CMOs, and the big advertising networks.
The Pulse system, built on data combined from the two companies, slices and dices sales impact of buzz-marketing programs among the million registered BzzAgents in just about every imaginable way, in addition to providing detailed analysis of sales impact from BzzAgent or other marketing efforts.
For CMO’s that are striving for accountability and ROI on their social media marketing efforts, Pulse tracks BzzAgents’ social-media presence on behalf of brands on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere – also tracking reviews and attributing sales lifts to WOM programs.
It also tracks campaign impact by shopper segment, identifying for example how much came from new households vs. existing ones.
“The tool is brilliant,” said Oliver Bradley, eCommerce innovation and shopper insights manager for Unilever, who’s spent the past six months with Dunnhumby working on refining Pulse. “I’ve seen a lot of dashboards in my time. I think BzzAgent Pulse is the best.”
My Opinion?
Recent reports from Gartner showed us that by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. That’s is a remarkable shift.
We have also learned that big-data offers truly incredible possibilities that will be transformational for the future of business and marketing.
By combining their skills, Dunnhumby and BzzAgent can build on customer loyalty to identify true influencers and advocates.
That is part of the social CRM trend I see for 2013: Focus at loyal customers, not just at buying fans by paid likes, since most of these bought fans are mostly not even our customers yet.
And if they are not yet satisfied, loyal customers, how can they ever drive brand advocacy? So we seem to be skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. I like it. Why?
Because above synergy and big-data transformations, will finally reveal the real social marketing and ROI of fans. True fans AKA loyal clients AKA brand advocates.
But if large brands and media agencies will ever truly understand WOM and the power of Owned and Earned media channels, I seriousely doubt that from what I have experienced the last 5 years.
What About You?
What do you expect from large brands in the world of WOM? Will brands and media agencies truly understand WOM metrics?
Will many brands be able to build powerful owned and earned “media channels”?
I’d love to read your opinion in the comments below.
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