McKinsey and Nielsen form JV for Social Business Consulting

The industry of Social Business Consulting just became a little more interesting. McKinsey - the big daddy of the traditional Strategy consulting firms and Nielsen - the maker of the Nielsen Buzzmetrics, social media analytics and listening tool (which helps in listening and responding as explained in this blog post), announced a Joint Venture to help clients leverage the social media data being gathered.

Here's Clickz's news report:

Nielsen has formed a new social media consulting company through a partnership with McKinsey & Company. The firm, called NM Incite, includes executives from both Nielsen and McKinsey, and is intended to help brands act on social media research and analysis provided through Nielsen-owned BuzzMetrics offerings.

Over the years, Nielsen has served some of the same clients as McKinsey, a global strategic consulting firm with consultants based in more than 50 countries. The new venture brings the companies together formally in order to serve senior level executives. While Nielsen monitors social media to isolate brand strengths and weaknesses and consumer insights, the combined NM Incite will help clients apply that intelligence on a more strategic business level.

"Our clients have been asking many questions with regard to social media...as to how to use it to their advantage," said NM Incite's president of media products and advertiser solutions, Steve Hasker, who spent 12 years with McKinsey before moving to Nielsen and helping to get the joint venture off the ground.

Hasker said Nielsen's traditional clients in CPG, retail, and media have shown an interest in the new company's services, in addition to pharma and financial services. "The large clients will be a focus here," he added.

"There's a big area around product development," he said. NM Incite will focus on "how brands can leverage social media to harness consumer insights to develop better products and optimize the launch of those products," he said.

I personally think McKinsey's entrance into this space brings a larger sense of credibility to the social business consulting world - and along with folks like Dachis Group, Altimeter Group in the US, and 2020 Social in India, will be growing and maturing the market. I expect to see other large consulting firms like Booz & Co., BCG, Accenture and Bain to also actively look to enter the space via the JV, acquisition or "building a practice" route.

Check out NM Incite's blog posts here.


Yes, exciting times ahead.