Dunnhumby, the data company credited with being the driving force behind Tesco’s meteoric rise, has acquired a social marketing company based in the US.
BzzAgent gives volunteer agents access to sample products before they are released in return for advocating those products to their friends, especially over social media. Its clients include packaged goods companies such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever and L’Oreal.
The deal has been reported to be worth around $60m (£37m). Dunnhumby, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of supermarket giant Tesco, will continue to operate BzzAgent as a standalone business.
BzzAgent chief executive Dave Balter said that the company is looking forward to exploiting Dunnhumby’s shopper targeting. “Together we think we have a huge opportunity to connect the dots between shopper marketing and social media,” he said.
Dunnhumby chief executive Simon Hay said that customer-to-customer marketing plays a key role for the company’s clients. “The customer today is as influential as the marketing gurus were a decade ago,” he said.
Dunnhumby co-founders Edwina Dunn and Clive Humby left the business late last year after cashing in the last 10 per cent of the business to Tesco, pocketing £48m in the process. In a Sunday Times interview, the couple intimated that they were looking at setting up a new business in the social networking space.
Dunn said consumers would soon control with whom their data is shared and what benefits they expect in return, even offering their data in “an auction scenario”. Meanwhile Humby said: “There is so much new data, and if everything goes digital, what we understand applies in so many ways…”
