BuzzMetrics Gives Me Deja Vu

As Steve Rubel notes in his blog, when radical changes happen in a market, it is easier for big companies to buy the needed skills than to try to develop them organically. While some observers may think this means the death or the failure of these new ideas, it is just the opposite: the beginning of major growth.

Been here. Done it. Got the T-shirt.

I started my advertising and marketing career in the early '80's, a time when a new-fangled discipline called "direct marketing" was just making the transition from late night Ginsu knife commercials into the budgets of the Fortune 500. The '80's turned into the Golden Age of direct marketing and Madison Avenue followed the money: Ogilvy bought Hodes-Daniel a couple of years before I joined them, Y&R bought Wunderman, and on down the list.

So perhaps today's creation of Nielsen BuzzMetrics will start a similar cascade that brings word of mouth marketing into the heart of the traditional marketing community.

Marketers and brands will be better off for the change.