In a strategic move, the Nielsen Company (Nielsen), a leading global information and measurement company, has joined hands with McKinsey & Company (a global management consulting firm) to launch ?NM Incite?. The global joint venture has been created to help leading companies harness the power of social media intelligence to drive better business performance.
NM Incite is headquartered in New York and is led by Dave Hudson, former executive vice-president, Global Client Services of Nielsen?s Telecom Practice. Announcing the news, Piyush Mathur, president India, the Nielsen Company said, ?Social media is a fast developing platform for consumer opinion. NM Incite aims to help marketers understand this media better and leverage it for growth. ?
In this joint venture, McKinsey will contribute to client capability building and expertise in the areas of marketing & sales, organisation and service operations. ?We evolve our consulting methods based on our client requirements. Social media is increasingly becoming too powerful a marketing tool to ignore it any more. This joint venture will help us in delivering to our clients the key to unlock the potential of social media,? said Sahana Sarma, head, Sales and Marketing Practice, McKinsey & Company, India.
Currently, McKinsey serves multiple clients and has developed proprietary knowledge and insights in areas such as digital marketing, marketing ROI, word-of-mouth marketing and consumer purchase behavior. According to Mathur , social media in India is where search used to be 3-4 years back and brands that take early positions will definitely stand to gain. ?Only 8% of social media users in India have not read a product review in the last 12 months and 77% have visited a product website after reading a review on a social media site. This gives an idea of how extensively the Indian user is interacting with brands online,? explained Mathur.
In an effort to gauge the impact of social media on consumers today, Nielsen Online conducted a study among 800 online consumers in India, and the study revealed that 70% of all social networking users access it everyday.
It is interesting to note that only two per cent of the people surveyed are not on any social networking sites.
