Nielsen Joins Forces with McKinsey for Social Intelligence Consulting

In a recent article Zach Hofer-Shall of Forrester Research comments on a new partnership launched by Nielsen and McKinsey to compete deeper in Social Intelligence Consulting. Through “NM Incite,” Nielsen combines its Buzzmetrics listening platform technology with McKinsey’s management consultants, to offer a broad range of social consulting influenced by social media data and analytics.

The author sees the announcement as a good leading indicator of the social media market: Many businesses want to harness the power of social media data, but few are currently prepared to make those steps on their own. Businesses need help turning social media data into action. This year many listening platforms have ramped up their consultancy staff and offerings in efforts to keep up with this growing demand.

What it means for CI professionals: NM Incite is one of many vendors offering social consulting, but the McKinsey name brings increased business credibility to Social Intelligence. The practice of listening to and learning from customers’ online discussions is making its way into the spotlight and with McKinsey putting stake behind Social Intelligence, expect more businesses to start taking it seriously, adopt a Social Intelligence strategy, and ramp up their ongoing listening initiatives.

What it means for listening platform vendors: Prepare for a growing demand of services and a new series of competitors. As more companies take on Social Intelligence practices, they’ll need your help getting there while they scale internally to address the management and analysis of social data. And in case the industry weren’t fragmented enough, expect to see a new angle of competition coming for the business consulting world. Where McKinsey goes, expect its peers to follow.