WPP's GroupM Buys WOM Shop

In a move to strengthen its word-of-mouth marketing capabilities, WPP's GroupM announced Wednesday that it is acquiring M80, a smaller firm established in 1998 that specializes in online word-of-mouth with a focus on community activation and viral marketing.

The acquisition is clearly intended to boost GroupM's abilities to harness consumer-generated media at a time when advertisers are expressing growing interest in social networks like MySpace, but still seem unsure how to best use such sites for marketing.

M80, which posted $2 million in revenue last year, boasts a client roster including entertainment and consumer properties such as Microsoft, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Music Group, the NBA, Comedy Central, the Gap, and Sega. For its part, GroupM is a management firm responsible for coordinating the work of a number of WPP's most valuable media holdings--Mediaedge:cia, MindShare, MediaCom, and MAXUS--all of which also work with big-name clients.

Early on, Dave Neupert, the founder of M80, positioned his "peer-to-peer" marketing firm against the so-called "buzz marketers" who then dominated the word-of-mouth arena and mostly targeted professionals with large, varied social networks. By contrast, M80 sought out "superfans," in hopes that their natural enthusiasm for a particular product would prove far more infectious--and effective--than the bully pulpits of "buzz."

M80 has always been a Web-centered firm from its inception, drawing on Neupert's previous experience as an executive at Maverick Records, where he experimented with concerted word-of-mouth Web campaigns to promote the band the Deftones as early as 1996. In Neupert's model, the "superfan" recruits work practically for free, receiving free merchandise like t-shirts and music for the efforts--but seem to reap far greater psychological rewards, as they often believe themselves to be arbiters of popular opinion and taste.

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