dunnhumby Moves Hunter to BzzAgent as COO

In the US, dunnhumby's CIO Paul Hunter has moved across to its social media marketing agency BzzAgent to take up the post of Chief Operating Officer, with a remit to integrate the former's shopper insights with the latter's social media marketing practices.

BzzAgent has an advocate network of more than 800,000 people through which it provides access to social media dialog about brands and services. In May, dunnhumby's parent supermarket giant Tesco acquired BzzAgent in a deal thought to be worth in the region of $60m.

Hunter joined dunnhumby in 2003 as its seventh US employee. Initially working on the Kroger account, he then helped establish the Consumer Package Goods and Communications Media business units, where he was instrumental in launching new methodologies to address pricing, promotion, and new product analyses.

Earlier he worked as Senior Director, Marketing Information & Analysis at LexisNexis, and before that for eleven years at Information Resources Inc (IRI), running the firm's analytical divisions in Chicago, London and Cincinnati.

Based in Boston and reporting to BzzAgent's founder and CEO Dave Balter, Hunter will be instrumental in helping the company target 'social-savvy' consumers based on their purchase history, while measuring the impact of their advocacy on in-store product sales.

Balter comments: 'Paul will help us to seamlessly combine dunnhumby's shopper marketing expertise with BzzAgent's social marketing capabilities. His involvement will allow us to realize the potential business impact of social shopper marketing.'

Web sites: www.dunnhumby.com , www.bzzagent.com and www.tescoplc.com .