Academic research into behavioual science informs new wave of service entrepreneurs.

It is a first for this analysis column to look at a deal yet to be consumated but since it was reported as nearly-done by the ever-excellent All Things D website owned by news provider Dow Jones then it is likely to happen, and even if it doesn’t it is a great tale of the new world order. Salesforce, a New York-listed software provider, is reportedly about to buy advertising agency WPP-backed Buddy Media, a US-based social enterprise software, according to news provider All Things D (and referred to in KBS+’s Darren Herman’s great blog on advertising trends). The deal would be valued at more than $800m, All Things D added, compared to the about $85m raised by Buddy since its launch in 2007. While Salesforce might only indirectly have had an interest in Buddy – one of the reported target’s early venture capital backers, Bay Partners, had run a developers fund for Salesforce at about the time Buddy was being started – the informal links between the two companies have been good. In March, Buddy hired Susan St. Ledger as president after more than seven years with Salesforce, most recently as senior vice-president of industry verticals, where she focused on the largest clients within technology, financial services, insurance, media and telecommunications. Michael Lazerow, founder and chief executuve of Buddy Media and serially-successful entrepreneur behind University Wire and Golf.com, said at the time of St Ledger’s recruitment: "It’s clear that organizations which power connections with their customers will create shareholder value, and those that don’t will lose. "Susan’s unparalleled experience in enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) sales shows her commitment to our company mission and helps us to successfully scale and serve the largest brands and agencies around the world." The new world order aspect comes from how these connections are powered. There has been a shift in the past few years of academic research into what are loosely called behavioural sciences into mainstream application by companies to influence people’s decisions. Or, as Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman at WPP advertising subsidary Ogilvy & Mather, which set up OgilvyChange behavioural sciences practice in the firm earlier this year to apply the techniques across its clients, puts it: "Although they don’t have much else in common, marketers seem to have made the same mistake as neo-classical economists. "They have become so preoccupied with a model of ‘how people should decide’ that they have completely neglected to ask the question ‘how do people actually decide’." This approach…

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