Pete Blackshaw

Proud father. Proud marketer. Proud consumer advocate.

Throughout Pete's varied experiences in marketing, government and entrepreneurship runs a common theme - the power of the Internet to give individuals a voice and change the way things are done. He coined the term "consumer- generated media" (CGM) and authors a blog by that same name.

Pete presently serves as CMO of Nielsen BuzzMetrics. The firm helps companies promote and protect their brands through the measurement, analysis, and interpretation of CGM – or online word of mouth – across forums, message boards, social networking sites, direct company feedback, online communities and blogs.

Pete is a co-founder of the 2004 Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). He presently authors a bi-weekly column on digital marketing strategy targeted to CMOs for the ClickZ marketing network. He's frequently quoted in major publications, and he authors several work and personal blogs, including www.hybridbuzz.com, and parenting centered blogs www.dosbebes.com and www.proudpadre.com.

In 1999, Pete founded PlanetFeedback.com. Over a million consumers have written letters or submitted comments to the popular service, and the insights and commentary from the site have helped Pete deepen his expertise on consumer attitudes toward brands, advertising, word-of-mouth, and customer service.

While at Procter & Gamble, Pete led initiatives dealing with online advertising development, online issues/rumor management, online sampling, database marketing and consumer word-of-mouth behavior. He also co-chaired and organized the P&G sponsored Future of Advertising Stakeholders Summit (FAST-Summit). In 1998, Pete’s work culminated P&G being named Advertising Age Magazine’s “Interactive Marketer of the Year.” Two years later, Advertising Age named Pete one of the nation’s top twenty individual interactive marketers.

Before receiving his master's degree from Harvard Business School in 1995, Blackshaw served as a press secretary and legislative consultant to then-Senator Art Torres in the California Legislature, where he guided several consumer-focused bills to passage and initiated the nation's first "interactive" legislative hearing. He helped approve the nation’s first legislative effort making legislative data available to California citizens for free through the internet.

Pete graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he helped create the logo for the school's iconoclastic mascot, the Banana Slug Pete is happily married to Erika Brown, a New Jersey Native and currently a brand manager at a major consumer packaged goods company. Pete and Erika are the proud parents of six-month old twins, Liam and Leila (www.dosbebes.com).