Tom H. C. Anderson - More Than Market Research

Corporate Blogging in Marketing Research

In September 2005 TNS the second largest market research company in the world (one of my former employers) started their own blog http://www.tns-blog.com.

At the time TNS said “Our ‘between the lines’ blog, based in North America, provides market insight and information about an array of industry sectors and core marketing issues…” I was initially impressed with their embracing of new technology in such a way. Especially as, rather unfortunately, it rarely happens in our industry.

I was skeptical about the success of the blog. TNS made a few critical mistakes right from the beginning. One of the most important ones I think was requiring name and email address prior to “approving” a post. For discussion boards or blogs to be truly successful I strongly believe that anyone should be able to post anonymously in real-time. Offensive or improper posts can be deleted by the community or company later if needed.

Today I happened to check back on the site and there was just a simple message stating “The TNS Blog, Between the Lines is currently off-line. If there is an article or blog post that you are interested in or seeking, please contact us”

Of course nothing ever disappears totally from the internet. So it took a look back in time at the blog using the Way Back Machine (http://web.archive.org). According to the time machine the blog ran from October 2005 – August 2007.

While colorfully designed, the first entry here shows that most of the information read more like a series of press releases. In 2005 there are a total of 2 pages available posted on Oct. 26 & Oct 27. In all of 2006 there looks to be 11 posts. In 2007 possibly 3 posts. This is a bit Ironic since TNS is currently touting the importance of bloging to its clients and attempting to position themselves as experts on blogging and web2.0 through expensive acquisitions such as TNS Cymfony and TNS Compete etc.

The TNS blog seems to have been carefully edited down so that no competitive insights, dangerous opinions or anything else of interest would be present. Unfortunately this is the case with most large company blogs in almost every industry. There are a few exceptions though, like Microsoft who finally understood the value of letting their developers discuss their products more openly with the public.

The question I’m wondering about today is whether blogs are something that should be left to individuals, or whether companies are capable of creating meaningful content and dialogue with their customers? What are some good examples of corporate blogs/discussion boards if any?

What do you think?

- Tom H. C. Anderson