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TNS Media Intelligence acquires Cymfony

Posted by Peter Kim on February 26, 2007

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The news is out - TNS has acquired Cymfony.  The new operating unit will be called TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony.

I'm not surprised - in my opinion, this was inevitable.  In the Forrester Brand Monitoring Wave,
published in September 2006, one of the clear conclusions was that
Cymfony would be a great fit with a large research firm like TNS. 

Did they sell too early?  From what I can see, mainstream attention
is just starting to turn towards brand monitoring services.  In my
conversations with vendors, everyone loves the fact that Nielsen
brought attention to the space - now TNS ratchets it up a notch - and
my Forrester wave helped validate the market as well.  But nobody wants
to sell too early - like selling the rights to the Nike logo for $35 - and thus the market has been dating around, but not making long-term commitments.

Now,
expect additional activity in the brand monitoring market.  Other conclusions from the Wave:

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Boston's Recent Marketing Prank Turned Terrorist Scare

Posted by Shar VanBoskirk on February 16, 2007

No doubt many of you are already well aware of the ad-campaign-turned-terrorist-scare that rocked us in the city of Boston on January 30.  I'm a little behind the 8-ball in writing up my thoughts about it.  But since it is still coming up -- both in our team conversations here, and out in the world at large -- I thought it would be worth talking about, even a few weeks after the fact.

The redux of what happened:

In an attempt to promote its Cartoon Network show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," Turner Broadcasting positioned LED displays of one of the show's characters around significant city structures, including bridges and i-93, Boston's central artery. (See images of the devices here).

The question we've been debating internally, is: Was this good marketing?

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Super Bust XLI

Posted by Peter Kim on February 5, 2007

Outside of Indianapolis and Chicago (maybe Tennessee and Louisiana, too),
most of the U.S. will have forgotten who won Super Bowl XLI by Monday
evening.  Nationwide, most of the ads were forgotten by the time
viewers fell asleep Sunday night.

Last year, I focused on integrated marketing; here's my 2007 Super Bowl ad review.  In general:

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