BURLINGTON, MA — (Marketwire) — 09/26/11 — , the enterprise guide to Drupal, announced today that partner (Taylor Nelson Sofres, London), the leading worldwide market research and consulting company, has leveraged Acquia Commons social business software to build an award-winning Mercedes-Benz social community website. TNS won the Best Study 2011 award from the German Association for Marketing and Social Research for the development of the Mercedes-Benz site. The award honors innovative and creative new studies in the field, with special attention on projects with measurable results.
Using Acquia Commons, TNS built the Mercedes-Benz community website “,” the first online market research community in the German auto industry. Stars Insight takes advantage of social media and Web 2.0 dynamics to conduct consumer market research on its target market of drivers of compact cars between the ages of 20 and 45. The website includes questionnaires, moderated discussions and forums, chat, a media gallery, ideation contests, creative competitions, ratings, and comment areas.
With Stars Insight, Mercedes is now able to pilot test marketing materials, commercials and advertisements to their target community. Their ideation contests allow them to solicit key customers for desired features, support and services, while the rest of the community provides feedback through votes on what they like. This allows Mercedes to react to the needs of their market in a timelier manner than ever before.
The global market for social CRM (customer relationship management) is expected to pass the $1 billion mark by 2012 according to Gartner Research. The Stars Insight community is a prime example of the kind of social CRM website that-s gaining popularity among global organizations who want to build better customer relations. Such solutions capitalize on advances in online customer relations and research, allowing organizations to tap into the knowledge and desires of their target audiences.
“We are proud of this honor for our partner TNS, a true expert at building this type of online community, and are thrilled that our Acquia Commons is helping revolutionize traditional business processes,” said Tom Erickson, Acquia-s CEO. “The Mercedes-Benz website is a great example of how large enterprises and luxury brands can take advantage of social software to build communities that help drive their business.”
“Our work with Acquia to create the Stars Insight website has been a complete success,” said Thomas Wachter, TNS Senior Consultant and Automotive Market Research Team Leader. “Acquia Commons allowed us to quickly build this website while adhering to Mercedes- strict brand guidelines and maintaining the flexibility needed to support TNS-s strategic requirements.” Christian Bauer, Head of Mercedes-Benz Communication Insights, agreed. “The continuity of the online community and the interactive integration of its members provide numerous benefits for Daimler AG: We can get to know a broad section of this target market, we are completely flexible in the content, various methods can be combined, and we can validate our results directly with the community itself.”
Acquia Commons is the open-source alternative for enterprise-scale social business software. Its collaborative environment includes blogs, wikis, and calendars; standard Drupal modules provide other features. Commons enables social networking to create productive interactions among employees, customers, and the web, at a much lower cost than other solutions. Find out more at .
TNS is the global leader in custom market research delivering actionable insights and research-based business advice to clients around the globe so they can make more effective business decisions. TNS offers comprehensive industry knowledge within the Consumer, Technology, Finance, Automotive and Political & Social sectors, supported by a unique product offering that stretches across the entire range of marketing and business issues, specializing in product development & innovation, brand & communication, stakeholder management, retail & shopper, and qualitative research. Delivering best-in-class service across more than 80 countries, TNS is dedicated to discovering growth opportunities for its clients in an ever-changing world. Through its pioneering and innovative culture, TNS understands the latest marketing challenges and research techniques, being the first to discover and solve new marketing issues for clients.
Drupal is free, open-source software that powers millions of websites and online applications. It runs on industry-standard hosting platforms and connects to virtually all legacy systems. With a community of hundreds of thousands of users and developers, Drupal-s success has spawned an enormous business ecosystem. Learn more at .
Acquia empowers enterprises with the open-source social publishing system Drupal. Co-founded by Drupal-s creator in 2007, Acquia helps customers manage their growth and scale their online properties with confidence. Acquia-s products, cloud infrastructure, and support enable companies to realize the full power of Drupal while minimizing risk, as it-s done for nearly 1,500 enterprise customers including Twitter, Al Jazeera, Turner, World Economic Forum, Stanford University, New York Senate and NPR. See who-s using Drupal at , and for more information please visit or call 888-9-ACQUIA.
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Dana Harris
Red Javelin Communications, Inc.
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