MUMBAI: This is a move that reflects the changes in the global market research industry and the way that businesses use market information. Global market information group Taylor Nelson Sofres, has announced that it is bringing together all of its operations in 53 countries under a single brand, with immediate effect.

As part of a major repositioning and rebranding exercise, Taylor Nelson Sofres will be renamed 'TNS', uniting a business which had previously supported many different corporate brands around the world.

Where there is a strong local brand, as in India, the brand name will be retained but strongly associated with TNS such as TNS Mode in India or TNS Sofres in France. It is also intended to help TNS leverage the potential of acquisitions made over the past few years and meet changing client needs. TNS India joint MD Debi Basu said: "Our new brand identity conveys the sense of freshness and continuous innovation that has been the hallmark characteristic of TNS Mode in India".

The new brand has been developed by global brand consultancy Wolff Olins and is based on the idea of being "the sixth sense of business". It reflects the company's ability to provide insight, intelligence and advice and not just information, data and research. It will further unite the company and clearly differentiate TNS from its peers. The new TNS marque is simple and bold; the positioning of the letters gives a three-dimensional feel and suggests a sense of depth.

One of the areas where the company provides services is in measuring the habits of the television viewer. Its Peoplemeter technology measures viewing habits and provides accurate viewing The analysis system InfoSysTV answers a wide variety of questions relating to audience behaviour data. TNS technology is used to conduct TV audience measurement in 25 countries.

Audience estimates are used to negotiate prices for commercial airtime and plan TV advertising campaigns. Broadcasters also use the data to evaluate the success of programmes and to devise future programming schedules

In India, TNS Mode has 12 offices including Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai (Madras), Kolkata (Calcutta) and Hyderabad.The company conducts both quantitative and qualitative research, and has specialised divisions for social developmental projects, qualitative research, automotive research and research involving IT & Telecom sectors.

It has a face-to-face omnibus in 12 large towns of the country. It also claims to have pioneered specialised research technologies in the country such as Single Source Panel, Trade Research, application of Ethnography in consumer research and multivariate analysis such as Conjoint.