Case No. EWHC-941-(IPEC)

– in a more detailed (61 page) report in 2010, TNS stated that “Match.com/Match” had scores of 37% for TOM awareness, 48% for spontaneous awareness and 74% for aided awareness. Even without the figures for Match Affinity (a sub-brand set up by Match in 2010, which itself scored 15% for aided awareness), Match’s figures were substantially higher than those of its nearest competitor, eHarmony, which had scores of, respectively, 10%, 24% and 48%. On this basis, TNS concluded that “Match is, by far, leading the market in terms of awareness…” and it paid tribute (at p.38) to the effectiveness of “Match’s campaigns”, noting that the campaign media recalled by customers was “overwhelmingly TV”.29.In contrast to the 2009 report, in the commentary to its 2010 report, TNS generally referred to “Match” as the name of the business. For example, the “Objectives” listed on p.5 were to (1) “Follow the development of the Match’s brands and of its competitors”; (2) “Evaluate the performance of Match’s latest advertising campaigns” and (3) “measure the impact of Match’s recent Match Making brand launches…”. Then, at pp.10-12, the 2010 report stated that its “Main Findings” were: “Awareness: Match is the clear leader”; “Match has a large leadership in terms of awareness…”; “Match has one of the market’s strongest image…”; “Match users’ satisfaction is only at an average level”; and “Match is the brand with the strongest growth potential”. Similarly, in its “Recommendations” (p.13), the 2010 report noted that: “Match now has the market’s strongest level of awareness and needs to nourish this brand with content”, and that “As market leader, Match will be the first brand to benefit from this market growth”. Whilst the report makes some use of the name “match.com”, this was confined to the various tables and to the footer of the title pages for the report’s sections, where it used the match.com logo (as shown in paragraph 18 above).30.This tendency in some people to refer to the business as “Match” (as opposed to “match.com”) is also apparent from the fact that the customer awareness figures mentioned above were stated to be in relation to “Match.com/Match”. This was consistent with the evidence of Mr Riviere that the figure for TOM awareness which appears in the various reports included consumers whose spontaneous response was simply “Match” as well as those whose response was “Match.com”.31.