James Turner to head FreshMinds’ online business

Turner was most recently client development director at polling agency Populus, and before that spent five years at BT.

The online division of FreshMinds now includes the research community business that for the past two years has been part of sister company FreshNetworks.

FreshNetworks continues to offer online communities for marketing purposes.

“Using online communities for research and marketing purposes are two very distinct disciplines that require different approaches,” said FreshMinds CEO Charlie Osmond.

Turner said: “It has become clear research teams have a real need for online communities that are designed specifically for research purposes… The types of client who want a marketing community are quite different to the clients who want a research community.”

He told Research that online communities will account for a “substantial” portion of the business of the growing online division.

The news comes in the wake of the announcement from the MRS that the use of client incentives for research, which is common in branded online communities, will be prohibited under the new version of its code of conduct coming into effect in December.