OpenBrand Company
This edition is about Comperemedia and about me.
For 6 years, I have given CMOs, CFOs, and CEOs the same advice. Change while business is good. Back the bigger version of your company. Start before the market asks you to.
At Comperemedia, we believe that advice. This year, we acted on it.
In August, OpenBrand acquired Comperemedia from Mintel. It was an extremely hard decision. Mintel was the best owner we could ever have had. Then we met OpenBrand, and we knew. They built their technology from the ground up for exactly the work we do. Saying yes was right for the business, and right for every client we serve.
Andrew Davidson hosted Mintel’s Little Conversation podcast for 7 years. On his final episode, Pete and Greg explain why Mintel and OpenBrand both said yes. The 2 companies share one belief about market intelligence. The future goes to firms that pair deep industry knowledge with strong technology. Those firms put the insight straight into a client’s decision.
Mintel saw OpenBrand as the owner best placed to take Comperemedia there, and turned its own full focus to what it does best: helping consumer brands see what comes next. OpenBrand saw a proven business to extend with AI. Andrew called it “the beginning of something bigger.”
Choose the next chapter while the current one is still good.
Pete Haigh shares the origin story in the pod.
Before Mintel, he worked at direct marketing agencies. Once a quarter, he reviewed one bank’s competitors for a client. He collected every mailer he could find, glued them to big boards, and walked the boards to the client. An interest rate here. A late fee there.
In 1999, Mintel bought a garage in Santa Rosa, California, full of direct mail. It came with a panel of a few hundred friends and relatives across the US. Mintel named it Comperemedia.
Mintel kept changing too. In Pete’s early years, every report came off a printer in the basement and went out by post. Then came the CD-ROM, the internet, and machine learning, and Mintel took up each one early. Comperemedia did the same. Email, social, and digital joined the mail.
Ask Pete about AI after 30 years of change, and his answer is short: “It excites me.”
Greg Munves has led OpenBrand since its founding in 2023. Its technology uses AI to collect marketing from many channels and turn it into clean data you can compare over time. Comperemedia does that work for financial services, insurance, and telecom. Greg called it a perfect fit.
OpenBrand started in consumer durables. Greg said the team “had our sights on financial services from the very beginning.”
Greg listed what clients see first:
Greg expects a future where “everything will be measured everywhere.” For a financial services marketer, that means more of the market in view, sooner.
Please take a minute today so every edition reaches you.
I will keep giving you the advice I have given for 6 years. Now, I give it as someone who took it.
Thank you, Pete, and everyone at Mintel, for 27 years that built Comperemedia. Greg, we are ready.
What hard decision does your team already know is right?
OpenBrand Company