ThinkVine Named Cool Vendor

Thinkvine, a local advanced analytics vendor that I have met with a number of times:

Gartner Names ThinkVine 1 of 4 “Cool Vendors” in Consumer Goods, 2009
... ThinkVine, a marketing simulation & planning software provider, has been named a 2009 “Cool Vendor” by Gartner in Consumer Goods. The 2009 research report highlights four vendors from around the world whose technology helps Consumer Goods manufacturers improve revenues while decreasing costs.

Advanced analytics and internal collaboration are central themes in this year’s ‘Cool Vendor Report’ as Consumer Goods companies seek to improve their advertising, forecasting and product development capabilities in response to a difficult economy. ThinkVine’s Emerging MarketplaceTM helps marketers understand the collective impact of traditional and non-traditional marketing on the consumer and provides a means to capture ROI from advertising.

Gartner defines a “Cool Vendor” as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are:
Innovative: Enables users to do things they couldn’t do before
Impactful: Have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology)
Intriguing: Have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in the past 6 months

“We are excited to have been chosen by Gartner as a cool vendor,” said Damon Ragusa, Founder & CEO of ThinkVine. “As the report points out, Consumer Goods companies have never faced a greater need for better tools to understand the impact of advertising and promotion in the face of economy-driven shifts in the marketplace.”

The “Cool Vendors in Consumer Goods, 2009” report is available at http://www.gartner.com.

... ThinkVine helps some of the world's most respected companies better align marketing & advertising with consumer behavior. Our application, The Emerging MarketplaceTM, simulates the interactions between different mixes of marketing and consumers in a virtual environment that mirrors the “real world.” Built on an agent-based modeling (ABM) framework, The Emerging MarketplaceTM lets marketers run “what if” scenarios and turn marketing/media planning into an iterative exercise versus a “one shot” approach. ThinkVine is currently deployed in consumer packaged goods (CPG), food & beverage, pharmaceutical, technology and other vertical markets ... "