ThinkVine Teams Up to Win 2010 EXPLOR Award for Research Innovation

CINCINNATI, Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- ThinkVine, Digital Research and American Water took home top honors at the 2010 EXPLOR Awards competition at The Market Research Event in San Diego, CA. Now in its eleventh year, The EXPLOR Award is an annual case study competition that honors technology innovation in market research. American Water's case study titled, "Tipping the Scales: How a New Research Tool Has Changed American Water's New Business Development," won the award for its new Target Identification Program (TIP) business development technology. TIP enabled American Water to build sustainable channels of communication between its management team and civic and business leaders who are the company's primary stakeholders. This year's finalists also included submissions from ANZ National Bank, eBay and the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.  

"Winning the EXPLOR award is additional validation for ThinkVine's innovative approaches to helping companies improve their business planning," said Damon Ragusa, President and CEO of ThinkVine. "We valued the opportunity to work with American Water and Digital Research in building this technology that applies robust analytics on top of best-in-class marketing research to deliver a positive impact on American Water and its stakeholders now and for years to come."

American Water's TIP technology was created to facilitate the shift from a relationship-based approach of evaluating business development opportunities to a fact-based approach driven by the growth in the number of municipalities. Encompassing 25 states and pulling from multiple data sources, the technology evaluates the sales potential of municipalities enabling American Water's staff to make more informed, proactive business development decisions.

"The EXPLOR Award is an honor for ThinkVine and American Water as it recognizes companies for innovation and the winner is selected by industry peers," added Curt Stenger, Vice President of Analytic Services for ThinkVine. "We appreciated the opportunity to share the stage with American Water and Digital Research at The Market Research Event and to receive the recognition from the industry."

Past winners and finalists of the EXPLOR Awards include Orange Telecom, Frito-Lay, Unilever, IBM, Intel, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Wharton Graduate School of Business, NBC Universal, Microsoft, among others. 

About ThinkVine

ThinkVine Corporation is a leading provider of advanced marketing optimization software and services. The company's ThinkAhead Technology platform represents a major innovation providing organizations a single solution to store, plan and test marketing and media plans across both traditional and emerging media platforms including search, social and mobile.  It does all this while providing visibility into the attribution of marketing spend to sales, performance in reaching target consumers and ability to test media vehicles that have not yet been tried.  Adoption of its flagship application for marketing planning and simulation has quickly grown including firms as varied as Citrix Software, Hershey's, Kraft Foods, LegalZoom.com, MillerCoors, Oreck, and Valvoline.  For more information on ThinkAhead™ Technology and ThinkVine's Marketing Analytic Services, visit www.ThinkVine.com or call 1-513-842-5900 x104.

SOURCE ThinkVine