This month we’ve changed the name of both our company and our flagship service to Affinity Answers. We did this to make it as easy as possible for everyone in the marketplace to understand what we do. The name reflects our own belief that we’re not simply providing our clients with data, software, insights, consulting, or targeting. Rather, we’re committed to using consumer affinity data to bring our clients the answers for their specific marketing questions. That’s how we help our clients get results.

Our CEO, Sree Nagarajan, chose the name Colligent when he founded the company in 2005. That name stood for “collectively intelligent” — and we know that our clients can make more intelligent decisions by basing them on the collective affinities of the people in their audiences. As we grow under our new name, we are better-equipped than ever to deliver on that potential.

What We’ve Done So Far

We’ve come a long way since 2005. We’re proud of our client roster, which includes household names like MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, A&E, and Universal Music Group, and we continue to bring on new clients, including media companies, consumer brands, and agencies. It’s also gratifying to see the impact we’re making in the media landscape. Our clients have called on us to deliver crucial information that has helped them be successful in media buying, sponsorships, and many other areas. Sometimes that work takes on a higher profile than usual, as when MTV used Affinity Answers data to help select the presenters and performers at the 2013 Video Music Awards.

These achievements are possible because of the effort our team has put into building our technology platform, refining our unique dataset of consumer social affinities, and honing our skills in data integration. Just as important, we’ve benefited from close collaboration with our clients; that has allowed us to deepen our expertise in the specific use cases faced by professionals in marketing, ad sales, programming, and other key functions at the companies we serve.

Today: More Visual and More Effective

Leonardo da Vinci said that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” — and that’s a good way of capturing what we’re trying to achieve today. Our goal is to keep evolving so that our tools and our service deliver the most penetrating, relevant insights even as they get easier and easier to use. Achieving that requires not just technical know-how, but a deep understanding of the market we work in and a commitment to making life easy for our clients.

On the technical side, we are continuing to refine our visualization tool in ways that will enhance the storytelling ability of our data. That helps our clients better understand consumer affinities and trends over time, which makes it easier for them to formulate effective strategies and make good decisions. Along with changing our name, we have opened up access to a limited-feature version of the visualization tool; click on this link to explore the top affinities for the brands that matter to you.

We are also committed to educating the industry about affinity data and what it can do. We want to help our client companies be more successful — but we also want to help make you more effective in your job. So stay tuned for relevant topics in media marketing, ad sales, and programming that we’ll deliver through blog posts, videos, infographics, and other media that get the story across quickly and clearly.

What the Future Holds

Our vision of using social affinity data to find the right answers has paid off time and again for our clients, and we continue to bring it to new companies and new market niches. We also never stop improving and deepening the data we collect and the expertise we apply to understanding it. That was the legacy we began under the Colligent name, and it will only be better as Affinity Answers.

We look ahead to a productive 2014 for ourselves and our clients. We’re glad that you’ve joined us for the ride.