Millward Brown, a global leader in brand, media and communications research will acquire the business operations of Analytics Quotient (AQ), a marketing analytics company that extracts insights from data to help clients define their marketing strategies.

Millward Brown is a leading global research agency specializing in advertising effectiveness, strategic communication, media and brand equity research, by helping clients grow great brands through comprehensive research-based qualitative and quantitative solutions.

Interestingly, AQ will become part of Millward Brown Analytics, which in turn is a part of Kantar, the data investment management arm of WPP. 

Commenting on the acquisition, Travyn Rhall, global CEO, Millward Brown stated, “Our clients are continually looking for ways to turn data into brand and consumer insights that deliver a competitive advantage and AQ has developed a unique storytelling approach that connects data from across sources and combines it with industry knowledge, analytics and data visualization to answer business questions. Having already collaborated with the AQ organization on client work, we are delighted to now welcome the team and its expertise to Millward Brown and across the Kantar stable of brands.”

While, Kantar group is one of the world’s largest insight, information and consultancy groups with its services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies; WPP is the British advertising and public relations giant, owning a large group of companies under its umbrella including Kantar. Headquartered in London, WPP employs more than 1,79,000 people in about 3,000 offices across 111 countries.

Thus, WPP is acquiring Analytics Quotient indirectly through two tiers – Kantar and Millward Brown. This is understandable, as AQ will be working directly with Millward Brown, but for Kantar as well.

With this acquisition, WPP continues its strategy of investing in important markets and sectors and strengthening its capabilities in digital and data investment management businesses.

However, the AQ leadership team and its approximately 400 employees will become part of Millward Brown Analytics and continue to be led by Pritha Choudhuri, AQ’s CEO and the company founder.

Pritha Choudhuri told us that they are delighted to join Millward Brown and Kantar. “We know that every brand has a unique story hidden behind data and we look forward to helping more brands solve their business problems by extracting that story.” she added.

Founded in 2008 in Bangalore (India), Analytics Quotient has worked with some of the world’s largest CPG, retail and hospitality brands, using marketing consulting frameworks, statistics, CRM transaction analysis and a proprietary analytics platform to extract business insights from data. Further, it also builds data visualization tools and custom analytics solutions to help clients slice, dice, simulate and monitor business data.