Iconoculture

In 1992, before the internet reshaped the world, Vickie Abrahamson and Mary Meehan launched a Minneapolis-based company called Iconoculture. Their business was built on understanding the subtle, yet powerful, shifts in consumer behavior. They provided consumer research and advisory services to major companies, helping them understand cultural trends to better position their brands and products. Iconoculture developed a proprietary system to track and analyze consumer attitudes, growing into a premier research firm. By the late 2000s, the company was generating nearly $20 million in annual revenue, serving as a critical insights partner for Fortune 1000 brands. But as the company scaled, its founders felt a growing distance from the creative analysis that had inspired them. In early 2010, Abrahamson and Meehan departed the company they had built to start a new, more focused venture. This set the stage for the next chapter in Iconoculture's journey. Just months later, in May 2010, the firm was acquired by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB). The deal was valued at over $15 million, a little more than one times the company's annual revenue. For CEB, the acquisition filled a key gap, bringing deep consumer insight into its portfolio of corporate services.