Competiscan

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---
name: competiscan-research
description: Competitive marketing research over Competiscan's archive of 20+ years of real US and Canadian marketing (direct mail above all, plus email, digital, social, search and print), using the Competiscan tools search_campaigns, read_piece, show_pieces and discover_filters. Use it whenever the user asks what a company or competitor is mailing or advertising; wants examples of offers or creative (balance transfer, 0% APR, sign-up bonuses, checking bonuses, pre-approved mail, rates, rewards); wants to compare companies' marketing; tracks how offers or messaging changed over time; asks how many campaigns or pieces something had; or names a piece by entry ID (like 2026-09-09-5185), even if they never say "Competiscan". Covers credit cards, banking, insurance, mortgage, investments, telecom, energy, retail, automotive, travel and other sectors.
---

# Competiscan research

Competiscan's archive holds real marketing pieces collected from a panel of US and Canadian consumers and businesses for more than 20 years: direct mail above all, plus email, online display and video, social, search ads, print and website captures, across 17 sectors. Each piece is scanned, its text read by OCR, and coded with structured fields: company, product, offer terms, mailing type, audience, targeting.

That makes it the record of what companies actually sent, to whom, when, and what it said. It does not hold response rates, spend, or total market mail volume. A count is the number of pieces the panel captured: a strong *relative* signal (company A vs. B, this year vs. last), not an absolute volume. Say so whenever you report a count.

## Tools

| Tool | Use it to | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| `search_campaigns` | Find pieces. Returns metadata rows: company, product, headline, channel, audience, mailing type, dates, `pdf_url`. Never the full text. | Needs at least one narrowing filter. No paging. |
| `read_piece` | Get the full printed text of specific pieces, for exact terms and fine print. | 25 ids per call. |
| `show_pieces` | Display pieces to the user as visual cards (thumbnail, headline, PDF button). The only tool whose output the user sees. | 8 ids per call. |
| `discover_filters` | Look up what filters accept: company spellings, the taxonomy under a sector, the advanced filter groups and their values. | — |

The usual flow is search → read a few → show the best examples → answer.

## 1. Frame the search

Turn the question into who / what / where / when before calling anything.

- **When.** For "lately", "now", "current", default to the last 90 days. Bound every search with dates. It keeps queries fast, and rows come back newest-first, so a long window with a small limit shows only the last few days of it.
- **Recent mail lags.** Direct mail reaches the archive roughly 2–4 weeks after it lands in mailboxes, so the most recent weeks are always thin. "This week" or "this month" for mail will undercount; widen the window and tell the user why.
- **Channel.** "Mail", "mailer", "mailing" → `media_channel=["Direct Mail"]`. "Marketing" or "advertising" in general → leave the channel open and break results down by channel.
- **Audience.** "Small business" → `Employer/Business Owner`; advisors or agents → `Insurance Producer/Financial Advisor`; brokers → `Mortgage Broker`; doctors or clinics → `Provider`. Otherwise `Consumer`, or leave it open.
- **Country.** The archive mixes US and Canada. Set `country="US"` (or `"CA"`) when the question is about one market; otherwise label the Canadian pieces.
- **Prospect offers vs. customer mail.** `mailing_type` separates Acquisition (offers to new customers) from Upgrade/Cross-Sell, Loyalty/Retention, Win-Back, Follow-Up and Statement. A question about "offers" or "acquisition" almost always wants `advanced_filters={"mailing_type": ["Acquisition"]}`. Without it, statements and servicing letters crowd the results, especially in older years.
- **Dates.** `search_date` (the default) is

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