Our story
Mention was always the point.
I’m Ryan. A dad, a baseball coach, an Eagle Scout, and for the last twenty years, a marketer. I bought a small Milwaukee shop, rebuilt it, and pointed it at one stubborn question: can the right people find you, trust you, and choose you?
Helping people was always the point. Mention exists to make the organizations doing good work, the ones quietly making their corner of the world better, impossible to overlook. We operate under 3BL, LLC, the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit, in that order.
The tools kept changing, social, then search, then reviews and maps, and now AI answers. The mission never did. That is Mention.
“Getting a mention was always the point. I’ve always been good at seeing what’s around the corner and knowing the right people, so making Mention an option for people, just made sense.”
— Ryan Thompson, owner
The timeline
Twenty years, one question.
A click-through of the moments that shaped Mention, and what the marketing world was doing at the same time.
Filament Communications is born.
Kelly founds a small, female-founded Milwaukee communications shop, good clients, good craft, good bones. It is the company that becomes Mention, with early work for local institutions like Milwaukee County Parks.
Ryan joins the team.
After a trading floor at Deutsche Bank, a first company, and years running social for Fortune 500 travel brands, Ryan joins Kelly’s shop. Markets move on signals, and so does marketing.
Running the firm.
Within a year Ryan is working across every client and effectively running the place. The conversation about buying it begins.
Crisis communications, daily.
Through COVID we run rapid-response communications for the City of Racine and the City of Kenosha, concept to published by noon, every single day.
Bought, and rebuilt as Mention.
Ryan completes the purchase, keeps every client, steadies the finances, and moves the firm to a full-time downtown Milwaukee office. Mention Marketing is born, named after the outcome: being mentioned.
The ground shifts.
We lean harder into search, reviews, and the signals that decide who gets found, because the front door is about to move.
AI becomes the front door.
We formalize Generative Engine Optimization and start publishing the AI Mention Report, a sourced read of who AI actually cites.
Mention Group, fully remote.
We return to Wauwatosa as an office share and go fully remote, a senior crew of partners pointed at one question: can people and machines find, trust, and choose you?
“I want to help the region become more competitive. Having worked in a global environment, I know what our region is up against and what it takes to be on the cutting edge on the national or international stage.”
— Ryan Thompson, owner, in BizTimes Milwaukee
Over the years that work has earned gold and platinum industry awards alongside our PR partners, and helped drive millions of dollars in revenue for the clients behind it.
Today
Small by design. Senior by default.
Today, Mention Group is deliberately small. You work directly with Ryan as your main account manager, and he hand-picks a small team of trusted partners for your project. No bloated team. No mystery handoff. No junior person pretending to own the strategy.
For years we were a traditional small agency with employees. In 2023 we restructured into a more open, partner-based model. Many of the specialists we bring in are people Ryan has worked with for a decade or more, so you get senior, familiar hands and one accountable point of contact.
That bench is built from longtime collaborators, people like Meredith, Kayla, and Evan, who make the work better and the clients glad they called. Mention is Ryan out front, and a crew he trusts behind every project.
We ran from a full-time downtown Milwaukee office from 2021 through 2025, then returned to Wauwatosa in 2026 as the team went fully remote, an office share for a distributed crew of partners and talent across the region.
We help organizations become the answer across AI, search, maps, reviews, content, and paid media. We also publish the AI Mention Report through Mention.Report, because guessing is getting expensive.
The future of visibility should run on evidence, not vibes.
And because access matters, our systems are built and audited with accessibility in mind. Being findable should include everyone.
Why it matters
Getting found is good. Getting trusted is better. Getting recommended is the win.
The internet used to reward whoever shouted the loudest. The next version rewards whoever is clearest, most credible, most useful, and easiest to recommend.
That is good news for serious organizations, especially the ones that do good work but have never had the time, language, or system to make that work visible. That is where Mention fits.
The person behind the work
A bit about the person you’d be working with: an Eagle Scout, a father of two, a baseball coach, and someone who is happiest on a bike. He has lived abroad, which has a way of showing you how differently the world can work, and he came home believing the best work happens close to the people it’s for. He cares about doing right by clients and their customers, even when that means saying no. Because behind every search, every review, and every AI answer is a person trying to make a decision.
The next chapter
Start with a reading.
Before we prescribe anything, we look at the signals. Where are you showing up? Where are you missing? What does Google understand? What do AI engines say? What do reviews reveal? What would a customer believe before they ever call you? That is the starting point.
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