Industry Insights Archives

Remote Work: Before and After the Pandemic

Remote work has become a widely accepted and common practice in many companies, but the way it was...

Why is discipline important when it comes to marketing?

Marketing is a critical function for any business. It is the process of creating, communicating,...

How to Survive Trade Show Season, Part One

It’s the beginning of a new year. Time to set a fresh round of quarterly goals, fine-tune your branding, and finally put that new internal strategy into place. Oh, and it’s also trade show season. And with that comes the trade show hangover. Remember the last time you attended CES in Las Vegas, or that […]

The Car as a Service: Why Renting, Not Owning, is the New Frontier

When the Smart Car first appeared in the US in 2008, it raised some questions, perhaps the biggest being: would Americans used to trucks, sports cars, and open highways drive such tiny vehicles? While European drivers had been using Smart Cars for years, the driving conditions in Europe—congested cities, high fuel costs, and relative proximity—are […]

Volkswagen’s Slow Recovery: An Update

We’ve spent a lot of time here talking about the ways Volkswagen can begin to recover from a catastrophic emissions cheating scandal—first in an analysis of VW executives’ public messaging and then a deep dive into the problems ahead for the company. Our advice has boiled down to: be transparent. After all, it was likely […]

Podcasts Are Underserved: An Update

Earlier this year, we looked into the ways that podcasts are a rarity in today’s digital media landscape: an underserved digital niche. Indeed, while it seems like every other form of digital media has a robust ecosystem supporting it—from the boom in streaming music services to the myriad outlets for digital video—podcasts remain the sometimes […]

iPads are useless (but they were important)

Perhaps you remember the iPad launch of 2010? Though the idea of the tablet computer wasn’t new, Apple stamped its approval on the device by releasing their own version and instantly set the Internet abuzz. First came the jokes, then came the skepticism. Eventually, though, a third reaction appeared: cautious optimism. Perhaps this super-sized iPhone […]

Podcasting Is An Underserved Medium

For those of you who may not know, we love podcasts here at Cardwell Beach. We listen to them, we analyze them, we even produce our own. As marketers, though, we’ve noticed something: despite the incredible growth and popularity of podcasts, there hasn’t been a corresponding growth in the ecosystem that enables podcasts to truly […]

Your Innovation Problems Start With Your Haircut

I should clarify something before we get started: I’m not talking about your actual haircut, which I’m sure is stylish. Instead, I’m talking about the experience of getting your hair cut—especially your interactions with the person who is doing the cutting. Let me explain. As a CMO and sales executive, I talk to people all […]

Companies Are The New Bloggers

Here at Cardwell Beach, we love user experience design. There’s a lot you can learn simply from reading the insights that UX designers gather, whether or not you’re designing a website or a mobile interface. (For example, good UX design emphasizes the essential business principle of putting the customer first.) But we’ve also noticed something […]

How CMOs at Fortune 1000 Companies Can Adopt Start-Up Thinking

These days, it seems like everyone and their best friend are hard at work at their start-up. It’s become a nationwide trend, as coders, designers, and entrepreneurs join forces to bring their dreams to life. Many will fail, some will succeed, but along the way, they’ll learn some important lessons about leading teams, managing investors, […]

3 Content Marketing Trends Shaping 2016

Marketing using “content”—be it blogs, storytelling, visuals, or audio—is quickly becoming an industry-wide trend: roughly 70% of marketers surveyed in 2015 by the Content Marketing Institute reported having produced more content last year than the year before. Nearly 90% of the marketers surveyed said they were doing some type of content marketing overall, the Institute […]

Listen to: La Cebolla: Peeling Back The Layers on Univision’s Purchase of The Onion

While it might seem surprising, Univision’s recent partial purchase of The Onion isn’t quite so unexpected, according to former Onion video director JJ Shebesta, who joined Dave Donars, Cardwell Beach chief of research, to talk about the deal. In this first part of the conversation, JJ and Dave dive into The Onion’s legendary independent streak, […]

Q&A with Mike Lichter on the art (and science) of creative direction

This week I sat down with Matt Hansen, who interviewed me about my philosophy on working as a creative director, common misunderstandings about the job, and the management advice that I try to bring to my work everyday. Q: Many people are familiar roughly with what a creative director does, but not the intricacies of […]

Inside Two Winning Mobile Audience Strategies from Veteran Marketers

It’s a mobile world, as the data shows: users spend more time-consuming media on mobile than any other digital platform and spend more of their day looking at smartphone screens than desktop computer screens—and in 2014, more consumers purchased mobile devices than desktop devices for the first time ever. So, at first glance, it would […]

What 2016 Holds For Drones (and Marketing)

For drones, 2015 was the best of times and the worst of times. In the plus column, the little flying machines became ubiquitous across the country and around the world, resulting in some breathtaking visuals: and some fun new sports (drone racing, anyone?) But then there were the mishaps. Drones ended up crashing the US […]

Insight of the Week: When Hotel Chains Rebrand, Customers Respond

It’s time for the business trip to the annual conference, yet again. But this year, you’ve decided to do some comparison shopping to find the best hotel deal and save some money on expenses. Do you choose the stalwart hotel that has served you well in the past or the newly re-named property that was […]

3 Winning Rebranding Strategies From Veteran CMOs

Sometimes it pays to change. That’s what CMOs at companies from entertainment to personal finance are finding as they grapple with the digital revolution, where customers flock to online (and often mobile) alternatives to the traditional stalwart services that made up the 20th century economy. But with the right rebranding strategy, three companies have found […]

Listen to: The Annihilation of Incrementalism (and Penn Station): Infrastructure as Branding

It’s hard to envision New York’s Penn Station—an entirely underground train station filled with winding hallways that have been little updated since their construction—as a marketing opportunity for the city of New York. But that’s how New York governor Andrew Cuomo sees it, and that’s why Cardwell Beach chief of research Dave Donars and I […]

Insight of the Week: The simpler the information, the healthier the choice

Eating healthy is a priority for many consumers—at least they say so when asked in surveys. But in reality, factors like convenience and price often eclipse the need for healthy eating. A group of researchers tried to figure out what shoppers would need in order to be persuaded to eat healthier, and it turns out […]

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