Campbell Ewald Launches CE/CX - New Consulting Practice to Bridge Consumer Insights and Business Impact

Campbell Ewald is launching a new consumer experience capability designed to fill the gap between consultant recommendations and the execution of compelling, successful marketing programs. CE/CX draws on the company’s decades of experience applying consumer insights at scale for its clients as well as a new approach to gathering intelligence meant to streamline the process from insight to activation across complex organizations.

Campbell Ewald’s work in consumer experience started more than 70 years ago when one of its co-founders bought a Chevy dealership so he could help the Chevy account team understand the car purchasing journey and sales experience. That founding spirit has carried on beyond the dealership and is now part of Campbell Ewald’s DNA. 

“Our new practice is based on the insight that although CX intelligence is more readily available than ever before, clients have experienced difficulties applying it in the market. Understanding this, we saw the opportunity to fill the experience gap that is missing,” said Kari Shimmel, chief strategy officer, Campbell Ewald. “Our approach starts with the end in mind – we draw a straight line from consumer intelligence directly to business impact in everything we do.”

CE/CX, which already has extensive experience delivering value to clients in finance, insurance and sporting apparel, is framing its offerings around three core specializations: BX (Business Experience), MX (Marketing Experience) and CX (Consumer Experience). These services range from category positioning and business model innovation to audience planning, go-to-market planning and stakeholder alignment workshops – all filtered through their core competencies in journey mapping and addressable audiences.  

An example of CE/CX’s unique approach to turning insights into action can be observed in its approach to consumer experience journey mapping, a discipline Shimmel was instrumental in developing at the agency. Her strategy team has built these maps for clients in financial services, automotive, travel, retail, health care and consumer packaged goods. “For CE/CX, data is a key, but context is everything. This is often overlooked in the typical customer journey,” said Shimmel.

M.I.A.: The Experience Gap Between Insights and Action is Campbell Ewald’s recent study of senior management leaders who had experience with consultancies,* and it has uncovered costly gaps many are facing:

· 62% agreed that consultants’ findings expire too quickly (in six months or less) to be useful.  

· More than 40% stated that consultants’ recommendations were unrealistic to implement and needed “less theory and more action.”

· One in three believed that consultants’ deliverables fell short of expectations in speed to impact, driving meaningful business outcomes and usability across departments.

The launch of CE/CX follows the recent arrival of two new chief creative officers, Silmo Bonomi and Clarence Bradley, along with the introduction of the MiCROWN campaign to fight race-based hair discrimination in Michigan.