Trends

Josh Wolfe believes that society’s outcasts are the ones who hold the secret to human progress. And he’s dedicated his life to spotting them early. 

The Signal: You can add “interactive podcasts” to the list of interactive digital experiences that will stick in the post-COVID world. This new genre of media, which blurs the lines between narrative and gaming, was gaining popularity before the pandemic.

The Signal: The coronavirus crisis is forcing governments in the US and Europe to make regulatory changes on the fly.

The post-crisis world will see significant regulatory changes in regard to health care and disaster preparedness. And these changes will cost companies billions in compliance costs.

According to research by Rice University, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act following the 2008-09 financial crisis “roughly doubled the number of regulations applied to U.S. banks, which hiked their compliance costs by more than $50 billion per year”. Costs included compliance salary expenses, auditing, consulting, data processing and legal fees.

Further analysis by George Mason University showed that the number of new regulatory restrictions created by the Dodd-Frank Act dwarfed the combined impact of every other Obama-era administration law.

In addition to the fact that there is significant coronavirus-related changes coming to global regulatory regimes, existing compliance training have 2 underlying factors that make the industry ripe for disruption:

Andrew Hogan, a London-based paid marketing professional with 10 years of travel and ecommerce experience, set the Trends Facebook group on fire with this post: “Today, I will help validate your idea with Google search data.”

Lecture Lessons provides actionable takeaways from our Trends Lectures series. This entry is based on Nik Sharma’s Product Launch 101 webinar. You can find him at Sharma Brands, follow him on Twitter or contact him via text (917-905-2340).

Last week, we sent out a survey inviting businesses that made it through the Great Recession to tell us how they did it. We got hundreds of responses, creating a database that shows the mix of strategies they used to cope with the economic fallout.

This week we’re publishing our third (and likely final) installment of our “Coping with Coronavirus” series (here’s part 1 and part 2).

The final mini-case studies, all from new industries, cover 7 thriving businesses forced to pivot during an unprecedented era:

Last week, we profiled the business impact that coronavirus is having on 6 of our Trends community members. The mini case studies covered the marketing, events, cleaning, beauty, manufacturing, and newsletters industries.

On March 12, 2020, Sam asked the Trends community, “How has your business been impacted by coronavirus? Grown? Hurt?”

In this article, we dive deep into 6 companies, exploring how they’re weathering the fallout from the novel coronavirus. The report looks at industries across the spectrum, zeroing in on the specific problems and solutions faced by these operators: