Alberto Cardaci
Verified Expert in Marketing
Marketing Expert
Milan, Metropolitan City of Milan, Italy
Toptal member since October 30, 2024
Alberto drives growth by leveraging 10 years of experience at the intersection of economic analysis, strategic planning, and market insights. He served as a senior manager of market insights at Toptal and held research leadership roles at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Complexity Lab in Economics, guiding international teams and advising businesses and governments. Alberto holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Milan and Sciences Po, combining business acumen with academic rigor.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Business Strategy
- Competitive Analysis
- Consulting
- Data Analysis
- Macroeconomics
- Market Intelligence
- Market Research
- Quantitative Research
Work Experience
Head of Behavioral Intelligence
Interhuman AI
- Defined and operationalized a behavioral intelligence framework, translating human social signals into structured, machine-readable standards used to train and evaluate AI models.
- Led the design of multi-modal signal definitions and scoring logic, aligning behavioral science, product requirements, and engineering constraints across teams.
- Built scalable processes for interpreting, validating, and refining social-signal data, ensuring consistency, reliability, and product readiness for AI-driven interactions.
Economist and Market Intelligence Consultant
Emerging Trajectories
- Produced weekly strategy briefings on geopolitical and economic volatility for Morgan Stanley, HP, and GoodMills.
- Led the evaluation and integration of external data sources to enhance real-time media monitoring, enabling more precise geographic and topical filtering.
- Developed tailored prompts for LLMs that power the startup’s intelligence outputs, improving relevance and speed of insights across political and economic domains.
B2B Market Research Expert
Bredin
- Extracted key insights from complex survey data, ensuring clarity and relevance for a client-facing deck aimed at presentations and prospect outreach.
- Collaborated directly with the CEO to sharpen the presentation’s narrative, translating raw data into concise, impactful summaries aligned with the client’s messaging.
- Delivered actionable input under tight deadlines, receiving positive client feedback for clarity, accuracy, and fast execution.
Senior Manager, Market Insights
Toptal, LLC
- Led in-depth industry analyses to identify growth opportunities, shape territory strategy, and develop positioning playbooks that aligned marketing and sales around high-potential verticals.
- Built market opportunity matrix to support C-level planning in the US and EMEA.
- Oversaw competitive intelligence efforts, synthesizing market trends, competitor moves, and strategic signals to inform go-to-market decisions and strengthen the company’s positioning.
- Built a data-driven client needs evaluation framework to improve outreach accuracy.
- Conducted labor market scenario analyses to identify sentiment and demand shifts.
- Coordinated in-depth interviews and survey research to build personas for global targeting.
Senior Economist
Goethe University
- Coordinated and mentored an international research team of six.
- Provided strategic consulting to corporate stakeholders at AXA, ABP, and OEE.
- Supervised segmentation analysis of pulmonologists to support a new drug launch.
- Boosted credit card adoption by 5% after leading a bank's customer survey research.
- Reduced parking violations by 12% by collaborating with a micromobility firm on a behavioral intervention.
AXA Senior Researcher, Complexity Lab in Economics
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
- Secured a €120,000 competitive grant from the AXA Research Fund, placing in the top 3.4% of all applicants.
- Supervised a team of two as part of a €1 million EU-funded behavioral insights team.
- Provided research-based strategic advice to AXA experts and partners.
- Created a model that increased consumer spending prediction accuracy by 60%.
Research Fellow
Sciences Po
- Joined a €1 million EU-funded macroeconomic research team.
- Designed 10+ experimental surveys and A/B tests for corporate stakeholders.
- Created a trend analysis model for the automotive, industrial, and healthcare sectors.
Project History
Keyword Machine: A Data-driven Approach to Organic Growth
Supported the creation of a data-driven keyword discovery and prioritization framework that enabled the launch of 1,000+ new landing pages, improved the organic performance of existing pages, and boosted lead generation.
The project featured various key steps and elements:
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A landscape analysis to identify new professional skills in demand from job postings, competitor websites, and desk research.
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A data-driven framework to prioritize the identified skills for landing page creation—and existing pages for performance improvement—based on search volume, competition intensity, labor market demand level, and variation over time.
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A “recommended actions” system for multiple teams and stakeholders, including marketing strategy, SEO, content marketing, and website production.
Market Intelligence Matrix: A Data-based Industry Selection Framework
Helped a company identify new high-value growth opportunities by developing and implementing a data-driven industry evaluation model.
I led the development of a comprehensive data-driven industry evaluation model for a global industry leader, analyzing market opportunities across multiple sectors.
The framework incorporated 22 key metrics from authoritative sources—such as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Lightcast, and BlackRock—to create five indices measuring industry attractiveness and client’s ability to win.
We applied this model for strategic targeting, identifying three high-value industries: healthcare/life sciences, financial services, and industrials. The analysis included detailed industry scorecards, technological trends, and prospect needs discovery, directly contributing to the successful implementation of new services and improved outreach accuracy.
Boosting Credit Card Adoption Through Behavioral Insights
Helped a bank achieve an 11.8% increase in credit card take-up rates by leveraging behavioral insights about color psychology.
I led a research project to boost credit card adoption rates in the European market, where ownership was only 40%.
Through a rigorous experimental study with 1,000 EU consumers, I demonstrated that changing the credit card color from red to black increased take-up rates by 11.8%.
The research combined behavioral insights about color psychology with randomized controlled trials and advanced statistical analysis. A follow-up study with emotional marketing materials yielded an additional 4.8% increase.
The findings were particularly effective for specific consumer segments, enabling the bank to implement targeted marketing strategies that significantly improved product adoption rates.
Behavioral Solutions for Urban Micromobility Challenges: Reducing Parking Violations
Developed and implemented targeted behavioral interventions that reduced parking violations by 12% for a micromobility company through data-driven user segmentation and personalized messaging strategies.
I led a 2-phased behavioral research project to improve parking compliance for a micromobility company in Germany.
Phase 1 involved conducting a comprehensive survey of 500 users to identify key behavioral drivers and user segments—revealing distinct patterns among different user groups.
In phase 2, we exploited these insights to design and implement two targeted interventions: a social norm-based pop-up showing local compliance rates and an empathy-focused message highlighting the impact on visually impaired people.
These data-driven solutions cut down parking violations by 12% and decreased local authority claims, improving urban mobility operations.
Education
Visiting PhD Program in Economics
Sciences Po - Paris, France
PhD in Economics
University of Milan - Milan, Italy
Master's Degree in Economics
University of Pavia - Pavia, Italy
Bachelor's Degree in Economics
University of Pavia - Pavia, Italy
Certifications
Career Essentials in Generative AI by Microsoft and LinkedIn
Microsoft and LinkedIn | via LinkedIn
Design Thinking for Innovation
University of Virginia and Darden School of Business | via Coursera
Design Thinking
National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA)
Skills
Core
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Marketing Strategy, Customer Segmentation, Go-to-market (GTM) Strategy, Competitive Intelligence, Keyword Research, SEO Keyword Research, Market Research & Analysis, Marketing Collateral Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), A/B Testing, Digital Marketing, Product Marketing, Account-based Marketing (ABM)
Platforms & Tools
Lightcast, Ahrefs, R, Monday.com
Business Models
B2B
Other
MATLAB, STATA, Spreadsheets, Qualtrics, Tableau, Notion, Design Thinking, User Research, Consumer Research, Consumer Behavior, Economics, Finance, Econometrics, Statistics, Data Analysis, Data Visualization, Behavioral Science, Macroeconomics, Market Research, Industry Analysis, Google Keyword Planner, Business Strategy, ChatGPT, Surveys, Forecasting, Stakeholder Management, User Behavior, Survey Programming, Sentiment Analysis, Team Leadership, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Economic Analysis, Trend Forecasting, User Personas, AI Prompts, Prompt Engineering, Quantitative Research, Customer Insights, Presentations, LaTeX, Growth Strategy, Competitive Analysis, Market Intelligence, Market Insights, Personas, Consumer Insights, Keyword Analysis, Apple Keynote, Pitch Decks, Sales Enablement, SimilarWeb, SurveyMonkey, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Mind Mapping, Machine Learning, Consulting, Storytelling, Battle Cards, Usability Testing, Project Management, Reports, Strategy, Behavioral Economics
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