Every era has its vices. Crowd’s Olivia Anderson looks at how one cigarette brand is breaking tobacco’s taboo in a bid to bring cigarettes back to the masses… 

Cigarettes – one of the most heavily policed products in culture today. Until recently, the cigarette industry seemed to be ceding its ‘share of lung’ to a slew of newer tobacco-free products like vapes and ZYN pouches. But as indie sleaze creeps back into our cultural lexicon and the debauchery of the Roaring Twenties threatens to materialise, we’re seeing smoking in a new light. One brand in particular is cashing in on it. Hestia spotlights smoking’s cultural cachet by connecting smoking to respected tradition and cultural heritage, all with an irreverent twist.

Code 1: Time-Honoured Americanness

Hestia Tobacco positions smoking as an integral part of Americanness. Visuals call upon iconoclasts of American culture – Superman, Abraham Lincoln – which tether the brand to an established vision of Americanness, instantiating it as part of the nation’s ethos. The brand consistently foregrounds the phrase ‘American Farmer Grown’, which roots the product in the land itself. Hestia’s website features quotes from famed American figures from Lana Del Rey to Abe Lincoln – “so we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies / and we walked off to look for America”. The linguistic work quotes such as this one from Paul Simon does is to code smoking as intrinsic to the American spirit, conjuring a specific image of vintage Americana by recalling the language and imagery of storied eras of the nation’s history. This is similarly reinforced by visuals depicting blue jeans, symbolic of the American ideals of hard work and freedom.

By capitalizing on semiotic cues of classic American-ness, Hestia presents their product as a natural – if not integral part of their cultural identity.  

Code 2: Ancient Ritual

Hestia also draw on folklore and tradition to position themselves as the protectors of the true American legacy: “Tobacco is indigenous to the Americas, and has been a part of the history and culture of this land since the dawn of time”. Intertwining tobacco with America’s own origin story draws on ancient ritual and ideas of heritage to convey respect – even reverence – for Hestia’s product. The name Hestia derives from the Greek goddess of the hearth – this evokes the heart of the home, a site intimately connected to ideas of ritual, tradition, custom. The brand’s signature orange tones are earthy, warm and natural – a far cry from to the artificial, overbright shades we associate with vapes. They’re leaning into naturalness, ancient custom and the idea that tobacco is inextricable from the earth itself, attuned to nature’s seasons and processes. As Hestia themselves declare – “Hestia cigarettes are ritual and tradition in your hand”.

Foregrounding the tobacco plants and their raw, ‘naked’, ‘wild’ nature forges a primordial connection to the land itself, effectively doubling down on the ancestral practices underscoring Hestia’s product.  

Code 3: Irreverent Craft

Hestia positions itself as a scrappy challenger to Big Tobacco by doubling down on ideas of craft and artisanship. Paradoxically, one of the ways they do this is by using the visual language of a political campaign – a not-so-subtle nod to the politically charged cult of Big Tobacco. The brand’s visuals lean heavily on the imagery associated with political campaigns – badges and banners bear slogans like ‘Smoke Hestia 2024’ and ‘God Hates Vapes’. Hestia also foreground their deep understanding of the cultivation of tobacco, from crop to cig, ‘from seed to smoke’: “to have the knowledge to plant, prune, harvest and cure tobacco remains an art form passed down through generations”.

Constructing their product as an ‘art form’ invokes the idea of craft, positioning Hestia as artisanal, undeniably of nature, far from the mass-produced essence of Big Tobacco.

Conclusion

Hestia is breaking the mould of tobacco brands, evoking its cigarettes as natural, artisanal and intrinsic to American identity. Smoking Hestia tobacco is positioned as an ancient – almost sacrosanct – ritual, carefully crafted and infused with heritage. Hestia’s semiotics do important work in lessening the harmful, taboo aspects of smoking and grounding it in nature, tradition and – above all – storied Americanness.

If you’d like to learn more about how we use semiotics to reach real cultural insights, get in touch at: hello@crowdDNA.com 

Our editorial insight series, Club Free, meets people who don’t fit neatly into segmentation tick-boxes. Here Global Managing Director El Pigram gives some tactics for brands to meet them outside of these…  

Club Free Issue One, download it here. 

At Crowd, we believe that change presents opportunity.   

Our latest editorial insights series, Club Free, is about groups seeking a new way of thinking about their individual liberty. It’s not freedom that’s unchecked or selfish: we talked to people who are providing each other with the support, empathy and community to exercise their freedom effectively.   

In chapter two: The Financial Outsiders, we heard from a community-minded group living and giving outside of elitist money systems. 

Subverting Status.  
As chasing down those traditional milestones of (ultra) wealth become less ‘shiny’, how do we think about new articulations of (and ways to cater to) age old social identity needs like ’status’, ‘reward’ and ‘discernment’? It’s not that this audience aren’t seeking all the good stuff that once came with splashing cash – self-gratification, community validation, recognition – but instead they’re more choiceful in how they fulfil these desires, with the act of giving (rather than receiving) hitting that sweet spot. 

Values over value. 
You can’t put a price on happiness. Cliche, and a bit (to use a Gen Z word) ‘cringe’ – but for many this rings true more today than ever before. Rather than play by the rules of a game that’s rigged against them, young people are forging their own way of earning (figurative) wealth – by doubling down and focusing on their values, rather than their earning potential. It’s not that they don’t value work, they just don’t see work as a fair value exchange. Which poses an interesting question to us as marketers, strategists, employers – how do you define, create and communicate real ‘value’ to an audience who interprets it in a fundamentally different way? 

(More) Radical Honesty.
Radical honesty has been a thing for a while. Honest brands that ‘say it how it is’ connect with an iconically millennial sensibility (I’m looking at you, Ryanair, KFC & Pot Noodle ). Emerging audiences are however encouraging us to move a step further, from saying the unsaid – to doing the unexpected; supporting people and communities in ways that genuinely benefit them. What our Financial Outsiders are calling for isn’t about CSR, it’s about putting an end to gatekeeping that upholds the imbalance between the haves & have nots through creating spaces and cultivating (branded) communities that facilitate the greatest kind of wealth distribution – knowledge. 

Learning about The Financial Outsiders is part of our commitment to look at (and be inspired by) groups of people who don’t fit neatly into tick-boxes, well trodden segmentations or traditional pathways.      

We hope you find these stories interesting. And please do feel (yes) free to reach out to the Crowd DNA team to explore how this type of thinking could apply to your brand challenges.   

Club Free Issue One, download it here. 

Our KIN network take us on a trip to their home cities. This time we head into the night with creative Angel Galán, in Madrid 

Madrid is a cosmopolitan city with long hours… 

Since the 80s, Madrid nightlife has been recognised by residents and visitors as one of the most fun. And while I think there is a clear division between underground and commercial nightlife, lately new hybrid electronic genres are beginning to blur the lines that separate them. 

Madrid nightlife always has something for everyone, all the time. 

It used to be quieter during the summer months because people were on vacation and fewer tourists came. But this has changed: the number of people coming here in the summer has increased, especially because of the number of open-air festivals.  

A lot of night life is outdoors, eg the Mad Cool festival and in bars like La Paralla and at label parties

The increase in tourist apartments has caused people to change neighborhoods 

People are moving away from the city centre. This has gentrified some working-class neighborhoods, such as Carabanchel, which is becoming an area of artists’ studios, galleries and hybrid cultural spaces. 

Find out about the parties that are taking place outside the city centre… 

In Madrid we have the emblematic Siroco and El Sol venues with a very varied program (so I recommend that you visit their websites and find out what’s on), as well as smaller clubs like Cadavra, Specka or Ballesta, and the Sunday parties at La Parrala. And of course you should find out about the parties hosted by the different private clubs in areas far from the city centre. 

The quality of electronic music has been at a high level for a long time…  

Focusing on what I like the most, which is electronic music (from ambient to techno through to electro or bass music), I can say that the quality of the DJs and producers in Madrid – whether the parties, their labels, or their music – has been at a very high level for decades. Go to label parties such as Caustica, Distrito 91 or Analogical Forces for a good example of very creative people making and playing very good music and connecting people from all over the world. 

To delve into more city life read City Limits, our series of pieces exploring the urban experience here. 

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, how amplifying tailoring is (finally) giving exclusive fashions for all…

Tell me more…  With actor/ seamstress now a popular hyphenate career (see Joe Ando, 2.5m followers), WWD declaring Tailoring as the Fall 2024 trend, and #SewingTikTok on 7.4 billion views to date, it’s clear that tailoring is getting even more attention than a disappointing Shien haul.  

Not surprising, it’s the perfect fit for our times… It’s bespoke, sustainable and the process of making it produces great online content. Tailors, dressmakers and designers gain countless followers by sharing the step-by-step processes behind their creations. When @er.embroidery (185.5K followers) embroidered a moon and stars over a mushroom on TikTok, it was viewed nine million times. Custom-fit clothes have gone from being just an option for the richest shopper to one available to all – whether that’s doing it yourself or finding a reasonably priced seamstress.  

So, it’s democratising fashion? Yes, by showing that fashion simply requires patience, and anyone can do it if they put their mind to it. It’s not as complicated as the couture runways make it look. 

Meanwhile, upcycling… is not a lifestyle, it’s a necessity, right. Of course, the statistics on waste and carbon emissions from textile production are horrifying – there’s no excuse not to take an alternative seriously. 

So big fast fashion brands are out, where is in? Made to measure fashion brands are booming online in Vietnam. Hashtags such as #Vietnamfashion and #Vietnamesefashion on Instagram and TikTok have amassed tens of thousands of gushing posts and millions of likes, in contrast to the growing disenchantment with Chinese fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu.  

And it’s gone corporate… The Singapore National Heritage Board recently launched Recustom, a fashion brand aiming to revive the country’s tailoring community with designs not available off-the-shelf. Instead, customers must visit local tailors to recreate the looks using provided design blueprints and their own pre-loved garments as raw material.  

But it’s also still punk… You only need to look at Melisa Minca’s upcycled suits emblazoned with sarcastic and disruptive motifs (definitely NSFW) to see this… 

TL; DR: Forget the disappointment of What I Ordered v What I Got and embrace the opportunity to instead get exactly what you want – tailoring offers fast fashion, done your way.   

We don’t just ‘do quant’, we culturally charge it. Our Numbers Director, Ed Bird on how to fuse the best of quant rigour with cultural strategy… 

When you think about cultural research and strategy, I bet you think about ethnography, observations, trend forecasting, and semiotics – methods that bring you as close to people’s lives as possible. And quite possibly, quant is the last method you think of. 

But, since 2017, we’ve been asking ourselves the question: “How do you understand and unpack real human stories that dictate culture when speaking to thousands rather than tens of people?”.  

Thinking about how to culturally-charge data allows our global Crowd Numbers team to steadily fly high, tackling some of the biggest challenges from the biggest brands around the world. We’d like to tell you more about how we do it and what this approach can bring to your brand challenges. 

How We Culturally-charge Data  

Our quantitative work is blended. We feel the very best quant works in tandem with our other research methods. We can unpick complex topics about people and culture through a variety of specialists. This helps us produce clear, human storytelling, and back it all by understanding people at scale. 

Our blended approach doesn’t just stop in house. As part of STRAT7 we partner with our sister agency Bonamy Finch when we need to enhance our analytics and data science capabilities. And we use STRAT7 Audiences, the group’s global centre of excellence for data collection.

Read more about STRAT7 Audiences here.

We’re ad-hoc: Why would we use a fixed template when culture (and your objectives) aren’t static? So, at Crowd Numbers we start from scratch. We approach each brief with creativity and an open mind: questioning everything and experimenting with traditional methods to tailor these to your very specific goals. 

We don’t do filler: Forget about long PowerPoints filled with charts, we collaborate with our editorial team and of course our qual research team to produce reports that inspire, not overwhelm. 

We’re human: Our aim is to replicate real world thinking and interactions, but at scale. Just look at our questionnaires that strike the balance between the rigour of academic quant research with the flow of real conversations.

People & Context 
When brands need powerful narratives to lead conversations, culturally charged data can help clients to confidently lead the way on how culture is evolving, and showcase brand knowledge in certain categories, sectors, or topics. 

Case study: Paramount x On Screen Representation 
Take our work with Paramount in both 2021 and 2023. They wanted our help to unpack attitudes to on-screen representation to push this important conversation forward. We devised a 15-market survey that unpacked real human understanding of both societal views and deeper personal emotional impacts. But we went further, speaking to experts globally to produce a market leading narrative for our very public facing findings. Read more here.  

Brand & Comms  
We don’t just use data to size, prioritise and validate (though we do that too), but we love to use it to demonstrate how brands can tactically and strategically lean into culture. 

Case Study: Amazon Ads x Culture 
Our partnership with Amazon has yielded some fantastic projects, none more so than unpacking the relationship between advertising and our evolving culture. Big questions, need big solutions so we brought in trends, qual, and semiotics wrapping it all up in a global survey that captured our evolving relationships with advertising and the role Amazon can play. This storytelling was launched at Cannes Lion in 2024. Read more here.  

Product & Experience 
Culture is messy, but we can find your space and help you execute a role in culture. We provide executional guidance across consumer journeys and touchpoints but always through the lens of culture – something quant testing often misses. 

Case Study: Ballantines x True Music DEI
We did this with Ballantine’s. Following our work Resetting The Dancefloor, it was all about helping them with the next step in progressing DEI within live music and clubbing spaces. So, we tested ideas and hypotheses and through culturally charged data, we found meaningful ways the brand could make a difference. Not just based on metrics, but on human understanding. Read more here.

We’re very proud to have developed global quantitative capabilities with a focus on both storytelling and the analytical challenges. We love what we do, and we think you would too. If you’d like to know more, drop us a line at hello@crowddna.com and we’d be happy to discuss. 

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, Crowd’s Olivia Anderson on how literature is taking luxury by storm… 

Tell me more. Picture the scene: you’re bored of performatively reading Sylvia Plath at Jolene cafe. You want to take your carefully cultivated Reader Aesthetic to the next level, but you aren’t sure how. Enter luxury fashion houses. 

Word on the street is ‘book girl summer’ … It’s so much more than that. Literature is becoming a lifestyle, and one that is distinctly aspirational. Valentino really got the ball rolling with their SS24 collection using Hanya Yanagihara’s acclaimed novel A Little Life as a conduit to explore new meanings and expressions of masculinity. And Thom Browne’s NYFW show in February of this year drew inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe, because goths are important too. 

So it’s the luxury version of dressing up for World Book Day? It goes a little deeper than that. Miu Miu’s Summer Reads initiative sees the brand gifting copies of seminal novels – all written by women – to visitors at pop-up locations around the world. Maison Valentino even sponsored the Man Booker Prize this year. Chanel’s 7L bookstore in Paris is now host to an arts programme designed to cultivate creativity and foster appreciation of the arts. While Aesop is getting in on the action too with its Women’s Libraries, using A Tale of Two Cities as the theme of its Women’s Day activations in China and dedicating its stores to novels written by or foregrounding women. Brands are using literature as a vehicle for something deeper than dress-up.  

It’s all very Dead Poets Society. It’s not just for the Dark Academics amongst us – Audi recently released Handbook Novels, where they partnered with up-and-coming authors in Spain to write novellas featuring key words from the cars’ instruction manuals in a bid to get people to actually read their instruction manuals. 

Rise up, English teachers. Pretty much. In the same way that luxury brands like Burberry and LVMH started producing PPE and hand sanitiser during COVID, we’re seeing this reverence of literature bubble up at a time when creativity is under threat, when “truth” is no longer an absolute, when the maelstrom of the online world makes it hard to distinguish signals from noise. It makes sense that brands are turning back to what feels time-honoured, certain and lasting – what culture writer Nadja Sayej calls “the timeless wisdom that can be sought if we put down our phones”. And fashion and literature are natural bedfellows – it’s all about cultural commentary and storytelling, be it pen and paper or needle and thread. 

Wicked smart. The message is clear: literature is a still point in a turning world, and one that is being called on now more than ever. Close enough to describe our realities, far enough removed to allow us to examine them through the trusted lens of cultural artefacts that have stood the test of time. 

TL;DR: literature is hot vital. Brands looking to cultivate credibility and foster ideas should lean on literature – particularly the certainty that the classics offer – as a north star and a source of inspiration in a world freighted with opposing cultural forces. 

In our series, Crowd DNA uses semiotics to decode colour trends and unpack cultural shifts in the process…

Colour of course carries plenty of meaning, but that changes (and often very fast) alongside lived experiences. In this series, Crowd DNA uses semiotics to decode colour trends and unpack cultural shifts in the process… 

At Crowd, we use semiotics as one of our tools, showing where signs and symbols – like words, visual icons, packaging, or logos – are a shortcut for brands to reveal their message or impact behaviour.  

Following on from Gen Z Yellow, we now take a look at what lies beneath the sugary lilac of the Y2K revival. We use semiotics to chart the evolution of new imaginings of technological frontiers – a purple that reflects the optimism of the early years of the dot com era – and how it then shifts in shading to speak to how our relationship with the online world has become more problematic over the last five years… 

In Heritage Purple, we explore:  

Semiotic analysis can help brands understand culture and keep ahead of cultural change, and we hope our Colour Me series will help you in  choosing more impactful colours.

If you’d like to learn more about how we use semiotics to reach real cultural insights, please get in touch: hello@crowdDNA.com

Our KIN network takes us on a trip to their home cities. This time we head into the night with architect Alice Asafu-Adjaye, in Accra

People begin – and usually end – their night in Osu, a neighbourhood by the coast

“The center of Accra nightlife is really Osu. It’s where a lot of communities were formed back in the days when we were colonized because it was right by the sea (trading posts and castles were established along the coast by the Danish and British). So, it has always been the hub. Osu brings together locals, tourists and people from the diaspora. It has all these pockets, but there’s this major thoroughfare called Oxford Street, and from one end to the other it’s just full of life. It’s easily three miles long, and it starts from one big, roundabout and it ends up close to the sea, and you have these side roads that you can branch off for relief.”

It is typically Ghana and Accra that the streets basically evolve.

“While it was a planned city, the structure is a bit more flexible, more informal now. When I say informal, it’s because almost everyone I know has a side hustle alongside their day jobs. Most of these don’t have permits, people basically just get a little shop, or sometimes a disused shipping container – give it a bit of sprucing up – and then boom, they have some sort of business in the nightlife area.”

A night out in Osu – The Republic Bar & Grill, eating Kenkey & drinks at Front/Back

We have some very unique restaurants and bars…

“One of these is The Republic Bar & Grill, which is a small joint but it literally spills out onto the road and it’s grown to the extent that they now block out sections just to allow people to sit partly on the road. Now on the same street there are quite a few copy-cat bars. Their unique selling point is making cocktails using akpeteshi, a local spirit brewed from sugar cane. It’s a potent drink that was previously frowned upon because it was for people who couldn’t afford wine or spirits. But these guys basically upscaled it and use it as a base for cocktails. A couple of streets away is The Pallet Kitchen (TPK), and they use local herbs and akpeteshi in their cocktails.”

One of the things that makes the nightlife so interesting in Accra, is that it’s OK if things go wrong.

“… and that’s when you end up at Osu Night Market. It is a maze of streets with food stalls. We have a streetfood, Kenkey and fried fish, which we normally have with chilli sauce. So you can imagine when people have been clubbing and this is in the early hours of the morning, they all just end up eating Kenkey there. The first time I was there, I was just like blown away. I was like, well, why did we not start our evening here?!”

But you can have quieter moments in Accra

“There’s a members club called Front/Back and it has very design-led spaces created by artists. Over the years, they’ve really expanded. I will go there for quieter moments – maybe to avoid traffic because the city is full of heavy traffic or I will schedule a meeting for late afternoon. There’s another place if you want relief called Ghana Club, and it’s where I would say grown ups go. It was the residency of the governor of Accra, then I think around the time of independence it was established as a private members’ club. It has a well-stocked bar, and exhibitions and it’s a good place to meet to debate – whether it’s current affairs, politics. And it’s only a few minutes away from the hustle and bustle.”

But while we are calm, as a people, the nightlife in the city is quite colorful.

“Our reputation for not being the most exciting city I think has really changed over the years. It’s actually quite loud and noisy, but not in an intrusive way. You have someone who has been selling all day you know, like the fruits and vegetables, and when you pass them in the nighttime, they’re still there (and you’re thinking: What’s going on!?). So while we are not like New York in being where a city that never sleeps – there’s always something happening.”

And it’s like a community-based nightlife.

“It’s testament to how important community is because people not only conduct their business in these neighbourhoods but it’s where a lot of them actually live. No one wants to threaten their livelihood or bring a bad name to them or their neighbourhood. So there is a lot of self-policing, and it feels safe there.”

And decibels are quite high…

“There’s a lot of energy – and I can’t think of a nicer word to describe the noise and how loud it is. There’s always someone trading, and you think some people are fighting, but no, it’s just that everything is sort of escalated. People don’t think twice about setting up a boom box!”

If you can describe Accra in three words?

“Spicy, colorful and loud.”