Our global team of futurists and strategists know what trends to pay attention to. Here they look at what trends will take their place in 2025 and beyond… 

The future can feel conceptual and abstract, but we’re experts in delivering tangible strategy and helping clients feel confident in using it for decision making.  

Download our new trend report here.  

Pause, Fast Forward, Rebound? has been developed and refined by a global team of futurists and strategists across our five offices. Our smart and adaptive cultural strategists are dedicated to future forecasting, and to providing solid strategic recommendation based on that forecasting.  

We blend methods (such as semiotics and working with social/unstructured data), to identify, articulate and draw meaning from trends, working with the world’s biggest brands to unpack the potential impact of emergent culture on products, comms, services, consumers and much, much more… 

Come to Crowd in 2025 for strategy rooted in cultural foresight, contact us at hello@crowdDNA.com 

 

We’re looking for an enthusiastic Senior Cultural Strategist to join our team in London…

We’re looking for an individual who will have a real passion for quantitative research, as well as someone who is open to blending their skills across other methodologies – so any experience outside of quant is very much valued.

Proficient at conducting all elements of the research process, the Senior Cultural Strategist will support the wider team by running projects, begin feeding into new business proposals as and when needed, guiding junior members of the team, developing client relationships and producing deliverables to a high quality.

The details

Role and responsibilities:

• Highly knowledgeable about the core processes of quant research – from designing bespoke questionnaires, managing the day to day process, all the way through to writing reports that bring data to life.
• Have been supporting projects or interested in getting involved on the core processes of qualitative research
• Own and nurture client relationships by delivering great work, anticipating client needs, gaining a thorough knowledge of their business
• Familiarity with supplier offerings and able to manage suppliers during fieldwork including sourcing and negotiating costs
• Excellent understanding of multiple and diverse client’s business and research objectives to inform overall research approach and analysis
• Able to execute multi-market research projects from kick off to completion raising any issues as and when necessary
• Ability to analyse data, identify interesting and relevant cross breaks, identify significance and work with statistics.
• Producing visually engaging reports that draw out the key insights from data, report succinct key findings and make strategic recommendations to meet project objectives Debriefing reports confidently and with enthusiasm to clients
• Contributing to new business and writing proposals as and when required
• Responsible for line managing more junior staff within the day-to-day running of projects, helping them to meet their objectives, learn, grow and develop
• Developing and sustaining good relationships and working practice with STRAT7 Crowd DNA’s internal teams; creative delivery, operations
• Working alongside the Project Producer to anticipate any needs and challenges, ensure smooth running, recruitment and financial management of the project
• Responsible for line management of Interns and/or Executives which includes conducting regular reviews, helping them to meet their objectives, learn, grow and develop

Key skills and attributes:

• Excellent attention to detail (numerical, written and visual)
• The confidence to suggest new approaches and introduce creativity to the research process
• Resolving problems when confident and offering solutions when raising problems
• Inspiring others around you by sharing knowledge, providing feedback and sharing your expertise
• Desire to keep learning and developing quant skills and new methodologies, while supporting other team members development
• An openness to learn and develop qualitative skills, trends and innovation skills and new methodologies
• Apply crowd context frameworks to research approaches and analysis
• Managing your own time and prioritising workloads, taking responsibility to raise resource issues and help identify solutions
• Highly organised and able to meet deadlines across multiple projects at once
• Able to work under pressure without compromising quality
• Supporting the wider team during workload peaks and being able to take initiative/work autonomously when needed
• Understanding clients working practices and meeting their specific needs

Working at Crowd DNA

STRAT7 Crowd DNA is an entrepreneurial and energised environment, fast paced and collaborative. If you fancy working in a place where setting the agenda for the future of cultural insights and strategy is coded into the way of working, please get in touch.

The role comes with a competitive salary of up to £51,000 and clear paths to promotion and to new opportunities. Benefits include:

• 25 days holiday plus UK bank holidays (our office also shuts between Christmas and New Year)
• 2 volunteering paid days per year (under a formal program for a registered charity)
• Flexible, hybrid working options
• Paid sabbatical after four years
• A contributory group personal pension scheme, to which we contribute 4% of Qualified Banded earnings to each team member’s gross salary
• Salary sacrifice and season ticket loans
• A Westfield Health cash plan
• Life assurance scheme at 4 x salary
• Discretionary bonus scheme
• Generous staff ents programme
• Cycle to work scheme

Recruitment Process

The cycle comprehends two or 3 interviews, depending on everyone’s agendas at this time of the year. It could be all done virtually or we may ask you to come and meet us at the office for stage two:

1st Stage – Around 45 minutes

2nd Stage – Around 1.5 hour – case study

Starting date – when possible

For information on applying for this position, please contact apply@strat7.com

Disclosure

STRAT7 is an Equal Opportunity Employer and our employees are people with different strengths, experiences and backgrounds, who share a passion for research. Our commitment to inclusivity is not just about race and gender identity, but also age, disability status, sexual orientation, religion and many other parts of one’s identity. All of our employee’s points of view are key to our success, and inclusion is everyone’s responsibility.

We’re looking for an enthusiastic Cultural Strategist to join our team in Sydney…

We’re looking for someone who has a real passion for culture and qualitative research. However, we’re looking for someone who is open to blending their skills across other methodologies, so any experience outside of qual is very much valued.

The cultural Strategist is expected to support the wider team by managing smaller projects or fieldwork elements for multiple projects with minimal support, working towards increasing their autonomy and owning all stages of the research process. Alongside this, you’ll begin to develop relationships with clients and gain category/sector expertise.

The details

Role and responsibilities:

• Knowledge about the core processes of qual and quant research – approach design, set-up, recruitment, writing discussion guides, moderation, analysis, presenting
• Able to execute research projects from kick off to completion with (minimal) supervision
• Understanding and being able to build in client’s business and research objectives to overall research approach and analysis
• Producing thorough and well thought out recruitment criteria and screeners
• Familiarity with supplier offerings and able to manage suppliers during fieldwork including sourcing costs
• Writing discussion guides for review
• Ability to analyse written and visual data, identify interesting and relevant themes
• Producing visually engaging reports that draw out the key insights from data, report key findings and make recommendations to meet project objectives
• Ability to move beyond research observation to identify strategic implications
• Debriefing reports confidently and with enthusiasm to clients
• Thorough knowledge and application of Crowd Values across all areas of work

Key skills and attributes:

• Excellent attention to detail (numerical, written and visual)
• The confidence to suggest new approaches and introduce creativity to the research process
• Resolving problems when confident and offering solutions when raising problems
• Inspiring others around you by sharing knowledge, providing feedback and sharing your expertise
• Desire to keep learning and developing qual skills and new methodologies
• Apply Crowd context frameworks to research approaches and analysis
• Managing your own time and prioritising workloads, taking responsibility to raise resource issues and help identify solutions
• Highly organised and able to meet deadlines across multiple projects at once
• Able to work under pressure without compromising quality
• Supporting the wider team during workload peaks and being able to take initiative/work autonomously when needed
• Understanding clients working practices and meeting their specific needs

Working at Crowd DNA

STRAT7 Crowd DNA is an entrepreneurial and energised environment, fast paced and collaborative. If you fancy working in a place where setting the agenda for the future of cultural insights and strategy is coded into the way of working, please get in touch.

The role comes with a competitive salary of up to $87,000 and clear paths to promotion and to new opportunities.

Benefits include:

• 21 days holiday plus AUS bank holidays (our office also shuts between Christmas and New Year)
• 2 volunteering paid days per year (under a formal program for a registered charity)
• Flexible, hybrid working options
• Paid sabbatical after four years
• Superannuation Payments
• EAP Access and support
• Discretionary bonus scheme
• Generous staff ents programme

Recruitment Process

The cycle comprehends two interviews, depending on everyone’s agendas at this time of the year. It could be all done virtually or we may ask you to come and meet us at the office for stage two:

1st Stage – Around 45 minutes

2nd Stage – Around 1.5 hour – case study

Starting date – when possible

For information on applying for this position, please contact apply@strat7.com

Disclosure

STRAT7 is an Equal Opportunity Employer and our employees are people with different strengths, experiences and backgrounds, who share a passion for research. Our commitment to inclusivity is not just about race and gender identity, but also age, disability status, sexual orientation, religion and many other parts of one’s identity. All of our employee’s points of view are key to our success, and inclusion is everyone’s responsibility.

How can cities welcome more people? In our latest issue of City Limits we share how urban life has changed to be better on inclusive and accessible spaces – and even smell better… 

City Limits Volume 11 – download it here.  

It’s through cities that we find meaning, and as we were putting together our 11^th issue of City Limits – our ongoing exploration of the ever changing urban experience – we wanted to look at how city living is accelerating change in the very meaningful task of making places more accessible.  

There’s lots of ways to talk about this, but by calling this issue Enabling Spaces, we wanted to look at what is making more people feel more welcome in cities.  

We go to luxury shops in Miami where a Blind or low vision customer can use a smartphone to interpret what is going on, celebrate a product that silences city noise, and senior housing that connects the community rather than separates them.  

The full 16 page magazine includes:

City Limits Volume 11 – download it here.

In our new film series, Crowd Voices, our US team took their cameras across country to hear what matters to young people today…

On the eve of the US election, we filmed young voters across the country.

Young people – whether the ones we met in Tampa, Charleston, Minnesota or New York – talked about the tensions that define and unite them.

Listen to our new series Youth Voices to hear how US youth feel about ideas of Trust, Safety, and Happiness today. First up, Trust – how is it built? And does this audience trust in what their politicians have to say? (spoiler alert… not so much).

If you think listening to youth voices is as important as we do, get in touch at hello@crowddna.com

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.