Creative Strategist and Marketing Specialist.
With more than 20 years across brand strategy, creative direction, and marketing/PR, I help lifestyle, outdoor, and sports brands grow by understanding people and turning that understanding into strategy, concepts, and communication that actually work.
Fredrik Ekström
Creative Strategist & Marketing Specialist
About Me
I’ve spent my career working at the intersection of consumer behavior, strategy, and activation, both inside brands and on the agency side.
I’ve held roles as Creative Director, Head of Marketing, Head of Global PR and Brand Strategist, leading everything from global brand repositioning and sustainability transformation strategies to go-to-market strategies, campaigns, and long-term communication frameworks. I’ve worked closely with executive teams, led internal and external teams, and been accountable not just for ideas, but for results.
Today, I run Above The Clouds, my freelance insights and strategy platform. It’s where I bring together everything I’ve learned about consumers, culture, sustainability, and brand-building, helping brands make better decisions and create real business impact.
My Beliefe
I believe brands don’t grow by saying more; they grow by understanding better. Consumer insight is not the end goal. It’s a tool.
A powerful one, but only if it’s mastered, interpreted, and translated into strategy, creativity, and action.
I don’t work as a “consumer insights consultant” in isolation. I work with insight as the starting point for building strategies, concepts, and communication that people actually feel something for and act on.
Real relevance happens when insight, strategy, and activation are connected. When brands don’t just know what consumers think but understand why they behave the way they do and how to respond with clarity, honesty, and intent.
My Approach
Everything I do starts with the consumer, but it never stops there.
I work through an integrated, consumer-centric process designed to move brands from understanding to execution.
Mapping
Consumer motivations, tensions, aspirations, and behaviors.
Alignment
Defining what your brand means in the eyes of the consumer. Connecting brand values, positioning, and behavior to culture and context.
Planning
Turning insight into strategy, long-lead concepts, and campaigns.
Activation
Translating strategy and concepts into playbooks and communication that live across channels, markets, and touchpoints.
This approach ensures that strategy doesn’t stay theoretical and that creativity doesn’t lose direction. Every step reinforces the next. Every decision is grounded in real consumer insights.
My background spans both agency life and senior in-house leadership, which means I understand the reality of challenges and strengths from both sides of the table.
I started my career working with skateboards and snowboards in the '90s in Sweden. After that followed a few years of soul searching, working as a chef for some of Stockholm's top restaurants at the time, living in Malaysia working as a specialty dive instructor, and managing dive centers, before moving back home to start a "professional" career.
I started my career in creative PR, working at Prime PR, at the time one of the world’s most awarded PR agencies. It taught me how culture, storytelling, sustainability, and earned media shape brands and move people in the real world.
I worked at United Minds, a brand agency, focusing deeply on brand development through consumer behavior, trends, and foresight, helping brands navigate cultural change, sustainability expectations, and shifting consumer values.
I spent six years working inside Tretorn, a Swedish heritage brand, holding roles as head of marketing, creative director, and global PR, and sitting on the executive management team. There, I led global brand repositioning, sustainability strategy, and large-scale activations, including founding the Eco Essentials Initiative and embedding sustainability into product, communication, and business decisions.
Alongside this, I’ve founded and run a creative agency, built PR and content platforms, and worked hands-on with leading international fashion, outdoor, and ingredient brands, as well as organizations and supporting other agencies.
These experiences matter because they shape how I work today:
with respect for objectives, budgets, teams, and the need to turn good intentions into real results.
Freelance Strategy Days
I run my own Strategy Days Free-Touring event in Engelberg.
Over three days, you will engage in morning strategy sessions that lay the groundwork for your business’s future, followed by freeskiing or ski touring workshops arranged by Freeride Days Engelberg, where you pick and choose after your own interest and capabilities. Each day concludes with co-creation sessions, where you'll have the opportunity to develop your strategies collaboratively while gaining insights from other participants.
Trailfulness Running club
I do my own Trailfulness Running Trips. Our focus is on mountain trail running, but not just any run; ours are explorative journeys through some of the world's most breathtaking landscapes. through a unique blend of running and mindfulness—Trailfulness. Whether you're a seasoned trail runner or a nature lover looking for a new way to experience the outdoors, the trip offers a unique opportunity to challenge your body, soothe your mind, and expand your horizons.
Lived in Malaysia working as a dive instructor and managed dive centers.
I lived in Malaysia for a few years, around the year 2000, working as a specialty diving instructor and managing three dive centers on the Perhentian Islands, a Marine Protected Area with a lot of illegal fishing and a unique mix of biodiversity that needed protection, at some times in unorthodox ways. Later this experience turned out to be my inspiration for - The Ghost Net Project - at Tretorn 2016.
Let's Connect & Collaborate
I offer a freelance consultant service where you as client get the benefits of in-depth expertise across a number of specialty areas, without having to increase your permanent staff or contract a full size agency.