Unlock the Future
of Your Brand
My work combines foresight, consumer insight, and brand strategy to help you position yourself towards consumer needs. I specialize in how culture, lifestyle behavior, and trends shape expectations to create clarity, direction, and momentum for you. Everything I do and deliver is aimed at helping you take action and move forward.
Fredrik Ekström
Insights & strategy Above The Clouds
“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 insight consultant" in isolation
I work with insight as the starting point for building strategies, concepts, and communication that create value, that create emotions, and that people want to act on.
Real magic happens when insight, strategy, and activation are connected. When brands understand why consumers behave the way they do and know how to respond with clarity, honesty, and intent.
My Consumer-Centric Roadmap
Everything I do starts with the consumer, but it never stops there.
I work through an integrated process designed to move brands from understanding to execution.
My winning game approach turns consumer understanding into strategic direction and activation, built around four steps: mapping, alignment, planning, and activation.
Mapping → Know your consumer
Consumer Mapping –
Know your audience: who they are, what drives them, and how they can participate in shaping, building, or carrying your brand.
Alignment → Connect your brand
Consumer/Brand Alignment –
Defining who we are in the eyes of the consumer. Connect your brand and how you act to expectations, values, and behaviours.
Planning → Long lead concepts
Consumer-Led Planning –
Create diamond strategies and concepts with creative height, depth, reach, and relevance to grow brand and business.
Activation → Playbooks for precision
Consumer Activation Playbooks –
Translating strategies into frameworks and formats, that bring your brand to life across campaigns, channels, and commerce.
“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 insights are real and
made to be put in action
My work turns complex behavior patterns into clear insights, frameworks, and strategies.
My services include:
• Defining Customer Key Needs
• In-depth consumer research
• Identifying consumer archetypes
• Driving force index for archetypes
• Brand strength tracking & analysis
• Consumer experience matrix development
Research and Reports
I help progressive brands by translating consumer understanding into clear strategic direction and impactful activations.
DOMETIC: NXT Outdoor Consumer
Created consumer trend research and a global future forecast of the NXT Outdoor Consumer, held a workshop for the global brand team, and defined direction based on report and insights.
GORE-TEX: NXT Sustainable Consumer
Created an insights deck based on mapping aspirations and trends related to the sustainability consumer trends, paradox, future fatigue, and audience vs. messaging intelligence.
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The Complete
Winning Game Strategy
The complete strategic brand playbook. A powerful consumer-centric strategy designed for activation. The winning game strategy helps teams move from planning to performance with clarity and confidence.
Built around all four steps of the roadmap:
Mapping: Know your consumer.
Alignment: Connect your brand DNA.
Planning: Long Lead Concepts
Activation: Playbooks for precision.
FIRST LINE: Winning Game Strategy
Based on First Line Sportswear Heritage, I created a global winning game strategy with brand DNA and direction, key target audiences, taglines, messaging, and playbook for activations.
HOUDINI: Winning Game Strategy
Based on Houdini's brand DNA and progressive outdoor positioning, we created a global winning game strategy with an updated brand approach, playbooks, and audience hierarchies.
Fast-track insights and
strategies with sprints.
When you need clarity fast, a go-to-market plan, a seasonal campaign, or a refreshed direction, the sprint format accelerates decision-making.
In a 3–4 week sprint, I bring teams together, dive into insights, sharpen direction, and translate insights into action. Each sprint is tailored to your brand’s challenge, resulting in clear priorities, creative energy, and a roadmap ready to execute.
The NXT Consumer Germany
The NXT Consumer Report is a consumer research and trend report based on 1300 respondents in Germany. It is a collaboration with studio MM04 and part of the Future Series, a yearly study on preferences, aspirations, status, and anxieties related to sustainability, communication, and consumption.
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The NXT Outdoor, Nordics
The NXT Nordic Outdoor Consumer 2025 is a consumer research and trend report based on quantitative data from a national representative base of 2500 respondents in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark and interviews of 27 brand representatives from Nordic outdoor brands.
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.