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
“Strategic foresight isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about preparing for it so you can make better decisions today.
I turn deep consumer insight into clear strategic direction, creating clarity, relevance, and real commercial impact.”
From Consumer Understanding
to Winning Game Strategies
Brands need, more than ever, the power of a distinct position. Not more campaigns. Not more formats. Not more quick fixes. What creates real value today is one strong idea and direction, rooted in deep consumer understanding, where creativity, strategy, and business work hand in hand.
My focus is to uncover what people need, desire, and aspire to, and shape that into strategic clarity your organization can act on.
I believe growth comes from being truly consumer-centric. My work turns insight into action through four connected steps.
Consumer-Centric Roadmap
I believe real growth comes from being truly consumer-centric. My work turns insight into direction and direction into action through four connected steps:
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.
My insights are real and
made to be put in action
I specialize in culture, consumer movements, and the NXT generation of behaviors shaping markets. I continuously track how values evolve and identify the opportunities that matter. My work turns complex behavior patterns into clear insights, frameworks, and strategies your teams can instantly use to grow brand and business.
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
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.
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
Outdoor Report
Germany
The NXT Outdoor Consumer Report Germany is a consumer research and trend report. It is part of the Above The Clouds Future Series, a yearly conducted quantitative and qualitative research study focusing on outdoor lifestyle preferences, activities and experiences, urban outdoor and the creative collectives, nature and sustainability, nature and health, and three important outdoor consumer archetypes.
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.