How I Help Brands Grow
From understanding people to a clear brand direction to a story worth telling. I work across the full journey, so nothing gets lost in translation between insight, strategy, and execution.
With more than 20 years across brand strategy, insight, and communication, I help outdoor, sports, and lifestyle brands turn consumer understanding into direction and direction into a story people believe.
Fredrik Ekström
Independant Brand Consultant
Who I Work With
I primarily work with progressive brands and organizations within outdoor, fashion, sustainability, sports, travel, and technology.
Brands that want to:
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Better understand their consumers
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Strengthen their market position
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Build stronger concepts and campaigns
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Create more distinctive communication
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Increase brand relevance and demand
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Connect strategy with hands-on execution
From global brands to start-ups, the focus is the same: helping brands become more meaningful, more memorable, and commercially effective.
"Insight tells you what’s true. Strategy tells you where to go. Story is what makes people believe it, remember it, and repeat it. I work across all three, so your brand doesn’t lose meaning between the research and the result."
Insights - Services
Turning complex behaviour patterns into insight, frameworks and direction.
Through the Future Series and my own Pattern Model, I help brands uncover the cultural shifts, values and motivations shaping future consumer behaviour, categories and opportunities. Combining cultural understanding with consumer research and market intelligence, I help you find where relevance is heading before your competitors do.
Services include:
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Consumer Research & Archetypes
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Consumer Mapping & Opportunities
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Sustainability & Outdoor Insights
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Brand strength tracking & analysis
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Trends & Proprietary NXT Reports
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Insight & Consumer Sprints
Strategy - Services
Turning insights into a clear, ownable strategic direction to act on.
I help brands create strategic clarity by defining positioning, audiences, messaging and long-term direction to win in the market. The objective is a strong, consumer-aligned foundation that guides decisions across brand, marketing, product, partnerships and sales, not a deck that sits unused.
Services include:
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Winning Game Strategy
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Brand Positioning
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Brand DNA & Foundations
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Messaging Frameworks & Taglines
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Brand Concepts & Activation Strategy
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Strategy Sprints for Implementation
Story - Services
Turning strategy into a story framework that unifies everything the brand does.
A brand is nothing without a story. It’s what fills the product, the advertising and the PR, and it’s what turns insight and strategy into something a brand can actually live inside of: in campaigns, in earned media and in how your team talks about what you do. This is where strategy becomes felt, not just understood.
Services include:
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Storytelling Playbooks
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Marketing & PR Strategy
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Campaign Architecture
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Brand Activations & PR Concepts
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Content & Social Frameworks
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Ambassador & Collaboration Strategy
Fractional Brand Leadership
Senior expertise, embedded in your team, without the full-time overhead.
For selected brands, I work as a strategic advisor, fractional marketing or brand lead, or senior support function connecting business objectives with brand strategy and hands-on execution. Drawing on 20 years as Head of Marketing, Global PR Manager, Creative Director and Brand Lead, I support organisations through project-based, interim and advisory roles.
Services include:
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Interim Marketing & Team Leadership
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Fractional Brand Leadership
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Team Alignment & Cross-Functional Collaboration
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Seasonal Planning & Go-to-Market
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Workshop Facilitation
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Senior Strategic Advisory
About Fredrik Ekström
I’ve spent more than 20 years working at the intersection of consumer insight, brand strategy, marketing, PR and activation, both inside global brands and on the agency side, as Creative Director, Head of Marketing, Global PR Manager and Brand Strategist.
Today, I run Above The Clouds: a strategic consultancy helping progressive lifestyle brands turn consumer insight into stronger brands, better decisions, and stories that move people.
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.