Trend Analysis | HORIZON SCANNING | Brand Strategy | Innovation STRATEGY
CULTURE Is a Story System
We are creative researchers and consultants. Our tradecraft is Culture Mapping. Culture Mapping is a patented system for structuring linguistic data so that we can see emerging trends to advise clients on strategic development, growth and sustainability.
Our approach showcases clusters of ideologies that arise from language, unveiling archetypes and the codes that propel them within a sociological framework. These frameworks guide a structured analytic approach to research and intelligence, enabling us to harness the full potential of new language-based generative AI models.
This method empowers us to assist clients in addressing challenging questions related to their evolving strategies. We can provide measurability and actionability to the more abstract and emergent facets of cultural change. These aspects play a crucial role in decision-making for investments, the development of new products, and the management of brand communication amidst ongoing changes.
Rigor in Semiotics
Our practice is rooted in semiotics, making sense of the visual and written language people naturally put out into the world. These signs bring to light implicit stories, which is pretty powerful in our current state of ambiguity. It has always been a large task for researchers to ask questions that people don’t yet have the vocabulary for.
The approach is transparent, easy to understand, feeds into machine learning and can be combined with AI tools using both Large Language Models and closed corpuses. It promotes rigorous analysis and allows for measurability so that we can better inform clients in making confident decisions on former unknowns. It allows us to advise with evidence.
Data-Agnostic Framework
We feed language into our Culture Mapping in many ways. We use open-source data, social media, books, transcripts, call records, imagery, gestures – if it is language, we can map it and build out taxonomies. Having a language framework also allows us to model behavioral archetypes through generative AI and speculative fictions. In addition, it fosters alignment with other widely used structured analytic techniques to quickly move beyond biases and fully triangulate issues.
Our experienced global anthropology field teams are skilled in conducting ethnographic investigations from home immersions to structured test environments. We hold co-creation sessions involving muses, category experts and industrial designers to develop innovation platforms and prototypes.