At STURMundDRANG, positioning means developing brands beyond their product value into cultural carriers. We explore people’s needs, desires, and tensions — and position brands where new spaces of meaning and future potential emerge.
Services
We surface brand relevance at the intersection of culture, behavior, and futures — creating brand visions, narratives and innovations that resonate and positioning brands where the future is taking shape
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Where does the brand play — and what role can it claim?
We decode the cultural forces shaping your category: the codes, tensions, and expectations that define competition and perception. This reveals what your brand stands for today — and which role it can credibly occupy tomorrow. From this, we develop a positioning that clearly differentiates in the market and continues to gain relevance over time.
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What does the brand stand for — and what future does it tell?
We identify the condensed stories, meanings, and needs that already surround your brand — consciously or unconsciously. From this, we craft a powerful core narrative that builds emotional connection, provides cultural orientation, and keeps brands relevant over the long term by linking future trends and societal shifts to your brand’s essence.
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How does the brand become visible, tangible, and consistent?
Using semiotic analysis, we identify which images, symbols, and experience worlds create cultural resonance today — and where brands lose clarity, relevance, or connection visually or verbally. Based on this, we develop a coherent system of brand codes that empowers teams and agencies to make a distinctive brand world tangible across all touchpoints.
Research & Methods
Our brand research combines qualitative in-depth interviews, narrative research, ethnography, and semiotic analysis with social listening as well as brand and category intelligence.
Complemented by trend and foresight modules, we identify cultural tensions early on — the spaces where brands can grow, reposition themselves, and build new relevance. This creates a deep, culturally grounded understanding of people, markets, and meaning as the foundation for strong brand strategies.
Contact person
Inga Nandzik
inandzik@sturmunddrang.de
Innovation at STURMundDRANG means identifying emerging behavioral and cultural shifts and new fields of human needs early on — and translating them into strategic innovation spaces. These opportunity areas and future-centric concepts secure long-term growth and differentiation.
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What's next in your category?
We develop forward-looking category projections that bring together cultural, social, and technological drivers—based on thought leader interviews, trend workbooks, and the assessment of our global network of experts. This results in scenarios with clear mindsets and personas that show where new opportunities for growth and differentiation are emerging.
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Where are the greatest opportunities emerging?
Using online ethnographies with lead users and market trend analyses, we identify new behaviors, “shortcuts,” motivations, and desires—the areas for which the culture is already “ripe” today. These opportunity areas represent the strongest potential for innovation: culturally compatible, user-centered, and strategically relevant.
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How do signals from the future become concrete concepts and innovations?
In our Innovation Camps, we bring together interdisciplinary teams, lead users, and foresight impulses. From prioritizing opportunity areas to ideation sessions to visual sketches and AI prototypes, we make ideas tangible and testable at an early stage. Iterations and live feedback ensure cultural resonance and brand relevance.
Research & Methods
Through ethnographies, in-home immersions, and diary studies with lead users and early adopters, we uncover emerging usage patterns and shifting behaviors — early signals of where categories are headed.
Combined with foresight, cultural insights, and our global network of over 1,000 experts, we translate these signals into clear opportunity areas and innovation fields.
In co-creation workshops, we turn them into human-centered concepts, products, and experiences that feed innovation pipelines and build futures literacy across the organization.
Contact Person
Europa Bendig
ebendig@sturmunddrang.de
Corporate Evolution at STURMundDRANG means developing a future-ready identity together with leaders and employees — and bringing it to life across the organization through new narratives, rituals, leadership principles, and everyday practices.
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We analyze the stories, meanings, and beliefs that shape how the organization is understood internally — drawing from management interviews, narrative culture analysis, leadership circles, and insights from across the corporate ecosystem. From this, we create a vision compass: a shared future narrative the organization can align around. It reveals what people truly believe in — and what they want to build together.
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Building on the vision compass, we develop cultural guiding principles that create orientation across the organization — especially for leadership culture. These principles define how responsibility is lived, how collaboration is shaped, and how decisions are made. They provide the foundation for new rituals, narratives, and practices that gradually lead the organization into its future.
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We translate vision and guiding principles into clear brand and employer promises: a corporate brand that expresses a strong stance — and an Employer Value Proposition that attracts talent and builds lasting commitment among existing employees.
Research & Methods
Our transformation research combines leadership and management interviews, narrative cultural analysis, leadership narrative circles, and perspectives from across the corporate ecosystem — including employees, teams, stakeholders, and, in B2B contexts, customers as well.
This creates a precise understanding of what the organization stands for today, what truly motivates people, and which cultural shifts make transformation possible.
Contact Person
Stefan Baumann
Sbaumann@sturmunddrang.de
Our Way of Working
We work iteratively and transparently and we develop the strategies in close collaboration with our clients.
Together with our international network of experts, lead users, and cultural thinkers, we connect qualitative research, future-forward strategy, and creative development. Ideas, narratives, and concepts are created in open-innovation processes, through continuous exchange, testing, and collective refinement.
In this way, we combine depth with speed — developing solutions that make brands culturally resonant, humanly relevant, and future-ready.
About
Partner universities
Network
Our international expert network is the foundation of our cultural and futures research. More than 1,000 specialists — from foresight and technology experts to semioticians, industry thought leaders, and lead users — give us access to early cultural signals, emerging behaviors, and future market needs.
This network enables us to anticipate what’s next, recognize cultural maturity levels, and develop innovations that people truly want.
Shared knowledge
Academies & Keynotes
Our keynotes and academies build Futures and Cultural Literacy: inspiring perspectives and practical capabilities to understand consumer and behavioral shifts early, strategically navigate brands and categories, and align leadership in times of cultural transformation — enabling brands and innovations that serve people and shape the future.
FAQ
Start with the right questions:
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STURMundDRANG works at the intersection of culture, behavior, and futures — translating cultural shifts into positioning, narratives, and innovation. We don’t start with campaigns or slides, but with the cultural forces shaping what people will want next.
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Clients involve us when they feel that their category, audience, or cultural context is shifting — and existing brand logic no longer creates enough differentiation. Typical triggers are repositioning, innovation pipelines, transformation phases, or moments when a brand needs renewed cultural relevance.
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Every engagement creates tangible strategic outputs — such as a future-facing brand positioning, a cultural narrative and code system, opportunity areas for innovation, or guiding principles for corporate evolution. The goal is always clarity that teams can use immediately.
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Cultural insight becomes most valuable when it leads to strategic decisions.
We decode emerging behaviors, desires, and cultural tensions — and translate them into competitive advantage: new brand roles, innovation spaces, and experiences that resonate in the market. -
We work with international and national brands, companies, institutions, and teams that want to lead through cultural change — from global consumer brands to hidden champions, from innovation units to leadership teams. Wherever the future of meaning, experience, and relevance is at stake, we help create orientation.
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Absolutely. Many collaborations begin with a keynote or Innovation Camp as a catalyst — and grow into deeper strategic partnerships over time.
Selected clients
