But our skill is how we draw them together to make sense of the whole picture
Mattel faced a critical moment with Barbie. Despite decades of cultural presence, the brand was feeling out of step with culture. She had lost her ‘iconicity’. The challenge was fundamental: How could we reposition Barbie as a powerful role model for championing the unlimited potential of young girls?
The project required a deep understanding of how female representation was evolving in global culture, and specifically what was standing in the way of girls achieving their full potential.
We deployed a cultural strategy approach across six global markets combining cultural insight, expert perspectives and semiotic analysis to uncover the barriers to progress and how ‘affirmative influencers’ were successfully challenging gender stereotypes and inspiring young girls.
The research took us deep into the culture of female empowerment to examine:
One of our key insights “The Imagination Gap” was pivotal, becoming the foundation for the ‘Barbie Dream Gap Project’, a global initiative seeking to undo the biases that hold girls back from their true potential. This has transformed the brand’s cultural relevance – and success.
The impact has been both profound and lasting:
The success of the Barbie movie is testament to this brand transformation, highlighting how powerful cultural strategy can be in shaping meaningful futures for brands, and in this case, the return of an icon.
Durex had established itself as the world’s leading condom brand, but this success created its own limitations. The brand needed to expand its relevance beyond product functionality to engage in broader conversations about sexual wellbeing. This meant navigating complex cultural territories: varying attitudes toward sexuality across different markets, intersecting dimensions of identity and expression, and persistent taboos that affect how people think and talk about sex.
The key challenge was to help Durex develop meaningful connections with diverse audiences while respecting local cultural sensitivities. The brand needed to understand how conversations about sexuality and wellbeing were evolving across different intersections of sexuality, ethnicity, generation, and region – and how to participate in these conversations authentically.
We utilised our global network of cultural analysts to decode how sexual wellbeing is understood and expressed in different markets to reveal the deeper cultural codes that shape how people think about and express their sexuality.
Our methodology combined two powerful analytical frameworks:
First, we developed the Cultural Codes of Sexual Wellbeing, drawing on localized insights from our in-market teams worldwide. These codes captured both universal patterns and important cultural nuances, creating a sophisticated framework for understanding how sexual wellbeing is conceived and discussed across different contexts.
We then translated these insights into a Semiotic Map of Sexual Wellbeing – a strategic tool that allowed regional Durex teams to visualise market-specific nuances and identify the precise visual and linguistic levers needed to activate relevant cultural codes in their markets.
To complete the picture, we conducted a detailed analysis of key competitors in each market, studying their core brand assets and communications. This revealed both dominant and emergent narratives in the category, highlighting opportunities for Durex to disrupt traditional conversations and create distinctive new positions.
Our work provided Durex with a sophisticated cultural framework that transformed how they approach sexual wellbeing conversations across global markets. Durex gained access to nuanced, culturally-informed strategies that respect local sensitivities while pushing category conversations forward.
The impact manifested in several key ways:
Perhaps most significantly, this project helped Durex move beyond traditional category constraints to find new ways of representing sexuality that feel both culturally relevant and future-focused. The brand can now engage in meaningful conversations about sexual wellbeing that resonate across different cultural contexts while maintaining consistency with their global identity.
This work demonstrates how thoughtful cultural strategy can help brands navigate sensitive topics across diverse markets. By combining analytical approaches with deep cultural understanding, we helped Durex evolve from a product-focused brand to a voice for positive change in sexual wellbeing conversations worldwide.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) faced a challenge in extending their City Heat Decarbonisation Delivery Programme (CDDP) to six new UK cities. While the technical solutions for reducing carbon emissions from heating – the UK’s largest energy use – were advancing, the human element remained a crucial missing piece.
The challenge was clear but complex: how could technical innovations in heat decarbonisation be integrated with genuine behavior change? Success would require not just implementing new technologies, but ensuring these advances resonated with and were adopted by diverse communities across multiple cities. This meant bridging the gap between technical expertise and human experience.
We brought cultural strategy to bear on a government context, combining semiotics, behavioral science, and storytelling to create a uniquely human-centred approach to technical change. More than understanding barriers to adoption, this was about uncovering the cultural codes that could drive meaningful behavioural change.
Our methodology consisted of several integrated components:
Working alongside Ramboll consultancy, we translated these insights into a digital platform that detailed how colour, space, and narrative could create an engaging user experience and tell a compelling story about the journey to zero-carbon heating.
Our work transformed how BEIS approached decarbonisation, embedding behavioural change as a core element of their delivery plans. The impact manifested in several key ways:
Perhaps most significantly, this project demonstrated how cultural strategy methodologies traditionally used in commercial contexts can be powerfully applied to government initiatives. By bringing radical thinking to public sector challenges, we helped create a more thoughtful and human-centred approach to technical change.
The success of this work shows how sustainability initiatives can be made more effective by carefully considering the cultural context that frames human behaviour and technical innovation. Through deep cultural understanding and strategic communication, we helped BEIS create a model for sustainable change that doesn’t just focus on technology, but on the people who need to embrace it.
This balance of technical innovation and human activation represents a new approach to sustainable storytelling – one that recognises that the most powerful technical solutions are those that resonate with human experience and motivation.
Gillette faced a pivotal moment as cultural shifts fundamentally altered the landscape of masculinity and male grooming. The rise of facial hair wasn’t just a fashion trend – it represented a deeper transformation in how men expressed their identity. Meanwhile, emerging discussions around toxic masculinity signalled a critical need to reconsider traditional masculine narratives.
For a brand built on the promise of “The Best A Man Can Get” and the perfect clean shave, these shifts posed existential questions. How could Gillette remain relevant in a world where the clean-shaven ideal no longer dominated? More fundamentally, how could the brand participate meaningfully in evolving conversations about masculine identity while maintaining its leadership position in male grooming?
We deployed a cultural strategy approach to understand the deeper meanings emerging around masculinity and male grooming. This involved decoding the fundamental shifts in how masculinity was being expressed, challenged, and redefined across culture.
Our semiotic analysis revealed several key dynamics:
We mapped these cultural shifts against existing and emerging grooming practices, identifying opportunities for Gillette to play a meaningful role in shaping new narratives of masculine identity. This work went beyond surface-level observations to understand the deeper cultural codes that would define the future of male grooming and identity.
Our work provided Gillette with a strategic foundation for evolving the brand in alignment with changing cultural dynamics. As put by John Mang (VP Gillette, The Art Of Shaving at Procter & Gamble): “Space Doctors delivered a future-facing system for understanding the changing face of global masculinity and shaving behaviour. This was invaluable in helping us craft our purpose and connect more emotionally with Gillette users around the world”
Subsequent to our work, Gillette launched their landmark 2019 “The Best A Man Can Be” campaign – a bold evolution of their historic tagline that addressed toxic masculinity and promoted positive masculine values, and represented a fundamental repositioning of the brand’s relationship with masculinity.
The cultural understanding we developed also anticipated the launch of King C. Gillette, a new brand that embraced beard care products while nodding to the company’s heritage. This extension showed how traditional masculine codes could be reinterpreted for contemporary relevance.
These initiatives demonstrated how deep cultural understanding could help a legacy brand:
Perhaps most significantly, this work shows how cultural strategy can help brands anticipate and shape cultural change rather than simply react to it. By identifying emerging patterns in masculine identity and grooming culture, we helped Gillette move from defending their traditional territory to defining new possibilities for their category.
This transformation demonstrates how thoughtful cultural analysis can help heritage brands remain relevant while driving positive cultural change. Through careful attention to evolving cultural codes, we helped Gillette find an authentic voice in contemporary conversations about masculinity while expanding their relevance in the changing world of male grooming.
In a growing category, Häagen-Dazs needed to secure in-store dominance and better communicate their super-premium quality. General Mills sought differentiating insights into the cultural codes of indulgence, luxury, and premiumness across the UK, France, China, and Japan to inform a global brand restage.
We deployed a two-phase design semiotics methodology to decode premium and luxury meanings across cultures. Our analysis revealed emerging visual and material codes of contemporary luxury and indulgence in each market. These insights were synthesized into a comprehensive Recoding Kit that identified two key opportunities, with ‘Progressive Elegance’ emerging as the leading strategic direction.
Our design semiotics team then translated this opportunity into specific executable elements:
The resulting packaging blueprint delivered specific, actionable direction for every design element – from structural forms to surface graphics – and won Gold at the 2012 Pentawards.
“Space Doctors semiotics work was incredibly inspirational for the global Häagen-Dazs franchise. The business teams, including Marketing, R&D, CMK and Design, were able to leverage the semiotics work for packaging and retail design development, but most importantly it gave alignment and clarity to our multidisciplinary, cross cultural team”
– Michelle Sullivan, Häagen-Dazs. Global Insights
This work provided Häagen-Dazs with a comprehensive design system that transformed ‘Progressive Elegance’ from an abstract concept into tangible packaging design guidelines, demonstrating how design semiotics can bridge the gap between strategic intent and design execution.
InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) faced a critical question: how could they encode a culturally relevant understanding of sleep into their hotel room design for Millennial guests? This generation’s unique relationship with rest and relaxation demanded a fresh approach that would stretch beyond traditional hotel room layouts to encompass everything from spatial arrangements and lighting to materials and colours.
We developed an integrated research methodology that combined cultural strategy, ethnographic observation, and design expertise. Through semiotic analysis, we decoded how the meaning of sleep was evolving in contemporary culture, with particular focus on Millennial values and expectations.
Our research revealed four distinct cultural narratives around sleep that could be translated into design principles. These insights were validated and enriched through ethnographic observation in hotel rooms, which highlighted two crucial findings:
To transform these insights into actionable design solutions, we collaborated with designers from outside the hospitality sector. This collaborative approach brought fresh perspectives to how cultural meanings could be encoded into physical elements:
Our cultural strategy work led to a groundbreaking new hotel room concept that was so innovative it was patented in 2018. The design successfully encoded Millennial sleep values into every aspect of the room experience, creating spaces that deeply resonated with this generation’s approach to rest and rejuvenation.
This project demonstrates how cultural strategy can bridge the gap between abstract cultural understanding and concrete design solutions. By bringing together semiotics, ethnography, and design expertise, we helped IHG create hotel rooms that don’t just provide a place to sleep – they deliver an experience that aligns perfectly with how a new generation thinks about and values rest.
The success of this work shows the power of collaborative cultural strategy. By carefully decoding cultural meanings and translating them into design elements, we helped create spaces that deliver genuine value while establishing IHG as an innovator in hospitality design.
Ocado had built its reputation on delivering an exceptional range of quality groceries, but its visual identity hadn’t kept pace with its innovation. This needed addressing, in light of an upcoming major brand refresh, being done in the context of the rapidly evolving digital retail space, where branded grocery experiences online need to feel seamless, distinctive and consistent across multiple touchpoints. As part of this, Ocado’s existing visual language – built around green and charcoal – felt disconnected from its vibrant service offering.
The challenge was multifaceted: how could we help Ocado evolve its visual identity to better reflect its dynamic nature, while ensuring it would remain distinctive and meaningful across all digital interactions? The brand needed to transition from a serious, understated aesthetic to one that could capture the energy and variety that made Ocado special.
We started by using semiotic analysis to understand how visual codes in digital retail spaces were evolving and what opportunities existed for Ocado to claim distinctive territory.
Our analysis began with a deep dive into the brand’s existing masterbrand assets – colour palette, font and logo. The traditional green and charcoal combination, while professional, was creating an unintended barrier – its muted tones and corporate feel were masking Ocado’s true personality and the excitement of its offering. We needed to find a way to inject vitality while ensuring the new direction would be uniquely ownable.
Beyond color, we conducted a thorough examination of shape and form in the digital space. With consumers increasingly interacting with brands on smaller screens, we analyzed how Ocado’s distinctive swirl and wordmark could be optimized for maximum impact and recognition across all touchpoints. This meant understanding not just how these elements worked in isolation, but how they could create meaningful moments of connection in every customer interaction.
Through our cultural analysis, we identified an opportunity to shift from conventional retail visual codes to a more dynamic and contemporary visual language that would better align with Ocado’s innovative spirit and digital-first nature – one that would bring to life Ocado as a place to discover food pleasure and grocery inspiration.
Our strategic work helped inform a comprehensive visual refresh that transformed Ocado’s brand expression – online, through Ocado’s own-brand packaging design as well as in delivery fleet design – contributing to retail revenue growth of 4.1% in 2021.
Perhaps most noticeably, the shift to purple as a primary brand colour was more than just an aesthetic choice – it represented a bold move away from category conventions and positioned Ocado as a truly distinctive player in the digital retail space.
The refreshed identity system achieved multiple objectives and played out across vehicles, uniforms and own-brand pack design:
The impact of this work extended beyond pure aesthetics. As Lisa McDowell, Head of Brand Marketing at Ocado Retail, noted:
“Space Doctors’ contribution has been invaluable… Our teams across Marketing, Merchandising, Insights and Creative value the rich and wide-ranging culturally-informed category insight, through to the granular analysis we’ve done on our visual and packaging identity, fleet design and value messaging. Our relationship with the team at Space Doctors has helped us stretch our thinking, shape successful creative briefs and carve out new exciting opportunities.”
This project demonstrates how cultural strategy can help brands navigate significant visual transformation while remaining true to their essence. By combining radical thinking with thoughtful analysis of cultural codes of a category in fast evolution, we helped Ocado evolve from a trusted but traditional visual identity to one that better reflects its position as a fresh and distinct pioneer in digital retail.
When global design agency Saffron approached Space Doctors about Facebook’s transformation into Meta, they weren’t just seeking help with a rebrand – they were asking us to envision the future of human digital experience. The challenge was unprecedented: craft an identity for a company that was attempting to transcend traditional social media and create an entirely new dimension of human interaction – the metaverse.
This was about far more than designing a new logo or choosing brand colours. The metaverse demanded an identity that could span virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality while maintaining authentic human connection at its core. We needed to create a foundation that would allow Meta to push beyond screens and inhabit the full canvas of users’ imagination – from the virtual air they breathe to the digital light on their skin.
As cultural strategists, we recognised that building this new frontier required a deep understanding of both current digital culture and future human possibilities. We deployed our design semiotics methodology in two distinct phases: Decode and Recode.
In the decoding phase, we immersed ourselves in the Meta brand and the cultural codes of digital experience, examining how colour and emotion intertwine and understanding the creative energy that drives digital expression. This was was an archaeological dig into the future, unearthing the patterns and meanings that would resonate with those who would inhabit this new space.
The recoding phase saw us investigating the very grammar of virtuality itself. We analysed how light, interaction, energy, and motion create meaning across the spectrum of virtual and augmented reality experiences. This deep semiotic analysis revealed the building blocks of digital immersion and helped us understand how to maintain human connection in virtual space.
Through this process, we synthesised our findings into distinct experiential worlds, each with its own carefully crafted combination of imagery, texture, narrative, and cultural context – complete sensory environments that could adapt and evolve while maintaining their essential meaning.
Our cultural strategy work provided Saffron with a sophisticated framework for designing Meta’s new identity. We delivered a set of experiential principles that went far beyond traditional brand guidelines, offering instead a living system of meaning that could flex and grow with the metaverse itself.
Each of our proposed worlds offered unique executional possibilities for the Meta experience, particularly in VR, where environmental design must balance technical capabilities with human perception and cultural resonance. We delivered actionable design directions that helped shape how users would eventually experience the metaverse.
The result was a brand identity that could hold the vast range of human experience the metaverse promises to deliver. It’s an identity built not just on visual design, but on deep cultural understanding and future-focused thinking. Our work helped ensure that Meta’s ambitious vision remained grounded in human connection while pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in digital space.
This project exemplifies how cultural strategy can bridge the gap between current reality and future possibility, creating frameworks for innovation that remain authentically human. By combining radical thinking with thoughtful analysis, we helped lay the groundwork for what may become the next chapter in human communication and connection.
Smith & Sinclair, a small UK startup pioneering alcohol-infused confectionery, needed to evolve from an innovative product into a fully realised brand. This required a comprehensive transformation that could support their next stage of growth while maintaining their disruptive spirit.
This was a full brand transformation brief – from business strategy, brand positioning and narrative development through to the creation of distinctive assets, packaging, visual identity, logo and guidelines for creative expression across touchpoints.
We developed an integrated methodology that put the creation of a ‘Sense Signature’ at its heart – a new tool applying sensory semiotics that translates a brand positioning into tangible visual & sensory equity. This approach was built on three key principles:
First, we used semiotics and cultural analysis to identify the brand’s core philosophy: experiencing the everyday from a different perspective. This defined the brand role and became our guiding principle for brand expression and activation.
Second, we directly translated the insight “It’s a cocktail, but as you’ve never had it before” into the visual identity by using microscopic imagery of different alcoholic drinks.
Finally, we worked collaboratively with the client to iterate rapidly across touchpoints – from retail and packaging to digital and experiential – using the Sense Signature to guide the roll out.
The impact was immediate and tangible:
This project demonstrates how cultural strategy can help startups find their unique role in culture, helping them create a compelling, cohesive and culturally relevant path to growth.
