"How do London-based D&P get to understand the cultural needs of brands and their audiences around the world?"

It’s a great question we get asked by our international clients on every continent we’re proud to work in. We track global trends across markets to understand what’s changing and why. Every project is unique, we strive to find the cultural nuances we can act on. When we partner with our clients, we’re joining them on a transformation journey, we’re not prescriptive, but we do have some tried and tested ways of working.

We wanted to share a few ways we like to work together to underpin our work with cultural nuance and insights, to unlock differentiated, effective and loved brand experiences.

By listening, observing, and spotting pain points

No assumptions, no cliches, no prescribed opinions. We ask good questions. We listen hard. In order to truly understand why this project, opportunity, or transformation is happening now.

We must first immerse ourselves in your culture - by which we mean brand culture, category culture, regional culture, and target customer culture - you can read more about how we do this specifically in Beauty here.

You can expect us to build a holistic view of your brand, market, and customer anchored in a strong sense of Purpose and Place. We will call out the inconvenient truths, this is often where innovation and opportunity lie, and it’s a benefit to have this fresh perspective on your challenge.

Through quality time together, out-of-sector inspiration, and holistic brand-building workshops.

We know you’re busy. You have multiple day jobs and responsibilities. But we know spending quality time together upfront pays dividends, we value clients being present and candid, in order to build rapport and unlock 'ah-ha' moments.

Many of our most important insights are unlocked during a candid conversation over a coffee, on an inspiration ‘Retail Safari’, or in one of our a playful, facilitated workshops.

Culture is expressed in all a brand does. We use our Brand World Framework - to map the barriers, benefits, and cultural opportunities to connect with your audiences in meaningful ways.

This framework consists of our 6Ps, (Purpose, Personality, People, Product, Process, Place). Our clients enjoy this framework and its workshop, some call it therapy, others call it team bonding, we call it essential. It helps us to spotlight the local, unique opportunities to embed cultural codes into a brand experience throughout the customer journey.

Here are just a few of our favourite cultural insights that have helped to build brands and their experiences.

To see how we acted on these insights, click on the project to deep dive into the case study.

By fuelling our conversations and workshops with poetry, sisterly anecdotes, nostalgic and symbolic references for Asteri, Saudi Arabia.

Quality time and candid conversations with founder Sara Al-Rashed are a constant source of inspiration. A rolling, creative conversation continued via WhatsApp and shared inspiration, while travelling, and between meetings. This collaborative approach added depth and soul to the creation of this new brand

"The night sky relates to my ancestry as in a way the stars have always been the guide of people” Sara Al Rashed, Asteri founder.

By understanding what’s affecting the changing cultural attitudes of a generation for Marie's Baby Circle, South Korea.

With one of the world’s lowest average birth rates (and falling). Our audience of South Korean parents are first-timers-only seeking advice and social reassurance from their peers and social circle, in a culture that values newness, social pop-ups and innovation.

By listening to our client's personal, passionate belief that the modern Indian woman is seeking a trusted and reliable friend in their life who’s as multifaceted as her for Tira Beauty, India.

"Understanding that modern Indian women are increasingly financially independent, with better access to education and career advancement, they desire more organised sales channels." Ed Nelson, Creative Director, D&P

By observing the interconnected pain points of colleagues, customers, and infrastructure; our inconvenient truths landed with impact at Boardroom level for Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada.

We’ve supported one of Canada’s most loved and trusted brands on their healthcare transformation journey. Against a backdrop of a country-wide shortage of access to primary healthcare, we’ve radically challenged the service design of the pharmacy model to make it easier for customers (and colleagues).

With a proudly diverse and inclusive culture in Canada, we knew colour-coding, iconography, photography and environmental design could communicate intuitively to non-English and non-French speaking audiences, where to go and what happens there.