Amy Daroukakis, Global trend forecaster & cultural strategist
My work lives in everyday life: supermarket shelves, retail racks, hotel rooms, neighbourhoods, your dinner plate.
Made in Canada. I’ve spent my career outside. 60+ countries, 25+ industries. Along the way, I’ve…
- HospitalityBrought in a Céline Dion impersonator to help shape a fan experience for a hotel.
- RetailTravelled the world for Target, meeting mostly in secret rooms.
- TechSpent a year inside porn and crime signals to help shape how Google thought about AI.
- EntertainmentExplored the vampire zeitgeist, and true crime, for two major streamers.
- LuxuryHung out with RIMOWA’s repair team to understand the future of the brand.
- FoodRan a hush-hush project for McDonald’s global team, with hockey coaches and Gen Alpha YouTube stars.
- TravelDreamed up what was possible for a Middle East airport in 2050.
- WellnessCo-founded an eco-friendly sex toy company before femtech had a name.
I travel deliberately. Listen more than I speak. Get lost on purpose. Then I bring all of it to your brief.
I’d love to work with you. Yes, you.
Strategic sparring partner.
I bridge the outside world to the inside of your business, and work alongside your teams to shift and spark new thinking. Mapped to your reality.
Trend research · Consumer and cultural insight · Research strategy · Brand strategy · Keynotes
Call me in when…
Hire, brief, listen or book. Me or we.
Listen
When you need to hear local truth from many markets at once.Culture Connectors: 100+ locally embedded country and category experts. Real human signals. One invoice.
McDonald’s · Ipsos · ODEONMeet the network →Take the Trend Galaxy quiz →Hire
When you need senior thinking in the room.Strategy leadership for agencies and brands: brand, audience, culture and foresight, on contract or in-house.
Anomaly · WPP · AKQA · OLIVERBrief
When you’re about to commit to something big.Audience strategy, emergent trends, future scenarios and IRL immersions, with a speciality in luxury and UHNW.
RIMOWA · Google · McDonald’s · Young V&ABook
When your team needs fireworks for the brain.Keynotes, workshops and internal marketing days that make your brain dance.
Cannes Lions · House of Beautiful Business · LEGO · MonzoSee my talks →Brain Dance.
Multi-sensory, IRL cultural intelligence gathered, sniffed and licked across six continents.
My work is NDA’d. My curiosity here isn’t.
Signals into strategy.
Young V&A
Reframed the audience strategy for the V&A Museum of Childhood. Reopened as Young V&A, it drew 730,000+ visitors in year one and won Art Fund Museum of the Year 2024.
RIMOWA (LVMH)
Lead research partner on the future of luxury retail and travel across the US, China and Germany, supporting the C-suite’s 5-year audience growth strategy.
Over the course of a year, looked at porn and crime signals to help shape how Google thought about AI. Redefined Pixel’s proposition for the UK and Germany.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR)
Led UK high-net-worth audience strategy for Wavemaker (WPP) across Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar.
Fireworks for your brain.
“Amy IS innovation. She spots the future in raw ingredients and brings others along with clarity, excitement and true collaboration.”
“Amy is every organiser’s dream moderator. Sharp, warm and brilliantly curious, she had the whole room leaning in.”
“A brilliant, panoramic navigation of our audiences. So rich and resonant. And so many things I hadn’t considered that we must now engage with.”
Keynotes, workshops, panels.
From intimate executive trend labs to rooms of up to 500, including EU keynotes and company-wide marketing days. Plus 23K followers on LinkedIn.
- Cannes Lions, speaker 2025 and 2026
- House of Beautiful Business
- Brand Week Istanbul
- European Union, cultural strategy keynote
- [WIN] Women in Innovation and UN/SCENE
- Internal marketing days for LEGO, Nando’s and Monzo
- Co-host of Futures Friends, a quarterly IRL event in London
- Podcast guest: Canva, WARC, Salmon Theory, That Business of Meaning
Timely topics
Pick one, or I’ll shape a talk around your room.
- 01IRL in an AI worldWhy human signals beat synthetic insight
- 02Navigating the NEW Trend GalaxyWhy most trend reports are already stale
- 03The invisible billionsForget Gen Z. Your obsession with youth is costing you billions
- 04Fandom is the new loyaltyFrom Gen Z fandoms to brand communities
- 05Local matters, globallyWin in markets you don’t live in
- 06The cost of safe samenessWhy playing it safe is the riskiest move
Available for cultural comment.
Journalists, I’m happy to talk at short notice about global consumer and cultural trends, drawing on work across 25+ industries and 60+ countries, including:
- Emerging trends and what they mean for brands
- Luxury, travel and hospitality
- Food, drink, retail and FMCG
- Generations, fandom and the audiences brands overlook
- Local culture and how brands win in new markets*
- What AI can’t see that real people can
Amy Daroukakis is a global trend forecaster and cultural strategist who has spent her career outside, across 60+ countries and 25+ industries. Founder of Culture Connectors, a network of 100+ local experts, she has advised LVMH, Google, Airbnb and Unilever, and co-led the audience strategy behind Young V&A, Art Fund Museum of the Year 2024. She has spoken at Cannes Lions and House of Beautiful Business, and co-hosts Futures Friends, a quarterly IRL event in London.
Fast turnaround, on the record, any trend, any market*.
*I only speak to my own lived experience. For any other market, I’ll connect you with a locally embedded expert through Culture Connectors.
Request a comment →Culture lives at the edges.
I go there first.
I help companies unlock culture-led growth grounded in global insight.
Let’s talk.
Hire me, brief me or book me to speak.