Current and recent clients include: American Express, British Vogue, Diageo Reserve Brands Group, Investec Private Bank, Lamborghini, L'Oréal luxury division, Louis Vuitton, Melbourne City Council, Miss Selfridge, Toyota, Tesco, Zurich Bank, Nokia, The Gap, The New Yorker, Unilever, Veuve Clicquot and Vodafone.
Activities for these clients include brand realignment, brand strategy and category innovation. We also produce quarterly global and regional updates on new and emerging trends which are set to have an impact on consumer thinking.
What our clients say...
- The New Yorker
Condé Nast's The New Yorker magazine is one of the world's most respected literary and cultural titles. The Future Laboratory has been helping its publisher and his team understand how the development of a new generation of consumers, grouped through emotional needs rather than more traditional marketing demographics, requires a new language with which to address existing and potential advertisers.
'Our partnership with The Future Laboratory extends to a multi-tiered marketing platform and already has helped our sales staff initiate a more engaging and dynamic conversation with our advertisers.'
Daniella Wells, marketing director, The New Yorker
- Melbourne City Council
The Future Laboratory has been involved with the City of Melbourne since 2005. We have worked strategically with their marketing team to provide global insights and develop a retail strategy with an aim to make Melbourne a global retail capital. Early work included organising and managing a global retail tour by taking key staff from the council and city retail partners to Paris, London and New York.
Subsequent in-depth reviews delivered information on the retail environments of a further 15 cities while strategic thinking formed the basis of a retail strategy document, which was delivered by the city of Melbourne to retail partners and the public – and is now being implemented. After this first year, The Future Laboratory returned to the city to conduct a review of key targets and an assessment of work carried out to date. The project is due to continue into 2008 and beyond.
- The Gap
In 2006, we began working with Gap to explore, understand and identify the British and French Gap customer. Through a combination of desk research, customer interviews and semiotic analysis, we were able to align Gap's European design, marketing, field sales, product and retail stakeholders to a common target, and help match Gap's brand with the mindset of this customer.
In 2007, we entered a strategic phase of the relationship to delve deeper into the British Gap customer’s mindset to ensure both design and buying teams in Europe utilise their customers' evolving attitudes and thinking behaviours. We made the insights tangible and actionable so they could act as decision-making tools. The final dossier contained the principles, parameters and guidelines to follow when designing and buying for the British Gap customer.
- Nokia
The primary focus of our relationship with Nokia has been to constantly gauge and identify where young-minded people are headed. In January 2007, we undertook a comprehensive global study into young-minded consumers that spanned 11 countries. This insight report aligned Nokia’s Finnish and British design, concept creation, brand, marketing and business strategy teams to one common target. The in-depth, factual, empirical and highly visual study also provided short-term stimulus for tactical implementation, as well as a long-term understanding of Nokia’s concepting activities.
Further work has included comparing and contrasting the future of entertainment in 14 countries, understanding the conscious consumer and an exploration of post-feminism in design.