Cultural Research Lead (all genders) - Zalando Fashion Studios

at  Zalando

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

As the Cultural Research Lead at Zalando, you will be the expert who gathers and curates on-the-pulse culture and fashion insights, forecasting trends on the horizon. You will be responsible for leading Zalando’s efforts to understand, analyse, and forecast cultural trends that impact our business. Facilitate a vision that supports stakeholders in streamlining and synthesising the roadmap to the future, and being the connector to our customers, understanding and relaying customer needs back to teams. Together, we’ll transform internal insights into external innovations, shaping knowledge into ideas and products to captivate the world.

WHAT WE’D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING)

• Cultural Research & Insights: Lead and conduct (customer) research initiatives to identify and analyse cultural trends, translating complex data into actionable insights for Zalando’s business strategy, product development, and marketing. Consistently bring forth curated, tangible, relevant insights around current and upcoming culture, fashion, and inspiration trends.
• Trend Forecasting: Develop and maintain a forecasting model to utilise cultural insights to predict future cultural shifts, ensuring Zalando remains ahead of market dynamics. Present trend forecasts and strategic recommendations to internal teams.
• Internal Leadership & Collaboration: Act as a thought leader on cultural trends within Zalando, driving awareness and understanding across all levels of the organisation. Consistently develop and deliver internal presentations, and workshops that communicate relevant insights on culture, fashion, and inspiration. Foster a culture of innovation and trend awareness by sharing these insights across the organisation.
• Strategic Integration: Serve as a key connector between internal Zalando teams, influencers and collaborators, and partner brands, aligning cultural and customer insights with content strategy and customer engagement. Work closely with cross-functional teams to detect trends.
• Process Optimization: Empower stakeholders to streamline their planning and decision making processes, through design thinking, creating clear roadmaps for content planning. Build heuristics to share and leverage expertise across teams, optimising ways of working, scaling knowledge and continually iterating on processes.