Director, Trends Foresight
ESTÉE LAUDER COMPANIES
New York, NY
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. is one of the world's leading manufacturers, marketers, and sellers of quality skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products, and is a steward of luxury and prestige brands globally. The company's products are sold in approximately 150 countries and territories under brand names including: Estée Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Lab Series, Origins, M·A·C, La Mer, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Bumble and bumble, Darphin Paris, TOM FORD, Smashbox, AERIN Beauty, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, GLAMGLOW, KILIAN PARIS, Too Faced, Dr.Jart+, the DECIEM family of brands, including The Ordinary and NIOD, and BALMAIN Beauty.
Description The Director, Cultural Strategy & Trend Foresight will serve as a global cultural intelligence lead, helping the organization understand where culture, consumers, beauty, luxury, technology, and social behavior are moving - and what those shifts mean for brand strategy, innovation, portfolio priorities, and growth.
This role goes beyond identifying what is trending. It is responsible for interpreting the deeper cultural forces shaping consumer desire, decoding emerging behaviors across markets and communities, and translating weak signals into strategic opportunity. The Director will build a rigorous, globally connected cultural sensing capability that helps ELC distinguish meaningful shifts from short-lived noise, anticipate future consumer needs, and activate trend intelligence across brands, regions, categories, R&D, commercial innovation, and consumer experience teams.
The ideal candidate is a trend strategist, cultural strategist, and storyteller: someone who is deeply fluent in beauty and luxury culture, social platforms, creators, communities, aesthetics, rituals, and emerging consumer values - and who can turn cultural insight into clear strategic direction. This person will bring together social intelligence, qualitative insight, market signals, category data, expert perspectives, and regional knowledge to create actionable narratives that inspire decision-making and unlock growth.
Core Purpose of the Role This role exists to help ELC understand what is changing in culture, why it matters, and how the business should respond.
The Director will lead the development of a global cultural foresight discipline that connects macro cultural shifts to beauty category dynamics, consumer behavior, innovation territories, brand positioning, and commercial opportunity. They will create the frameworks, rituals, tools, and narratives that enable teams to move from passive trend awareness to active cultural strategy.
Key Responsibilities 1 . Lead Global Cultural & Trend Strategy Build and lead a global cultural intelligence agenda that identifies the most important shifts shaping beauty, luxury, self-expression, identity, wellness, technology, aesthetics, and consumer behavior.
Decode cultural movements across platforms, markets, communities, subcultures, creators, retail environments, and emerging consumer rituals.
Separate durable cultural shifts from short-term fads by assessing relevance, velocity, scale, emotional resonance, category fit, and business implications.
Develop a clear point of view on which trends ELC should monitor, test, invest in, or activate.
Description 2. Translate Cultural Signals into Business Opportunity
- Connect macro cultural drivers, category shifts, and social signals to tangible opportunities for brands, regions, categories, innovation, R&D, packaging, and consumer experience.
- Build strategic frameworks that help teams understand where to play, how to win, and how emerging consumer needs can inform future product, experience, communication, and portfolio decisions.
- Partner with Commercial Innovation, Category Strategy, R&D, Packaging, Regions, and Brand teams to convert trend intelligence into innovation territories, concept inspiration, claims direction, consumer experience ideas, and growth platforms.
- Support opportunity sizing, prioritization, and activation using a combination of cultural interpretation, social listening, market data, consumer insight, and competitive intelligence.
- Create and maintain a global signal-sensing system that integrates social and digital analytics, creator and community intelligence, regional market inputs, qualitative insight, syndicated data, expert sources, competitive activity, and emerging technology tools.
- Evolve the existing trends platform into a dynamic global cultural intelligence hub - a single source of truth where markets and regions can contribute, access, and activate cultural and category insights.
- Establish governance, taxonomy, rituals, and reporting standards for trend identification, evaluation, tagging, prioritization, and activation.
- Stay at the forefront of new tools and methodologies, including AI-enabled trend sensing, social listening, semiotics, digital ethnography, creator intelligence, search behavior, visual culture analysis, and emerging consumer research methods.
- Develop compelling cultural narratives that make complex signals clear, inspiring, and actionable for senior leaders and cross-functional partners.
- Lead monthly and seasonal trend and culture briefings that help the organization understand emerging shifts and their implications for beauty and luxury.
- Create high-impact presentations, trend reports, cultural maps, strategic provocations, and opportunity frameworks that influence brand, innovation, and portfolio decisions.
- Serve as a trusted thought partner to leadership by bringing a future-facing, culturally grounded perspective to strategic business questions.
- Build strong relationships with regional and market teams to surface culturally specific signals, local beauty behaviors, and emerging consumer needs.
- Create mechanisms for markets to contribute to the global cultural intelligence system in a consistent, high-quality way.
- Identify both global cultural patterns and local nuances, ensuring that foresight is not overly centralized or Western-centric.
- Facilitate cross-regional knowledge sharing and help teams understand where trends are global, regional, local, or community-specific.
- Manage relationships with trend agencies, futurists, cultural strategists, semioticians, research partners, social intelligence providers, and expert networks.
- Identify best-in-class external partners for non-standard research methodologies and emerging cultural analysis.
- Ensure external work is integrated into ELC's internal point of view and translated into practical business recommendations.
- 10-15 years of experience in cultural strategy, trend strategy, consumer foresight, insights, brand strategy, innovation strategy, social intelligence, or a related strategic discipline.
- Minimum 5 years of experience focused on trends, culture, consumer behavior, or foresight.
- Strong understanding of beauty, luxury, fashion, wellness, lifestyle, identity, and social/digital culture.
- Demonstrated ability to translate cultural and consumer insight into brand, innovation, portfolio, product, communication, or commercial strategy.
- Experience identifying emerging trends across social platforms, creator ecosystems, communities, markets, and cultural spaces.
- Proven ability to distinguish meaningful long-term shifts from fads, viral moments, or platform-specific noise.
- Experience synthesizing multiple data and insight sources, including social listening, digital analytics, syndicated data, consumer research, competitive intelligence, market data, and qualitative inputs.
- Strong executive storytelling skills, with experience presenting to senior leadership and influencing cross-functional stakeholders.
- Experience working in a global, matrixed organization and partnering across regions, brands, and functions.
- Experience in prestige beauty, luxury, fashion, lifestyle, wellness, or consumer goods.
- Strong fluency in TikTok, Instagram, creator culture, social search, visual culture, aesthetics, online communities, and emerging digital behaviors.
- Familiarity with semiotics, digital ethnography, cultural analysis, futures methodologies, social listening tools, AI-enabled research, or innovation strategy.
- Experience managing trend platforms, insight portals, knowledge hubs, or enterprise-wide intelligence systems.
- Experience working with trend agencies, futurists, cultural strategists, research vendors, or ex fashion desirable
Posted 2026-07-15
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