A bespoke branding consultancy leveraging cultural insights and semiotics to enhance brand strategy and consumer research.
WORK
Trends Intelligence
Examine the latest trends in rapidly changing environments to assist brands in making more informed decisions.
- Deliverables
Bespoke trend reports with Le Bureau Pink Brain: a selection of current topics each year to enhance brand strategy and inspire new developments
- Recent projects
- Luxury report 2024/2025: “Transformative Luxury: a jump into a cultural era”
- Sport report 2024/2025: “Future of sport: a new era begins”.
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Many more topics to come in 2025:
https://pinkbrain.ch/rapports-de-tendances/
Cultural Insights
Utilizing a semiotics methodology, decode emerging cultural forces and analyze cultural shifts to assist brands in better understanding specific cultures or subcultures.
- Deliverables
- Recent projects
- Decode the foodie culture in France.
- Analyze the comedy landscape in France.
Brand Strategy
Define or refine an existing brand’s positioning to better respond to cultural shifts and specific consumer needs.
- Deliverables
- Recent projects
- Create a global campaign positioning for a food brand specializing in condiments.
- Develop strategic positioning scenarios for a super-premium liquor brand in the African market.
Consumer research
Conduct qualitative consumer research to gain insights into the needs and expectations of a specific target audience.
- Deliverables
- Recent projects
- Organize focus groups in three major cities in France for a leading beauty company aiming to gain insights into consumer behavior in online marketplaces.
- Conduct more than 20 one-to-one interviews for a top-tier software company seeking to better understand its French consumers.
ABOUT
Dora Jurd de Girancourt
With a robust career spanning over two decades in brand strategy and consumer research, I have honed my skills at esteemed companies like Groupe Clarins and Saint Gobain, and top-tier agencies such as TBWA Group and Kantar Consulting. This journey has taken me across the globe, from France to the USA, South Africa, and Morocco. In 2022, I took the leap to found DJG Brand Studio, a venture that offers immersive semiotics and cultural insights, enriching international brand strategy and consumer research.
As a graduate of ESCP Business School and holder of a Master’s degree in Semiotics from La Sorbonne, I help companies in the retail sector and the creative industries – lifestyle, beauty, luxury, hospitality, sport, and entertainment – define strategies in line with emerging trends and consumer behaviours.
On the academic front, I have taught brand strategy in Morocco at ESCA École de Management and continue to give occasional lectures at business schools. I have also published three books on family businesses in France, South Africa and Morocco.
My journey took an exciting turn in 2024 when I joined Le Bureau Pink Brain, a Swiss-based consultancy renowned for its expertise in semiotics and brand strategy. Here, I serve as an Associate Director, leading the development of the Prospective & Trends department, a role that fuels my passion for innovation and forward-thinking.
THOUGHTS
How semiotics helps to choose a punchy product claim
Semiotics can help brands choose the proper claim for a product.
> Choosing the proper product’s claim is a challenging task. It’s very engaging and requires an extensive cultural and consumer understanding. Let’s consider a healthy food brand that needs to choose, for the launch of a probiotic-enriched product, an impactful product claim. Which words are they going to use? Gut health, digestive comfort or pre/pro/post biotics? Will they focus on the functional benefit, the feeling of comfort, or the ingredients’ specs?
> It depends on their targeted geographical market, their consumers’ expectations and the market’s socio-cultural understanding of health. And this is the job of semiotics to understand these cultural nuances to get the impactful claim that will win the game.
How second-hand platforms become real enabler brands that urge consumers to change in a positive and emotional way
Semiotics can help brands choose the proper claim for a product.
> Choosing the proper product’s claim is a challenging task. It’s very engaging and requires an extensive cultural and consumer understanding. Let’s consider a healthy food brand that needs to choose, for the launch of a probiotic-enriched product, an impactful product claim. Which words are they going to use? Gut health, digestive comfort or pre/pro/post biotics? Will they focus on the functional benefit, the feeling of comfort, or the ingredients’ specs?
> It depends on their targeted geographical market, their consumers’ expectations and the market’s socio-cultural understanding of health. And this is the job of semiotics to understand these cultural nuances to get the impactful claim that will win the game.
Setting the scene for filiation
In my opinion, this campaign is particularly inspiring for family businesses, as it presents the concept of filiation in a new light. Le Vieux Campeur, a historic French player in sports
The significance of the Louis Vuitton monogram
Have you ever wondered where the two main symbols of the Louis Vuitton monogram – the star and the flower- come from? It's a very well-kept secret, but one thing
Uncover skincare: when a Kenyan native brand uses South Korean advanced technology
The brand Uncover is the perfect alliance of South Korean technology and African ingredients, offering skincare products specifically tailored for African women.It leverages technology from South Korea, which is known
Whisky with a purpose
Rhino Whisky is a new South African brand of single malt whisky founded by two friends, Gerrit Wagener and Brin Kushner, who decided to create a whisky that would not
Yassir: the most valuable startup in North Africa
Founded in 2017 by Noureddine Tayebi, Yassir provides three basic services: transport, food and shopping delivery, and financial services.In Arabic, Yassir means “easy” and this is the reason for being
All-purpose products : a “less is more” growing trend in most African countries
Is it a sign of resilience against inflation that hardly hit some African countries? Is it a sign of growing eco-responsibility from brands and consumers? Maybe both.We’ve seen in Africa,
PRESS
Here is a collection of my online articles focused on semiotics, brand strategy, and family businesses.