Deanna Elstrom, Founder
I am a beauty brand marketer (L’Oréal, Avon, Revlon, L’Occitane), brand strategist (CBX NY) and consumer insights specialist (Flamingo Tokyo, Ipsos Japan). As a consumer researcher, I combine my love of branding with my fascination with how culture influences human behavior. Over the past 9 years in Tokyo, I have led qualitative research projects with a wide array of clients across a broad spectrum of industries.
Clients consistently remark that what sets my work apart is both depth of insight and the ability to help clients understand the consumer perceptions, motivations and behaviors behind the insights to allow them to cumulatively build their own intuitive consumer understanding.
I am American and have studied and worked in the U.S., Paris and Tokyo. I have an undergraduate degree in Economics from Duke University and an MBA from INSEAD. I speak (rusty) French and Japanese (N2 level). I have lived in Japan in 1983-86 as a teenager, in 1988-89 as a university student and, most recently, since 2013.
Erina Honda, Senior Research Manager
Erina is a highly- experienced researcher, moderator and facilitator. After six years at Ipsos in Japan, Erina joined somi insights as a Senior Research Manager in February 2023.
Thanks to Erina’s warmth and humor, respondents relax and open up, sharing freely their experiences, opinions and feelings. Within the focus group and workshop settings, she creates a positive group dynamic that leads to deeper level insights. A creative thinker and flexible problem solver, Erina easily adapts her approach according to the respondents, as well as to changing client needs and circumstances.
Detail-oriented and forward-thinking, Erina makes sure every project is executed with excellence — from consumer recruitment to fieldwork logistics and beyond.
Erina was born and raised in Japan. She spent a year in Sydney where she honed her excellent English language skills. She completed her undergraduate studies at J.F. Oberlin College in Tokyo.
Great work is the result of collaborative partnership
Photo by Marco Spola
What clients say…
“For the past 6 years, whether it's leading exploratory work on big themes like ‘aspirational womanhood in Japan and China’ or helping brand teams uncover unmet consumer needs to position brands around, Deanna has been a highly-valued partner to our Unilever hair care teams.
In 2019, Deanna and I partnered to present our research project around ambivalence towards gender inequality in Japan at Esomar Asia in Macau, working together pretty intensively over several months. This experience was another example of how Deanna brings her positive energy, curiosity, high-powered thinking and ‘make it happen’ attitude to everything she does.”
— Emi Nishiyama, Unilever
“Working with Deanna was a true pleasure as she is not only a professional with bountiful knowledge of consumer marketing in Japan,
but a high-energy powerhouse intellectual with a warm heart.
Her wide-ranging experiences across many industries help put things in perspective with a birds-eye view.
She is able to translate the cultural background and insights to bite-size concepts to enable a smooth communication with global counterparts.
Often times, "local" marketing teams in global organizations are challenged to convey consumer insights/perceptions/behaviours that are particular to the market.
Deanna is well aware, having been on both sides of the organizations, and can facilitate productive discussions for the benefit of the brand, global and local.
I would love to work with her again and would recommend her to anyone looking for a guiding light in the sea of vast consumer research in Japan.”
— Natsuko Kawahara, Stokke Japan
“[Deanna] is a very energetic and supportive individual and always on top of her work. Working with her was really fun!”
— Omar Faruq Khan, BAT Japan
What colleagues say…
“Deanna is a wonderful person with great passion and energy in work. She has experience in many industries, very open to new markets and new ways to work. She is great in supporting business goals and giving recommendations based on core needs. She is also great researcher, workshop facilitator and manager. Very fun person to work with!”
— Elina DeSilva, Ipsos Japan
“Deanna is an exceptional talent. She is smart, energetic, impassioned, and generous to both internal teams and external clients. She has a fantastic work ethic, producing high-quality thinking very quickly…a highly-valued consultant to some of our most important clients.
She is also an excellent writer and public speaker…a leader and problem-solver who approaches every task with enthusiasm, positivity and creative intelligence.”
— Chris Francis, Former CEO of Flamingo Tokyo
“I have seen Deanna lead both a number of complex strategic consulting projects, and a company. As a consultant, she was able to craft multi-faceted strategic solutions, based on deep understanding of client issues and broad-ranging data inputs. Never jumping to conclusions, she embraced the complexity of the evidence and still managed to boil it down to essential, actionable insights and recommendations.
As a leader, she also displayed utmost integrity, honesty and humanity. She treated people like people, spoke and listened openly, and never lost her warmth and good humour.”
— Nick Ashley, Fabric