Cultural Analyst

Cultural Analyst

Calling all cultural thinkers and insights explorers! FINN Partners is looking for a mid-level Cultural Analyst to join our Strategy and Insights team. We are in search of someone who’s curious about people, energized by patterns in behavior, and passionate about decoding what’s shaping our world today. You’ll bring a confident POV on what’s influencing consumer sentiment, emerging behaviors, and category disruptions, and connect those signals to business-relevant strategies for clients across sectors. This is a thinking and doing role: part researcher, part trend mapper, part story-framer.

What You’ll Be Doing

As our new Cultural Analyst, you’ll work closely with strategists, creatives, and client teams to uncover the “why” behind the “what”. You’ll surface insights that help shape the big idea and ensure our clients show up in a way that’s timely, relevant, and resonant. 

This role offers the chance to shape our insights practice: formalizing our approaches, building our insights library, and guiding integration into strategic processes.

What you’ll bring to the table:

You’re a critical thinker, a curious researcher, and a compelling storyteller. You love pattern-finding and insight-building, and you know how to turn a cultural observation into a clear strategic idea. You’re organized, efficient, and collaborative, with the ability to drive projects independently while feeding into larger strategic thinking.

As for what we’ve got to offer you?

• Competitive salary, benefits package, and a commitment to work-life balance.
• Generous PTO that gets even more generous the longer you’re here
• A culture that values innovation, continuous learning, and collaboration.
• Career advancement opportunities in a fast-growing company.
• A wellness subsidy.
• A manager that provides consistent 1:1 check-ins, reviews, and culture-building opportunities to connect with people across the organization.

Core responsibilities:

• Monitor and synthesize cultural trends and behavioral insights across verticals
• Develop cultural POVs that inform brand strategy, creative briefs, audience segmentation, and thought leadership
• Lead secondary research workstreams: social listening, media scan, and audience profiling
• Connect qualitative and quantitative findings to generate insight-rich strategy inputs
• Support competitive monitoring, including positioning, share of voice, and category whitespace analysis 
• Support competitive intelligence deliverable, including messaging audits, SWOT analysis, and category SOV snapshots    
• Build and maintain a cultural intelligence repository, including but not limited to frameworks, trend trackers, signal maps
• Use GenAI tools to accelerate synthesis and signal detection (e.g., trend clustering, tone analysis)
• Work across teams to ensure cultural context is embedded in all phases of brand, comms, and campaign work
• Support new business and major client engagements with quick turn insights decks and input into pitch narratives

Pro Tip! Qualities that will set you apart from the rest…

• Deep curiosity about people, identity, tech, media, and the world around you
• A sharp editorial eye and confidence presenting your POV
• Ability to work across multiple client types, from corporate reputation to lifestyle and consumer brands
• High attention to detail and strong organizational skills
• A problem solving mindset - you don’t just spot problems, you solve them
• A collaborative, team-first approach

Where will you work?

For this role, we have a strong preference for candidates located near Portland, Oregon or New York. However, we will consider candidates in other U.S. locations who can work West Coast hours. We're a remote-first workplace with optional in-office days in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, LA, Nashville, New York, Portland, Washington DC, and more.

Anticipated Salary:  

$75,000  $85,000

Compensation is based on experience and depending upon workplace location.

Interested? Fantastic. 

If you have…

• Bachelor’s degree (Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Communications, Marketing, or related fields preferred)
• Four to six years of relevant experience in a cultural insights, strategic planning, or audience research role in an agency, consultancy, or trend firm
• Demonstrated ability to lead end-to-end insight workstreams - from to data collection to synthesis to presentation

As well as the following…

• Strong command of qualitative research methodologies, secondary synthesis, and trend analysis frameworks (e.g., cultural codes, laddering, need states, signal-to-insight mapping)
• Fluency with at least two of the following tools: Meltwater, Talkwalker, GWI, Mintel, and MRI Simmons
• Comfort with ad libraries, SimilarWeb, and other competitive intelligence tools like CB Insights, SEMRush, Vivvix, and WARC 
• Hands-on experience using GenAI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Midjourney, etc.) to support signal mining, content summarization, or creative exploration
• Excellent synthesis and storytelling skills: can craft compelling insight narratives, visual frameworks, and stakeholder-ready decks
• Strong comfort with ambiguity, shifting priorities, and fast-paced agency environments

We’d love to hear from you!