Sophy Protonotariou Interview
In this question & answer session with Sophy Protonotariou, we explore the journey and philosophy behind The Growth Challenge, a brand value accelerator led by Sophy, who brings over 25 years of experience in market research, branding, and creative intelligence. The firm specializes in merging data-driven strategies with emotional and sensorial insights to help brands build deeper connections with their audiences. Through their dedicated to Market Research brand Truberries, the firm empowers brands to thrive in a fast-paced, tech-driven world. Sophy shares how the approach fosters authenticity, mindfulness, and innovation while driving growth aligned with evolving consumer values and the principles of the circular economy.
My Background & Firm
We started the interview by asking, “Explain your background and your firm in detail.”
- Sophy Protonotariou replied, “My background spans over 25 years in market research and data storytelling, ideation, and brand strategy. Throughout my career, I’ve been dedicated to helping brands unlock their full potential, something that becomes more and more challenging: in a world that is evolving at speed with trends imposing a must-follow attitude, it is hard for all of us, as business people, to harmoniously incorporate the trends into our brand’s physique. That’s one of our main jobs to be done: making new ways of entertainment, engagement, and innovation an inherent brand power of our brand strategy, promoting the brand value instead of leaving the trends competing with it.
- I’ve developed expertise in observing and understanding human behaviour through dialogues and beyond. In this sense, we bring new ways to brands to evolve, by deeply understanding what matters, before their competitors do. That is our blue ocean strategy and the way we serve our mission: in our company, every project we run is meant to guide our clients towards their next big success.
In recent years, AI and technology in the era of digital social life have brought me new possibilities in uncovering conscious and non – conscious human needs. With an experience of 500+ projects in concept creation, I am a strong fan of combined skills, diverse teams, and professionals with the appetite to learn and change – and of structured creativity approaches.
In the last 15 years, I have led our teams of Truberries and of The Growth Challenge creating new tools that extend the positive impact of market research in new fields, always with the goal to add value to brands.
The Growth Challenge, our company, was founded in 2012. We are Brand Value Accelerators, offering strategic solutions to our clients, through a unique combination of data-proven mentality and brand – centric perspective in everything we do.
Our clients comprise a variety of globally appreciated corporations and some of them are the direct headquarters of big multinational agencies. From the very first day of our company foundation, when starting with our first brand, Truberries, the global market has trusted us and we have successfully delivered big, sophisticated multi-country projects, exploring consumers of various cultures and injecting the value of insights in brand growth.
I am grateful for all those years; I have experienced unique feelings of excitement, joy, and fulfilment. First of all, seeing my brand Truberries starting from a small country of Europe, thriving as a brand name of high attraction power, self-proving our power to creativity in naming. Our website www.truberries.com has proven the value of pure, human-made, purposeful content; bringing us every single month new business and helping us communicate our differences to the world, as regards what we think and how we act.
I am proud of our teams; it is the essence, the main driving force behind every success we had.”
Seeking clarification
The Worlds Times: Why do you say so? What your company offers to a new person joining ?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “Thinking is a people-first business, and we have amazing people. Truberries is where great minds thrive together, enjoying their skills, expanding their potential. We are committed to our “growthtainment” employer strategy: offering an exciting environment where entertainment goes together with fast growth.
How can we not be an exciting environment for our people when we run such a big number of Creative Intelligence projects, with the brands we all love trusting us to invent their future? At times when all employers try to create environments where people’s voices are heard, we are proud to offer a lot of space for not only the voice but also people’s souls to be expressed. That is what space to create does. We are a creativity house; we handle both insights extraction, brand repositioning, and content ideation in ways that bring creativity as a protagonist.
That is something that inspires young people especially, and all those who are young at heart: in times when AI can get the job done, it is the firms that can redefine job standards that makes the difference. Few environments reinvent themselves at such a speed as we do, and that is our power to exist quicker than others. For us, creativity and bringing deep ideas into play is at the core of our value proposition.
We are often the first to test innovations in food or personal care, we are the first to listen and shape the ideas of tomorrow. Most importantly, we indirectly infuse and inspire humanity to value life and to evolve their value system in ways that are more fulfilling and more appropriate for the new lifestyles. How? By helping brands become purposeful, which practically means brands to serve and help people desire to fulfil their deeper values.
We recognize that brands that are popular and ubiquitously visible have a great influence on people. People always look for allies, and it is wonderful to bring brands and the corporate world closer to what society needs. In a recent survey, 70% of citizens have stated that their employers are the most trustful entity for them personally, beyond states or religions. This gives us a great opportunity and responsibility at the same time.”
Uncovering the Core
The Worlds Times: What is your personal driver, your personal mission in business?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “As the CEO of The Growth Challenge, my personal mission is to provide strategic guidance for growth, challenging barriers, to increase the business valuation of my clients through purpose-driven brand activation. Our vision is making our clients thrive, and achieving more than what they had dreamt. I am personally amazed by the magic of Creative Intelligence and my personal commitment is to make the market understand the power of emotions and human intuition; assets that, when combined with scientific tools for contextualizing the challenges, enable humanity to surpass the boundaries of what is possible.”
The Evolving Role of Branding
The Worlds Times: What is the role of branding today and tomorrow?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “At times, when society and the world need the truth more than ever, branding becomes many more things than just a logo or entertaining communication. Our world needs hope and pays much for hope and a good pat on the back. Our company aims to offer only tenable hopes to our clients, rather than hopes of any kind… Our focus is to help our clients shape new aesthetic, mental, or emotional interventions to win the hearts and minds of their audience. That’s the way we do branding strategy.”
Insights into Truberries
The Worlds Times: Tell us more a about Truberries
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “In 2012, I started by founding Truberries together with my co -founder, Katerina Kondylaki. Truberries is a brand dedicated to data-driven inspiration, with a focus on branding. We specialize in providing tailored market research and analytics solutions, helping brands discover the emotional and sensorial elements that resonate with consumers.
At Truberries, we offer unique tools that extract visual insights and tap into people’s emotions, placing brands at the heart of their audiences’ lives. With offices in Greece and Cyprus, we have collaborated with clients globally, fostering their growth through in-depth knowledge and innovative market consulting. Beyond these ventures, we actively support the Hellenic Start-up Association, GRECA. Our sustainability strategy mostly focus in one specific Sustainability Pillar, Education. We play our small part in helping the world access more and better education and knowledge, supporting single persons and organizations, various university projects and NGOs to promote innovation and collaboration in the research and business sectors.”
The Power of Sensorial Experiences
The Worlds Times: In your view, how do sensorial experiences shape consumer behaviour, and why are they crucial for brand success in today’s digital era?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “Sensorial experiences are vital in shaping consumer behaviour because they create unconscious emotional connections that make commerce much more than mere transactions. When a brand successfully engages multiple senses, it can evoke powerful memories, making its presence more memorable and impactful. In today’s digital era, while convenience and speed dominate, consumers still seek authenticity and emotional connection. Brands that harness the power of sensory experiences – – through visuals, sounds, aromatic impact, and touch – create unique and lasting impressions that can differentiate them from the competition.”
Rediscovering Sensory Connections in a Fast-Paced World
The Worlds Times: With the speed of modern life accelerating, do you think brands and businesses are neglecting the importance of engaging the senses? How can they better integrate these experiences into their strategies?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “The pace of modern life often leads brands and businesses to focus solely on quick, efficient solutions and may neglect the richness of sensorial engagement. Many brands, in view of their FOMO concern, they try to say it all and spread adequate satisfaction to many parameters. Such an approach misses the opportunity to forge deeper, more meaningful relationships with consumers.
Brands must ‘feel’ consumers and deeply understand their life moments, how they and why they experience intense, less desirable feelings, or too flat moments… people are looking to safely live the unexpected, break the boredom and they are getting bored easier than ever before.
That’s the canvas onto which brands come to create experiences and especially sensorial experiences. This kind of brand presence captures not only the mind or the heart but the senses and can make a brand strongly present.
Also, people struggle to attach themselves to something that goes beyond the greediness of goods, to make a statement that projects a genuine part of themselves. Be it through their happiness or through the blackness, helping them gain 5 min of fame that Andy Warhol wisely said, today’s people want to acquire a strong footprint in the visual economy. Brands that facilitate people’s goals in those directions can create more impactful experiences.
Within this context, brands join in to become the means for immersive, in-store experiences, creating products that appeal to the tactile sense or using storytelling and digital media to evoke sensory responses. Brands come to serve and connect with a reality of speed and depth, and that makes the whole approach complicated.”
Navigating the Future
The Worlds Times: As a market research expert, how do you see the balance between virtual and physical, technological support and human work? Which are the new opportunities for branding and the business world?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “Technology has undoubtedly revolutionized branding, making it more accessible and dynamic.
However, the challenge lies in ensuring that technology and the multiplicity of communication channels respect the brand’s essence, which is the promise brands make to human beings. This promise functions as an anchor for the brand’s physical and emotional depth. Brands must find ways to use digital tools to enhance themselves, helping them express their genuineness and identity. Rather than simply being connected to trendy aesthetics through their logo or any visual representation of brand moments in people’s lives , whether using augmented reality (AR), VR or any other technological platform, a brand should be here to bring products and promises to life in a way that allows customers to live more and dream more. The key is to create digital experiences that feel real and humanized, generating rich aesthetic experiences.”
Insights into Consumer Interactions
The Worlds Times: Given your expertise in digital ethnography, how do you use this tool to capture and interpret the aesthetic experiences and the way they deploy consumer interactions?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “Digital ethnographic tools that we use in Truberries provide a unique opportunity to capture the nuances of consumer interactions with the world around them in real-time. This reveals what creates emotional, functional, or aesthetic value, how their senses come into play, and how their preconceptions shape their aesthetic preferences. By observing and analyzing how consumers react to visual stimuli and how they engage with products and brands, we unveil mechanisms of engagement that truly work.
This allows brands to tailor their strategies, ensuring that they not only meet but exceed consumers’ deeper expectations. For example, analyzing the role of colour in social media conversations or design elements in visual content helps us explore what resonates most with target audiences, enabling more precise and impactful branding.”
Harnessing Sensorial Branding
The Worlds Times: How can purpose-driven brands utilize sensorial elements to deepen their connection with audiences and stand out in a fast-paced, crowded market?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “Purpose-driven brands can create their own aesthetics and the respective experiences that sharpen and vivify their message, hence build a stronger emotional connection with their audience. By using the right cues that align with their brand values-such as sustainable materials for an eco-friendly brand or soothing visuals and sounds for a wellness-focused brand – they deliver on authenticity. Such consistency not only attracts customers but also fosters loyalty. Sensorial elements, when rightly put into the mix, can become a powerful and easy- going, cool way to convey the brand’s mission, inviting customers to ‘feel’ and ‘experience’ the values that the brand represents.”
Promoting Mindful Living
The Worlds Times: Do you believe that brands need to advocate for a slower, more mindful approach to life to help consumers reconnect with their senses? If so, how can they authentically communicate this message?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “In an increasingly fast-paced world, brands that encourage slowing down and mindfulness can resonate deeply with consumers, in moments where they crave calm and connection. By advocating for a slower, more mindful lifestyle, brands can promote the importance of reconnecting with our own senses, focusing on our own body. For example, brands in the food industry could focus on the experience of savouring flavours, while fashion brands might emphasize the tactile sensation of high-quality fabrics. It’s about creating spaces, both physical and digital, where consumers can take a break from the hustle and engage in immersive, sensory-rich experiences.”
Enhancing Sustainability
The Worlds Times: In the context of circular economy strategies, how important is it for brands to focus on creating meaningful, sensorial experiences that align with sustainability efforts?
Sophy Protonotariou replied, “Within the framework of a circular economy, sensory experiences can play a crucial role in educating and engaging consumers. By focusing on sensorial elements that emphasize sustainability – such as eco-friendly packaging that feels and smells organic or products made from recycled materials with a unique tactile quality – brands can align their offerings with environmental values, while engaging consumers by stimulating their senses.
These sensory cues not only convey a message of sustainability, but also create a deeper, more personal connection with the customer, reinforcing the brand’s ultimate, curated commitment to the circular economy. Our senses have their own intelligence and process their own data, leading subliminally to our desire and connection with the world.”
Strategies for Staying Ahead
Lastly we asked, “With the rapid growth of digital platforms, what do you envision as the future of sensorial branding, and how can companies stay ahead by incorporating these elements into their brand storytelling and strategy?”
“The future of sensorial branding lies in the seamless integration of sensory experiences with digital storytelling. As digital platforms evolve, brands will need to create multisensory narratives that engage consumers at every touch point. This could involve interactive content that combines visuals, soundscapes, and immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality. Companies that stay ahead will be those that understand how to create a blend of digital and physical experiences, allowing consumers to engage with their senses in new and innovative ways, making the brand more memorable and impactful.” Sophy Protonotariou Concluded
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