The mood
Despite business and media's concern about the direction of the economy at large, a sense of disappointment about the absence of a Post-Covid rebound, and general negative sentiment towards China, this month offered all we could wish for in terms of the work. We are not blindly bullish but find the bull/bear polemical extremes of the narratives for China endlessly unhelpful. This month we have been busy partnering with clients who are planning strategies for all possible futures, whether desirable or not. One consistency is that our strongest clients tend to address their greatest competitive challenges from when they are in leadership positions.
The work
We spent time with ultra-luxury customers to design private retail and short-term experience, returned to a community in Northern China to understand residential needs on smart tech, identified pathways for the future of beauty, and ran semiotics projects on masculinity, among others.