Last Saturday we found a new apartment in Shanghai through ZiRoom (自如). The app has zero flair and is pure efficiency. Through filters we narrowed down our options, listed on a map in north Shanghai (screenshots are just examples). Most apartments have 360° photographs. We got an appointment in 10 minutes, and later that evening […]
WRI: Generating appeal for plant-based dishes
Can we increase appeal for plant-based foods by simply renaming the dishes? The World Resource Institute, which works together with multinationals like Unilever, NASA and Google, approached Seventy Agency to mitigate the rising trend of meat consumption in China, as beef is very polluting to the climate. Together, we formed the tasks of generating new […]
Leftover women review
Through ‘Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China’, Leta Hong Fincher shares an important message and she deserves credit for this, but I have several problems with the book itself. Firstly — and I say this while I understand that gathering quantitative research data about China is difficult — this book takes cherry-picking […]
GoEast Mandarin
GoEast Language Center is one of Shanghai’s premium Mandarin language schools, with effective and fun teaching. I studied there, but felt that their communication lacked behind the quality of their teaching, and looked all the same as all language schools in Shanghai. My time was primarily spend on three things: Optimizing existing assets (mainly websites […]
Hershey’s Kisses on the Bund
Increasing Hershey’s share in wedding candy market on top of a brand image facelift Hershey’s wanted to increase its share in the wedding candy market in China (a huge market). Both online and offline sales, plus PR where an integral part of the campaign. KISSES ON THE BUND Couples where to showcase their love and […]
Greybox Coffee Shanghai Xintiandi store opening
Greybox is a coffee chain with fifty locations, trying to beat coffee giants in China such as Starbucks (3000 stores) Luckin (500 stores) and Costa (500). Each of these chains says they’ve got the best beans and machines, but only Greybox goes so far that they make extreme HR investments. So why not treat baristas […]
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are review
“All knowledge is a recognition of the mutual relationships between sense experience and/or things and events.” This is a dense book, packed with insights. Some of them so wise that they make you look at life in a different way. But others feel just plainly wrong or overly simplistic (“You are IT”) — or are […]
So what is branding? And what does it have to do with livestock? And what did king Solomon say about it?
Branding started a long time ago. We know that pots, two thousand years ago had their marker’s mark on it. That then, in time, became a mark of quality. If anyone wanted a good pot (see example), they had to go to MNOVIVS, obviously. The whole village knew that. The word branding originated much later, […]
Speaker for the Dead review
This story on understanding comes in the unexpected shape a science-fiction novel — although anyone who has read Orson Scott Card’s books before would not be so surprised. It’s very different from its prequel, Ender’s Game: Speaker for the Dead is about understanding others, be it different individuals, families or even alien races — and its meditative […]
Being the center of attention
My mom often told me about me handing out candy on my birthday in kindergarten: hands and plate stretched far out, and my head turned around because I was afraid to look at people. Being the center of attention frightens me. It’s an irrational fear, but a fear nonetheless. The fear isn’t gone, but what […]