People rarely mistake strategy for tactics, but one of the most common mistakes in marketing strategy (or any kind of strategy) is confusing tactics for strategy. When prompted, most people can’t really tell the difference — but knowing the distinct difference between the two makes your strategy (and following tactics) infinitely better. Creativity without strategy is […]
David is partly a tour guide, partly a comedian, partly a philosopher. Confucianism, he sums up, is “Respect the elders, take care of the young”. Another important rule is that you do not impose on others what you do not want yourself. The story he tells is about a family — father, mother, a son […]
Thank you Wuhan. No longer are you the city of fear and hazmat suits. You’re historic artifacts, eating food together on the street. You’re live music in the park, you’re part of the Yangtze and the Yangtze is part of you. You’re a beautiful university and far grasslands. Of ponds and pagodas. You’re hot dry […]
Ground zero. My mind can barely comprehend the human chain that is covid-19, that droplets from mouths right here have spread to bodies all around the world within 12 months. I’m at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, which feels like being at ground zero in Hiroshima, or the former site of the Twin towers, […]
This is the Sihang Warehouse (四行仓库) at Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek. In 1937 during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, it mainly stored bags of sand, corn, and beans, until the 452 men of the 88th division of the Chinese army retreated into it. The Japanese armies invaded further into the city and the 88th was ordered […]
I’ve now been studying Chinese for almost two years — and it has taught me not just how to speak and read and listen and write, but also how to learn. For instance, I’ve found there are many ways to learn Chinese characters. You can read sentences, recite words, write characters, or write the radicals […]
It’s hard to say how popular books really are in China. Shanghai has many stores, on- and offline, and even an English book (Siddhartha) was delivered within 10 hours. But so too are there millions of people (24 million in Shanghai), so it’s hard to say if book reading is really popular. Even Suzhou has lots […]
So much negativity on the internet, and even Reddit has it’s subreddits that mock negativity, like awfuleverything, wewantplates, antiMLM, facepalm, menwritingwomen, idiotsincars and insanepeoplefacebook. Even interesting subs like relationships or stepparents are full of stories of how ungodly life is. It’s momentarily fun to browse these, but they do eat your brain, until negativity is […]
Construction workers sleep with six per room in bunk beds in modified shipping containers, and often live hundreds of kilometers away from family, and perhaps see their wife and children once a year. I guess life’s stripped down to the mere basics. Work, eat, sleep, accompanied by conversations. And the harder the work, the deeper […]
Without exception, the demographics of my twenty-eight marketing students are: Aged 18-22 year old Female Lives in Songjiang, Shanghai Studies at an art academy You’d think that these four points precisely describe a group of people, but we did an exercise in the class today and it turns out they mostly disagree on life topics, […]