Every few weeks, a founder writes to me from Berlin, Austin, or Melbourne asking the same question: “Olivier, should we just open a company in China already?” My answer is always the same: maybe, but let’s talk first. I have watched smart, well-funded teams rush into incorporation and regret it within a year. I have […]
For fifteen years, American universities barely had to sell themselves in China. The brand did the work. That period is over. In 2026, a US institution recruiting in China is no longer competing on campus quality. It is competing on whether a Chinese family believes their child will be safe, will get the visa, and […]
Most foreign celebrities who try to become known in China fail for exactly the same reason. They treat China as one more stop on a media tour. A press junket, a few interviews, a translated Instagram post, an appearance at a Shanghai gala. Then nothing happens, and everyone blames the market. The market is not […]
Every foreign founder I talk to in Shanghai has the same blind spot. They spend months polishing a Tmall storefront, a WeChat mini-program, a Xiaohongshu content calendar, and they never once put their own face on any of it. Meanwhile the Chinese CEOs they compete against for shelf space are doing the opposite: livestreaming, posting, […]
China still sends more students abroad than any other country. But the map has been redrawn. Roughly 570,000 Chinese students were studying overseas in 2025, against 703,500 in 2019, a drop of about 19% from the pre-pandemic peak (CKGSB Knowledge, May 2026). The market did not shrink evenly. It moved. If your recruitment story is […]
I sat in a meeting last month with a European asset manager who wanted to open an office in Shanghai. Their first question was about license timelines. Their second question, the one that actually matters for growth, was: “How do we get Chinese clients to trust us once we’re here?” That second question is the […]
Olivier Verot is the founder and CEO of GMA, a marketing agency based in Shanghai since 2012. He has spent over a decade helping foreign brands and athletes build visibility in China. China has 1.4 billion people online. For a long time, football was not part of the picture. Ask a kid what they wanted […]
