Cultural research and foresight across play, education, youth culture, and luxury

Role

Foresight and strategy researcher working across cultural analysis, market research, audience insight, and experience strategy, translating fieldwork and cultural reading into recommendations clients could act on.

At Inner Chapter I worked as a foresight and strategy researcher across cultural analysis, market research, audience insight, and experience strategy. Each engagement started with an ambiguous cultural or strategic question and moved toward insight teams could use in product, brand, or experience decisions.

LEGO Group: girls foundational insights refresh

Question

In 2019, LEGO had foundational research on girls. By 2023, Covid-era schooling, fiercer educational competition, and a more digital childhood had shifted how girls in China grow up, play, and imagine themselves. The brief asked: how do we make the LEGO brand popular among girls in China, and what should that mean for communication and a multi-year girls strategy?

Approach

Three lenses at once: Chinese girls and parents (values, leisure, pop culture), play (how meaningful play was being redefined under pressure), and the LEGO brand (perceptions, competitors, and barriers to affinity). The work was qualitative and girl-centric: ethnographic observation and interviews that treated girlhood as lived culture, not only as a market segment.

What changed

Gender reflexes and intergenerational ideals of girlhood were still familiar. What had shifted was sharper: girls maturing earlier under macro uncertainty, play time becoming more fragmented, screens taking a larger share of leisure, and aspirational identities growing more complex. Independence and confidence sat at the center, while “princess” myths persisted but needed characters with more dimension.

Popularity alone proved too thin a metric. Desire for toys showed up across social currency, personal engagement, developmental value, and presence in daily life.

Building had trial appeal for parents and girls, but barriers appeared after the first experience: motivation, patience, post-build play, and display. Local competitors were closing gaps with cultural relevance, emotional proximity, and easier distribution.

Direction

Speak clearly to girls without flattening gender neutrality. Reframe creativity as guided imagination. Open construction into customization. Let LEGO live closer to lifestyle objects in girls’ everyday worlds. Audiences that mattered included active moms, girls themselves, and modern dads finding shorter bonding moments through building.

Shanghai American School: endowment strategy

Question

Is the Chinese market, and are Chinese parents, ready to contribute to endowment campaigns? If so, what should such a campaign focus on? The work looked at family education needs, the role of SAS, endowment feasibility, and how capital and resources should be allocated for school development.

Approach

Five group discussions across Puxi and Pudong campuses with thirty parents, then a wider community survey for validation and sizing. Conversations opened with parents’ hopes for their children’s development before testing structured endowment themes.

Insight

An endowment drive anchored in facilities and hardware would not excite participation. What parents could not simply buy was software: networks of people, mindsets, and cultural exposure that expand a child’s horizons beyond a privileged bubble.

SAS was already seen as having world-class campus resources, often under-utilized rather than insufficient, and Shanghai offered families access to elite off-campus venues. Software meant human connection across industries and cultures: becoming world-smart, applying knowledge practically, and exploring individual passions with guidance. Parents hoped SAS could curate thinkers, alumni, mentors, and cross-cultural experiences that prepare students to move fluidly between geographies, especially China and the US.

Direction

Four endowment themes: thought leadership, practical learning, creating community, and real-world education. Lead with software rather than buildings. Prioritize networks that deliver nearer-term educational impact for a highly transient parent community. In China, contributing connections and company resources can be a culturally fluent first step before financial endowment feels natural.

Vans: youth culture research

Cultural and audience research into what is shifting in youth culture that a brand rooted in skate and street culture needs to hear clearly.

Chanel: perfume exhibition research and experience strategy

Research and experience strategy for a perfume exhibition holding cultural meaning, sensory experience, and brand narrative at once.