on City Reports
Learning from people and places
“To learn about people, you can’t just sit at a desk. Grab a camera and go to the streets. Observe them in everyday life. Talk to them. Watch how they live and work and eat. Then ask questions. About every tiny detail. And listen very carefully. And then ask more questions.”
That was what John Jay, Global President of Creative at Uniqlo, said to me when we first worked on a research project for the brand. It was also how he helped Nike become the brand it is today in his previous role at Wieden+Kennedy. By going to the basketball courts on the streets of New York, observing the players, and learning from them.
We’ve worked with Uniqlo on several city reports: in Singapore and Manila when they were exploring flagship stores, and in Vietnam when they were opening their first stores. We also worked on reports for their store launches in India, Montreal, and Vancouver. Then I built a team to work on a regional report where we interviewed travellers in Southeast Asia about their travel habits, to help Uniqlo develop new market opportunities.
This was through our long working relationship with Portland-based strategy consultancy, Studioriley. We’ve worked together for 14 years on reports for PayPal, Nikon, Sonos, Internet.org, and more.
In many ways, Chris Riley and Ken Smith from Studioriley have been like mentors. When I first met and worked with Chris on the rebranding of the Nikon Photo Contest, together with Koichiro Tanaka and Sumiko Sato, I remember our first call. Chris was travelling and called from the airport. We could only hear his voice, and I had never met him. He began walking us through his presentation: “We are drowning in a sea of information…”
That call had a bigger influence on my career than any other moment. The clarity and humanness in how he presented data and narrative was concise, deep, and impactful.
It was then I realised I wasn’t content with just creating beautiful work. I wanted to create work that made sense beyond aesthetics, helped people see the world more clearly and brought impact to both business and community.
Looking back, the way the dots connected makes sense. As I wrote in my last post, the common thread in all our work has been to organise and edit information, present it in a way that is useful and interesting to people, and uncover insights that help them understand the world. And as I think about what I might one day write a book about, looking back at the city reports offers some clues.
Fieldwork, Not Surveys
For the city reports we did for Singapore, Manila, and Vietnam, we worked with a small team made up of a photographer, sound recordist and fixer. We interviewed 10 - 15 individuals to learn from them about their city, their lives, to uncover insights about cultural tensions, their dreams and aspirations. The questions rarely mentioned the brand. It wasn’t a typical marketing survey asking what products they use or how much time they spend online.
As Chris once told me: “Information is data. Insights are actionable.” People don’t learn much from reading charts. Stories are a better way to tell strategic narratives.
Our questions went deeper. What do they love about their city? What’s great? What’s not so great? What makes it unique or different from other places? How do people feel about Japan and Japanese products? These interviews were turned into a city report that was shared with Uniqlo’s management and sent all the way up to the president, Tadashi Yanai.
The reports offered a deeper understanding of a place, something desk research or quantitative data alone could not provide. They were also shared with Uniqlo’s local partners and agencies, who used the insights and strategic direction to build marketing plans and launch campaigns. This gave them a more nuanced view of the people and the place, helping them create more relevant communications and products.
A Book Written like Field Notes?
The reports are a deep dive into a place and its people. They are not travel guides telling you where to go or what to eat. They walk you through a city, its history, how that history shapes culture, how it shows up in everyday life, and what we can learn through the stories people share with us.
If I were to write a book, it would follow the same skeleton as a city report. Part research project, part travelogue. It would bring together observations, conversations, reflections, and the stories and insights I’ve found. To learn from people and the places they live. To observe the ordinary and uncover what it means.
My goal would be to ask what we can learn from the world, and about the world, that might help us understand our place in it.
*This was previously posted on our studio’s field notes on 1 July 2025.
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Felix Ng
Co-founder, Anonymous
I will buy :)