Thinking Capital | Cultural Capital: How do you hone cultural fluency as a competitive advantage? (Sponsored Content)

Don't purely look at commercial value immediately. Take a longer horizon view. It is the lingering impact that I think is subtle but even more powerful.

Rugby is this great blend of disruption. We're an old sport. We need to evolve to continue to be relevant to new audiences, but not in a way that makes those values.

A trap for us.

You will speak volumes before you open your mouth, depending on how you look, how you're dressed. And if you're trying to command a room of very intimidating people, I think I gravitated towards different styles that I thought would help me in the rostrum.

Hello and welcome to the Thinking Capital podcast. I'm Lucy from Bloomberg Media Studios.

And I'm Will. In partnership with HSBC, we're decoding the pursuit of modern capital in all its different forms.

From financial and social capital to cultural and intellectual capital, everyone is seeking new avenues of knowledge, fulfillment, and expression.

Which brings us to the second episode of our four-part series, Cultural Capital.

Cultural fluency means being able to feel at home across different cultural and geographical contexts, from understanding local customs and savoir-faire to knowing what good looks like in different places. Crucially, it's also about judgment and discernment, knowing how to read the room, understanding nuance and acting with credibility.

In this episode, global leaders will reveal how cultural fluency can become an unexpected commercial advantage.

We'll hear from Phyllis Cao, Vice President of Luxury and Auctioneer at Sotheby's, Alan Guildpin, CEO of World Rugby, Judy Liu, co-founder of Trinity Asia, and Maggie Ng, CEO of HSBC Hong Kong.

They work in very different worlds, from luxury fashion to rugby stadiums. Combined, they will show us how powerful cultural fluency can really be.

Let's start with global sports. Billions are being poured into stadiums and broadcasting rights, but that investment isn't enough to guarantee that a sport will capture the imagination. For Alan Gilpin, CEO of World Rugby, cultural relevance is what moves heritage sports into the modern age.

I think it's about being beyond just the moment of the event or beyond just the time on the field of play that hopefully you've got audiences and fans and consumers watching and being involved in your sport. You're culturally relevant, I think, in places, in communities, if you're part of that everyday conversation, beyond what's happening on your own field of play or your own court or within the sport itself.

rugby sevens which is a massive growth driver for us a very accessible version of our sport so easier to understand for a new fan be arguably easier to play for a new participant Yeah, I think with Hong Kong and Sevens, the city's always embraced the event. It's much more than a sporting event in Hong Kong. It's a social event. It's part of the cultural and business calendar of Hong Kong on an annual basis. So, you know, really close partnership between the community, the city, our partners, and particularly HSBC, and then the sport itself. So the great thing about that, and I think, and again, this comes back to cultural relevance, is you don't have to be a fan of Rugby Sevens to want to be part of the Hong Kong Sevens.

The moment you no longer need to follow the sport to understand the occasion, it has entered the culture.

But what about something beyond an event, time, or place?

Phyllis Kao, Vice President of Luxury and auctioneer at Sotheby's, works with timeless cultural artifacts.

I don't necessarily draw on that specialist knowledge for everything. We sold Pele's first World Cup jersey, and I didn't need... a Chinese antiquities background to know this is a fantastic artifact. You just need to have a good basis of history to recognize something great. I think the best elements of masterpieces that stay relevant are always those that are universal truths.

You know, you don't need to be a specialist to recognize and have those elements resonate with you.

Cultural fluency. To me, it means.

understanding, appreciating the ramifications of cultural moments, objects, works of art, really, really understanding why something is important and being able to explain that to someone else, being able to articulate that and move someone. You have to move them to care about the object before you can ask them to spend money on it. But once they do take on that responsibility to be a steward, then that's how you preserve culture, right?

So it's an ecosystem.

Cultural fluency is not an inventory of facts. It's a differentiated judgment about what matters here to these people at this moment.

But sometimes that can be difficult to measure. Maggie Ong, CEO of HSBC Hong Kong... looks for cultural capital in the tools people use and the habits that become part of daily life.

We've operated in Hong Kong for 161 years. So, you know, our branches, our bank notes, you know, our bank passbook, actually many people's childhood memory. So to that extent, we are part of the city's fabric. We have launched a payment wallet, e-wallet called PayMe in Hong Kong. And nowadays it has about more than 3 million users. Such a wide use wallet today that pay me, which is a brand of the wallet, is literally used as a verb.

So people will be like, oh, just pay me me, you know.

And that's the power of cultural fluency, becoming a part of everyday life. But local relevance is never a one size fits all. It depends on understanding the nuances within a market. Judy Liu, co-founder of Trinity Asia, a strategic partner for premium and luxury brands in China, has seen just how much those differences can matter.

I grew up in Guangzhou, lived in Beijing, and moved to Shanghai when I sold my business. So I thought that I understood the country very well. However, you know, when I studied in Tsinghua University for my EMBA, My cohort actually came from across China, different cities, industries, and backgrounds.

This actually reminds me, especially as an international business, often we take Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen for the whole China, but actually they only represent around 5% of the country's population. So China is not one customer market. It's many different cultures and commercial markets within one country. So that is the point sometimes people often miss. I have spent most of my career working between China, Asia, and global organizations.

And the same idea can land very differently in Shanghai, Paris, or New York. So for me, cultural fluency is the ability to read that context, to understand not only what people do, but why it matters to them, and then translate between cultures, but without losing the original identity. And also curiosity, I feel is really at the heart of it, If you genuinely want to succeed in a market, then you have to be interested in how people think, what they value, and why they may say the words differently for you. So for me, cultural fluency is the ability to read the context before making assumptions.

So it seems cultural fluency can't be developed in isolation. Finding the right partners is key to building lasting cultural capital. For HSBC Hong Kong, that includes partnerships with M +, Kai Tak Sports Park, the Hong Kong Sevens and the Peak Light Show as a few examples. What sorts of principles actually guide Maggie Ong's decisions on which cultural institutions to partner with?

So we typically ask ourselves three questions. Firstly, does it support Hong Kong's economy? Sports and culture, they have a strong multiplier effect and they bring vibrancy to the city. They attract people to our city. They bring people out. And when they do, all our retail shops, our restaurants, our hotels, our transportation, they all benefit. Take the Hong Kong Sevens as an example. Nelson Sports estimate that Hong Kong Sevens delivered close to $ 100 million of economic values to Hong Kong just in 2025 alone. And Kai Tak Sports Park estimate It ranked number three in ticket sales just nine months after its opening. And the second consideration we have when it comes to partnership is does it

help Hong Kong connect with the rest of the world? Mega events can be catalysts. They create international exposure for a cosmopolitan business city like Hong Kong, and sports and culture have their own magic. They build pride locally while strengthen the city's soft power globally. And thirdly, we ask, is it a natural feat to HSBC to who we are and how we serve our customers? And the test is, can this partnership create value for our clients? If you take the Sevens as an example, it does bring our clients together. It created many social connectivities amongst our clients.

So at the end of the day, what's good for Hong Kong is good for HSBC.

The brands that cross cultures easily don't pretend to be one or the other, but instead find common ground.

I think the localization piece is really important, and it sounds almost counterintuitive to get to that cultural relevance that we need to really attract. and hold on to fans, we've got to make it relevant locally for them. So it's got to fit with that local culture. And again, even the HSBC 7 Series is a great example of that.

We're in iconic cities around the world. Fantastic. The product's going to look the same. It's very fast-paced, kind of high entertainment, party, festival atmosphere version of our sport. But what lands well in Cape Town for a weekend of 7s where there's a very educated rugby audience... A lot of rugby followers, avid fans versus what might work in Hong Kong or Singapore or Dubai or Buenos Aires is all different. So actually spending some time understanding how we localize to really appeal in a culturally relevant way to those fans is important. And our partners, both city hosting partners and our corporate partners are really important because they're in those locations all the time. So us learning about

what that localization needs to feel like is really learning from them.

The best localization today has already moved beyond decoration and into generating cultural participation. So a few years ago, I will say, a Zodiac Collapsal Festival corner may already have been enough for the luxury brands. But today, especially in China, customers, they expect something much deeper. One small example here, take Rolex.

They launched a mid-autumn festival campaign, and the campaign is called this moment of perfection. You can almost picture it, you know, an old craft man sitting quietly, hand curving the traditional mooncake mousse and with the refining watch component. And that image works so well because it's really kind of like the Chinese performance heritage with Swiss position. So this makes the whole idea of time, patience and perfection feel very natural across both cultures. I think the point is not for a global brand to become local. The point is really to remind its global identity while becoming emotionally true and culturally relevant into the local market. So neither identity has to disappear. And that can be true

for individuals as well, not just mega brands.

Sotheby's Phyllis Kyle stepped into an auction world with deep historical traditions. For her, Commanding the room meant understanding its culture without sacrificing her authentic self.

I'm not a British white male, which has typically been the profile for a successful auctioneer. I had a completely different upbringing from them, completely different environment, educational environment, cultural environment. So I think the way that we interact with people is just different. And I knew that it wouldn't be authentic to me to try to adapt. Their styles. The nonverbal language that is what you wear, you know, that visual cue is so effective and so important. I don't think people really realize, you know, you will speak volumes before you open your mouth, depending on how you look, how you're dressed. And if you're trying to command a room of very intimidating people, you know, in my skin,

I think I gravitated towards different styles that I thought would help me in the rostrum.

Cultural fluency does not ask you to become someone else. Often, it's about meeting the audience where they are. Something Alan and Judy are familiar with too.

Traditionally, sport attracted audiences from what we would call whistle to whistle. Live for the match, whether that's golf or tennis or rugby or football or whatever the sport might be, you're focused on this is the competitive part of the sporting landscape. Now it's about what happens behind the scenes, how does a younger audience get to know the athletes involved, get to understand what's going on behind the scenes. And for us and for World Rugby, one part of that is making sure that we earn the trust of that younger audience and try and show up authentically in the places where they're going to be interested to see us.

Today, digital ecosystem is developing more than ever, but I still believe the human connection is very critical for the cultural understanding and build the trust and connections with our customers. When we run the Farfetch business, we have a very important department called private clan. One to two percent of the customer represent nearly one third of the business. So it doesn't matter where the customer they are coming from.

It's not necessary only for the first tier city. Although it's an online business, I really feel that The people collection is everything. That's the whole reason that why we built the private client team, which we have around 70, 80 stylists that actually collect and communicate, you know, individually with our very important clients. And sometimes the understanding between this kind of one-on-one conversation can actually convert it to a commercial result.

You know, to give you a live example of that, We've taken rugby sevens to India at an elite competition sense with Rugby India, a really developing national federation for us. Rugby is a relatively small sport in India compared to obviously, for example, cricket. So we've got a lot of work to do, but great relationship now between Rugby India and city and government partners. And then we can bring and HSBC to the table and say, okay, if we're going to deliver a competition in India, HSBC can create business connections and networks that will really help that competition be more successful more quickly. So that's a good example of trying to be quite smart about how we bring different partners together in a new and emerging market for rugby sevens.

So we've talked about cultural impact and commercial impact. How should we be thinking about bridging these two? We'll hear from Maggie Ng, CEO of HSBC Hong Kong.

Well, firstly, don't purely look at commercial value immediately. Take a longer horizon view. Many of the time, if you're very financial focused, you look at the immediate KPI, which is how many sales you brought from this event or the partnership. But instead, it is the lingering impact. that I think is subtle but even more powerful. My advice would be to look at it a bit more longer term rather than the immediate result and then also go back to the customer and ask them how this event or the cultural partnership has created benefit for them because what is good for our clients is also good for us.

Cultural fluency is very much the art of noticing. But in a world of algorithms, infinite content and rapidly moving trends, how do you notice something before everybody else?

I'm not trying to figure something out before the rest of society. I like what I like. Things that speak to me, I think, have this quality of a universally resonating truth that will reveal something about human nature and yourself, right? That's why we love art. That's why we love that song. That's why we love that classic whatever. So I really just love what I love. I don't really follow trends ever in clothing or in art. But I think I've always maintained a discerning eye and an ever-evolving, ever-questioning and curious mind about things. And so I think if you just maintain that, you'll find that sometimes... you seem to have been before the curve.

I think it's the ability to show that you don't understand and the courage to ask don't always assume i think in the past maybe in the chinese culture in particular that raising our hands to ask questions is not something that's very common And when we are now interacting with our clients, it's important that we don't always show that we know it all. No matter how big you are, there are areas that your clients will know more than you.

Assume that you don't know at all and always raise your hands and ask questions.

First, spend real time in the market with genuine curiosity. Second, build a strong local talent team. And third, I think speech is often better than perfection. Test, listen, adjust and keep moving. Do not enter the market just simply because the market is large. Enter the market only if you feel you are prepared to invest the real-time resource and attention.

You have to spend time on the ground.

And perhaps cultural fluency isn't only about understanding what changes from one market to another. It's about pursuing innovation, having an entrepreneurial mindset of constantly learning, Evolving and trialling new solutions.

We're an old sport. We're 200 and something years old, if the kind of legends to be believed. But actually rugby is this great kind of blend of disruption. When someone picked up a ball that was supposed to be kicked and ran with it. So we need to evolve to continue to be relevant to new audiences in a very fast changing world. but also respecting and nurturing our identity and our values, but not in a way that makes those values a.

Trap for us.

Cultural fluency doesn't erase difference. It gives us more ways to connect across it.

Whether that's when a product or an event transcends its beginnings and becomes truly locally relevant.

Or when you can recognize value or variations that others miss. or can persuade others to see it too.

Or when you can read the context of an opportunity before making assumptions about it. In a world where algorithms can tell you everything, cultural fluency is one of the few assets that can tell you why something matters. And that is a competitive edge that really lasts. Our thanks to our international lineup, Maggie Ng, Phyllis Cao, Alan Gilpin, and Judy Liu. Thinking Capital is a Bloomberg Media Studios production in partnership with HSBC. Please do look out for future editions of Thinking Capital across Bloomberg Video, Podcasts, Print, and online as we continue to decode modern capital.

Thank you for listening.

Thinking Capital | Cultural Capital: How do you hone cultural fluency as a competitive advantage? (Sponsored Content)

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