Three cities,
one room.
When the borders were closed and the industry had stopped gathering, we designed and delivered HSBC's first client event since the pandemic began: a three-city hybrid programme for high-net-worth clients across mainland China.
A bank that needed to host, in a year no one could gather.
It was 2021. China's borders were effectively sealed, large gatherings were on hold, and most of the events industry had simply stopped. At the same moment, HSBC was in the middle of one of its biggest pushes in years: a multi-billion-dollar plan to grow its wealth franchise across mainland China, with private banking expanding city by city, from Beijing and Shanghai to Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
That strategy depended on relationships. The bank's most valuable clients, its high-net-worth families across China, still needed to be seen, hosted and reassured in person. Nobody, anywhere, was gathering anyone. The question on the table was how to host beautifully and safely when the obvious answer was to wait.
Deliver HSBC's first event since the pandemic began, across three cities at once.
The brief was to design and run the first client event HSBC's regional headquarters had staged since the start of the pandemic. A three-city programme, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, on consecutive days, for an audience of high-net-worth clients.
It had to work as a hybrid: a live, in-person experience in each city, stitched to a virtual broadcast so the clients who could not travel were still in the room. And it had to hold inside the constraints of 2021: limited movement, limited headcount, tight resources, and zero margin for a health-and-safety mistake at an event carrying the bank's name.
Owned the numbers as tightly as the guest experience.
Brought in as the project consultant across budgeting, profit-and-loss, planning and design. The remit ran from the spreadsheet to the door: a single budget covering three venues and one broadcast, a production plan that could survive a last-minute change in restrictions, and a guest experience that had to feel effortless to people who are hosted for a living.
Built and ran a delivery team of around twenty-five people across the three cities, videographers, event planners and on-site concierge among them, staging three consecutive nights at five-star hotels. The duty of care was as much a part of the design as the staging: visible, calm and faultless, because the audience was the bank's most important clients.
Three nights delivered, and a template the bank could repeat.
Three events ran on consecutive days across Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen: the first HSBC's regional headquarters had held since the pandemic began. Client engagement rose by more than 85% against the bank's prior remote touchpoints, and the hybrid format gave the team a repeatable way to host through an uncertain year.
The lasting proof was simpler than the metric. "We cannot gather" turned out to be a brief, not a wall, and the room, across three cities, was full.
Have a room
in mind?
A new property, a reopening, a market you need to enter, a moment you need to host well. If you would like to talk it through, we would like to listen.