Arnold Ma is a speaker, writer, podcast host, and the founder of Qumin, the UK’s first Chinese Digital Creative Agency.
Born in China, which at the time was still known as ‘the poor man of Asia’, Arnold (Chinese Ai Fu) moved to the UK in 1996 which was then still worlds ahead of China. By 2011, China was re-emerging on the global stage, but Western brands were not ready to engage with China. Hence why Arnold founded Qumin, at the age of 25, the first and largest Chinese Digital Creative Agency in Europe.
Qumin’s mission and Arnold’s bigger purpose in life became to ‘Open The World To China’. Owing to his bi-cultural upbringing and work scope, Arnold knows both Western and Chinese markets, businesses and, most importantly, he understands the different people and cultures. He knew to focus on the users behind the platforms, the subcultures behind the hashtags and the audiences behind the consumers. Only then could one conceive, design and build experiences that connect global brands with Chinese people.
For almost a decade now Qumin has helped copious Western brands including Sony, Man Utd, Mars Inc, General Mills, Unilever and many more to understand and engage with Chinese consumers. Notably, Qumin was responsible for the Chinese launch and ongoing consultancy for Skyscanner until its exit to China’s CTrip, the largest British tech exit to this day, valued at £1.4bn. Arnold has also helped Chinese companies including Bytedance, the world’s most valuable Tech start up, China Mobile and Huawei with their Western marketing.
In addition to being quoted in various media outlets including the Financial Times, Campaign, Reuters, McKinsey, The Drum, and more, Arnold is regularly invited to deliver keynote speeches on China, most recently at YMS London, FUTR Europe, NKF Fintech Summit in Germany and the Data and Analytics Summit. Topics of talks range from Chinese technology development and platforms to youth culture, but all put people and cultures at the core.
