Weak Signals from Paris

On May 11th, after 55 days under some of the strictest COVID restrictions in Europe, French society began to crack its shutters. By the time ReD research partner Rayan Hindi conducted a week-long research sprint in Paris in mid-June, the city was pulsing again. Restaurants, cafés, and shops had been fully reopened, with only a subset requiring masks indoors. Public parks and the banks of the Seine were packed with Parisians eager to gather after months of restricted mobility and in-person socialization. Protesters took to the streets to echo racial justice protests in the US, and to demand better wages and conditions for France’s essential healthcare workers. It was almost as if COVID had never happened.

...Almost. Paris now looks like a version of what an April piece in The Economist called a 90% economy: Much of pre-COVID activity has been resumed, but there are uncanny gaps — an absence of tourists, for example, meaning Paris is free for the first time in centuries from the gaze of foreigners. So how has Paris changed? What can we learn from this new Paris? And what might it tell us about how brands can serve its consumers in the months and years to come?

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