Chinese New Year advertising loves spectacle. Firecrackers, red lanterns, improbable family reunions and enough gold symbolism to bankrupt a jewellery store. Yet every few years, a film appears that quietly reminds us of what the festival was meant to celebrate in the first place. McDonald’s Malaysia’s 2026 Chinese New Year
Valentine’s Day advertising has long suffered from a shortage of imagination. Roses, candlelight, violins, perhaps a slow-motion walk across a beach if the budget allows. Love, apparently, smells faintly of perfume and chocolate. Flipkart’s latest Valentine’s campaign suggests something rather different. It smells like floor cleaner. Romance Begins Before the
In an age defined by endless scrolls, algorithmic playlists, and short-form content designed to be skipped in seconds, a quiet cultural counter-movement is beginning to surface across Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley: the rise of vinyl listening cafés. A recent report by Malay Mail highlights how spaces such as
For years, parental control tools felt like digital afterthoughts — clunky settings buried deep in menus, rarely used and often misunderstood. That era is quietly ending. With Meta, TikTok and Google rolling out upgraded teen-safety ecosystems in Malaysia, parental supervision is shifting from reactive monitoring to built-in platform architecture. The
Malaysia’s telecommunications giant Telekom Malaysia (TM) is preparing to refresh its social media agency partnerships, issuing a registration-of-intent notice that signals an upcoming open tender for social media services across its key business units. The appointment will cover TM Technology Services, the group’s principal operating entity, which oversees flagship brands
The NexGen Show has heard many voices, but never one speaking from the heart of our national language. In this unmissable session, Prof. Harmandar Singh banters with writer Muhammad Firdaus on a subject close to both their hearts — Bahasa Malaysia in advertising. “Back then, Bahasa Malaysia was very common,
Every Chinese New Year, brands tell us about prosperity. Gold coins fall. Lanterns glow. Families smile in slow motion. It is festive, familiar — and sometimes forgettable. AmBank’s Hundred Families Quilt takes a quieter route. Instead of shouting abundance, it shows how prosperity is actually made: patiently, collectively, and often
As Chinese New Year campaigns go, it would have been easy for adidas to lean into spectacle — fireworks, celebrity cameos, glossy symbolism. Instead, the brand has chosen something quieter, more human, and arguably more powerful: the everyday devotion of young footballers who treat the pitch as family. Created by
When a global brand wins Advertiser of the Year, the instinct is to treat it as a victory lap. But McDonald’s being named 2026 Advertiser of the Year by Spikes Asia is less about legacy status and more about something rarer in modern marketing: disciplined creative ambition, sustained at scale,
Brand mascots are usually engineered in boardrooms. This one slipped through the cracks of translation, fandom and internet humour — and still won. As China ushers in the Lunar Year of the Horse, an unlikely face has begun appearing on red posters, phone covers and even shopping mall façades: Draco
