There have been times I imagine waking up in a world where nothing is trying to sell you anything. No billboards lining highways. No sponsored posts slipping between photos of friends. No pre-roll videos before the content you actually want. No jingles, no brand mascots, no carefully engineered desire. At
Meta crossed a significant milestone in 2025, reporting more than US$200 billion in annual revenue as advertising once again carried the business. The performance highlights the company’s renewed momentum following earlier disruptions from privacy changes and economic headwinds. For the December quarter, Meta recorded revenue of US$59.89 billion, up 24%
Somewhere in Yiwu, China, the world’s most industrious factory town, a seamstress stitched a smile upside down. And, she accidentally created the most honest brand mascot of the Year of the Horse. Meet the crying horse: red, plush, vaguely miserable, and inexplicably sold out. It wasn’t conceived in a brainstorm.
If 2025 felt like a year of holding your breath, 2026 is shaping up as the year people finally exhale without pretending everything is fine. According to VML’s Future 100: 2026 report, we are entering an era defined by “dystoptimism”: a cultural mindset that acknowledges systemic breakdowns, social anxiety, and
A new regional study by Sun Life Malaysia suggests that the idea of stopping work entirely is no longer realistic—or even desirable. According to its Retirement Reimagined: Asia’s Retirement Divide survey, 64 per cent of Malaysians expect to work past retirement age. Nearly two-thirds say they are doing so because
There is a particular kind of honesty that only nature affords. Trees don’t posture. They don’t chase relevance. They don’t refresh their look every few years because a trend deck says so. They grow, quietly, patiently — and when they work, they work for decades. Which makes it quietly fitting
The RM40,000 fine imposed on influencer Tang Sie Luk may look, at first glance, like a straightforward legal outcome. A viral video. Public outrage. A guilty plea. Sentence delivered. Case closed. But for brands, agencies and the influencer economy at large, this is not just a court story. It is
It often arrives before breakfast. A WhatsApp forward. A screenshot with a red circle. A line in all caps: “PLEASE READ BEFORE THEY DELETE.” By the time you finish your coffee, the story has already moved—from family chat to Telegram to TikTok stitches to Facebook reposts. By noon, it is
Malaysia’s proposal to bar under-16s from social media as early as July is not just a child-safety story. For marketers, it is an early signal that the era of frictionless, anonymous reach is coming to an end. Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching has confirmed that the policy is now
For years, social media platforms have defended themselves with a familiar line: we don’t create the content; we merely host it. That argument may finally be wearing thin. This week’s landmark trial in California does not put TikTok dances, Instagram selfies, or YouTube videos in the dock. Instead, it puts
