By Jamshed Wadia Back in September, I challenged the APAC marketing community to take the CMO Council and Zeta Global MarTech maturity assessment. I framed it then as a “credibility builder”, a way for leaders to move from opinion to evidence when aligning with the C-Suite. Now, we have a
When KK Supermart & Superstore Sdn Bhd signals an IPO, the headline may read like a finance story. But beneath the numbers, this is a marketing narrative about scale, trust, and the quiet power of ubiquity. According to The Edge, the homegrown 24-hour convenience retailer is reportedly eyeing a second-half
We are at a strange moment for marketers. The dashboards look calmer than the real world. The headlines feel louder than the budgets. The tools are getting smarter, but attention is getting poorer. And somewhere in the middle sits the modern CMO, expected to be part growth engineer, part culture
Influencer marketing spend is growing, but scrutiny is intensifying: 68% of brands struggle to measure ROI from creator campaigns, while 72% of consumers distrust paid influencer content. Traditional approaches that prioritise follower count over credibility and accountability are no longer enough. With budgets under pressure and CMOs demanding proof, not
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.
Marketers have always loved a shortcut. Focus groups instead of full launches. A/B tests instead of boardroom opinions. Dashboards instead of “I feel it will work”. Now a new shortcut is entering the room, and it sounds almost too good to be true. Synthetic marketing. It means using synthetic data
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
Pos Malaysia Berhad, the national post and parcel service provider, ushers in Chinese New Year 2026 with the launch of the CNY 2026 Special Pack, celebrating the Year of the Horse — a symbol of strength, vitality and forward momentum in Chinese culture. The special pack reflects the spirit of
