Apple’s first VR headset will reportedly be powerful and pricey – CNET – its a rumour so take with a pinch of salt, the approach outlined reminded me of being rather similar the way Oculus was in their early model VR headset devices. It is also interesting how they consider a VR headset as a stepping stone to AR glasses. Will Apple be enough to mainstream the VR headset? More related content here.
Next drops bid to buy Topshop after Arcadia’s breakup | Philip Green | The Guardian – The Next consortium was pitted against Shein, a Chinese online fashion retailer and Authentic Brands, the US owner of the Barneys department store, which has been linked to a joint bid with JD Sports. The online retailers Asos and Boohoo are also thought to be involved in the mix. Shein tabled an offer worth in excess of £300m for Topshop and Topman, according to Sky News which first reported the development. It added that a separate process was being run for other Arcadia brands such as Burton and Dorothy Perkins
‘Absolute carnage’: EU hauliers reject UK jobs over Brexit rules | Brexit | The Guardian – data showed that an increasing number of freight groups rejected contracts to move goods from France to Britain in the second week of January. Transporeon, a German software company that works with 100,000 logistics service providers, said freight forwarders had rejected jobs to move goods from Germany, Italy and Poland into Britain. In the second week of January the rejection rate for transport to the UK was up 168% on the third quarter of 2020 and had doubled in the first calendar week of the year
Battle of the Robots Still Favors Japan and Europe—For Now – WSJ – Covid-19 has accelerated automation in factories, especially in manufacturing powerhouse China. Foreign companies have long dominated the market for industrial robots and automation tools there—but there are signs that dominance is fraying around the edges. As the factory for the world, China is unsurprisingly far and away the largest market for industrial robots. Before the pandemic, however, the U.S.-China trade war was slowing growth. New installations of industrial robots amounted to 140,500 in 2019, a 9% decline from the previous year, but still almost three times the number for second-place Japan, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Last year was likely much better: Credit Suisse estimates that China’s industrial-robotics market grew 9.5% in 2020.
Audi and BMW shut down car subscription programs | Engadget – When Mercedes-Benz shuttered Collection, however, it cited mediocre demand and complaints about the hassles of switching personal items between vehicles. While it wasn’t mentioned at the time, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t helped matters. People are commuting less if at all, and may be more interested in saving money than the flexibility of swapping cars.Subscription ervices like Volvo Care are still going, although it’s not certain how well they’re faring.There may be a slight revival. Automotive News claims Cadillac is testing a resurrected Book service with dealers, although it would arrive a year after the brand’s hoped-for early 2020 revival. However, the overall market appears to be contracting
Majority of Europeans fear Biden unable to fix ‘broken’ US | World news | The Guardian – “Europeans like Biden, but they don’t think America will come back as a global leader,” said the thinktank’s director, Mark Leonard. “When George W Bush was president, they were divided about how America should use its power. With Biden entering the White House, they are divided about whether America has power at all.” The survey of 15,000 people in 11 European countries, conducted at the end of last year, found that the shift in European sentiment towards the US in the wake of the Trump presidency had led to a corresponding unwillingness to support Washington in potential international disputes
At the time that the news came out about Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR, I was in Boston (for work), the weather was biting cold, the days long and jet lag dulled my curiosity; so this post came along later than I would have liked.
The first thing that struck me was how much of the content that I had posted about the Facebook IPO and the recent WhatsApp acquisition seem to fit the Oculus acquisition as well.
How it fits into the the broader Facebook acquisition pattern
When looking at the Facebook IPO I commented that Facebook needed to look at other markets beyond online advertising whilst leveraging its existing customer base. I also made the comparison of Facebook and Xerox; in terms of its existing form being a cash generator to fund some future big bet:
I personally think that if you buy into Facebook’s future promise, Facebook looks more like Xerox. In the 1950s, the Northeastern US was the Silicon Valley of its day; with engineering and chemical factories around New Jersey and the Boston corridor through to New York being the home of the infant computer industry. Xerox was founded as a photographic supplies company that made equipment to develop photographic film, it eventually incubated its killer product – xerography which begat photocopiers and fax machines after a decades worth of work. Later on in the development period, the company invested in an insurance company to provide cash flow for future model developments. If you believe that Facebook has a bright future ahead of it, then by implication, it’s current and immediate future products like premium ads in the news feed look more like cash generative businesses to fund ‘project X’ whatever that turns out to be.
What Oculus VR, Whatsapp and Instagram represent is a spread bet on what the future is likely to be based on a few different approaches; mobile devices are important, as are lean bandwidth applications that perform well on less developed mobile networks and finally that the immersive experiences promised us by cyberpunk literature will happen .
Given that Facebook has about 100 billion dollars or so to play with it could do another two dozen such bets on the future. Oculus VR technology isn’t likely to win out when Chinese, Korean and Japanese consumer electronics brands invade the sector and bring the kind of hyper-competition that translates into razor-thin hardware margins; so the model must have some licensibility in the business model.
Google Glass is not the glasses that you are looking for
The second thing that struck me was that Facebook’s endorsement of Oculus could be viewed as a tacit acknowledgement by Facebook that Google Glass is going in the wrong direction at the moment. Oculus Rift provides an ‘in the line of sight’ view of content rather than a ‘glance up’ orientation. However Sony’s Smarteyeglass seem to be ahead of the curve on this. There is more speculation that Facebook want’s to roll out a cyberspace view of the internet promised in cyberpunk literature; however there would be a lot of work that would be needed to be done on standards and conceptual web design in order to move this idea forwards significantly.
A break in faith
The outpouring of outrage by Kickstarter fans who helped fund Oculus VR is perhaps the most interesting aspect of all this. Early adopters are often upset when their little secret becomes mainstream. It is familiar to me from club culture.
Ibiza is not like it used to be… The atmosphere went when moved from to and the crowd changed…
The implication for Kickstarter is that it will be much harder to get funding for seriously innovative tech-related projects and Oculus will have poisoned the well. Kickstarter will still work for artists looking to release albums or small short film projects and will do so very well, but it will have had its potential clipped.
I have been thinking a lot about William Gibson recently. Judging by my social feeds, the Neo Tokyo aesthetic has saturated mainstream culture (from 90s anime clips, tech wear, creator built cyber decks and Hong Kong at night) and our Silicon Valley elites sound more like Wintermute at every turn.
The K-shaped economy described by Gary Stevenson in his thesis, feels very much like the have-nots of the sprawl trilogy.
Finally, Apple is on the cusp of releasing a TV adaptation of Gibson’s first novel Neuromancernext year. So I had to post these vintage videos of Gibson as they feel so ‘now’ despite being decades old.
William Gibson talking about cyberpunk as a genre in 1990. He calls a distinctively post-modern fiction genre. In a prophetic turn they talk about the unique way in which cyberpunk has been manifested into the real world; just not in the countercultural way that Gibson envisaged. Although the relationship now between Gibson’s work and the real world are probably too close for comfort. And there is a great interview with Timothy Leary.
Related to that was the cypherpunk movement who realised that cryptography was essential to online worlds.
Cypherpunks were concerned about the government a quarter century before the Edward Snowden leaks and the algorithmic web with a web of data for sale to advertisers and bad actors.
And in this clip, William Gibson contextualises the early web in this interview
30 Years of Micro Motors to Robot Dexterous Hands: MINDSYNC TECH and Jiangsu Leili Solve the Mechanical Stiffness Problem in Humanoid Gripping – interesting article in Pandaily. It’s basically smaller sizes of strain wave gears. Back when I went to the launch of Automata’s EVA robotic arm launch, strain wave gears came up as a topic of conversation. Robotic precision focused on software because only standardised strain wave gears were available from a limited amount of suppliers like Harmonic Drive. The Chinese seem to have sidestepped this innovation pinch point with powered strain wave gears small enough to operate a robotic hand with a high degree of dexterity.
Gadgets
Open Source Vacuum Avoids Cloud | Hackaday – thanks to open source software, a Raspberry Pi board, off the shelf parts and accessible additive manufacturing there is now an open source Roomba style vacuum cleaner.
ChinAI #366: Most Companion Robots Die by Day 30 – model capabilities will become increasingly cheap, while scenario-specific evaluation datasets will become increasingly expensive. Most companion products will not die because their AI models lack power, but because users stop opening the app by Day 30.
Doubling down on manufacturing at its EV hub in Hefei, China as part of what Blume describes as an “in China for China” approach.
Exporting the cars it produces in China, in Blume’s own words, to Southeast Asia, Australia, India, South America, Africa and Europe, in what looks more like an “in China for the world” strategy (minus the US market).
Pursuing mass layoffs in Germany, while luring Chinese carmakers into the German factories that Volkswagen is struggling to sustain.
Urging the EU to accelerate and broaden its trade defense measures against Chinese competitors that are seizing market share for plug-in hybrids at an astonishing rate.
Russia’s Newest Kh-101 Cruise Missile Upgrade Points to Chinese Help | Wes O’Donnell – the recent upgrade to Russia’s Kh-101 missile capabilities owes far less to stolen Western secrets than it does to Chinese industrial hardware. Whilst espionage may have ironed out a few technical creases, Russia is quietly acquiring the machine tools and microelectronics from Chinese suppliers. These are needed to turn a dormant Soviet-era innovation into a mass-produced reality.
The rationale for putting such high-spec, durable components like single-crystal engine blades into a single-use weapon comes down to a recent design trade-off. Having substantially increased the missile’s warhead size at the expense of its fuel capacity, Russian engineers required a hotter, vastly more efficient engine to recoup the lost flight range. Manufacturing equipment sourced from Chinese vendors provided the industrial “kitchen” necessary to make this crucial engineering workaround a reality.
The 6 wildest claims in Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI | The Verge – OpenAI allegedly “coached” Apple employees on how to bypass security measures. Apple alleged Tan kept an internal document that outlines employee off-boarding procedures. OpenAI allegedly used this information to warn employees coming from Apple about the company’s security checks and “coached” them on how to avoid it.
OpenAI advised departing Apple workers not to disclose their new employer and also offered tips on how to avoid a “dreaded walk out,” which would result in their immediate removal from the company, preventing them from accessing Apple’s systems for a standard two weeks, the lawsuit alleges. OpenAI is accused of telling Apple employees not to “sign anything at the exit interview,” and if they’re asked to sign a document, to tell OpenAI “asap.”
In the lawsuit, Apple says that OpenAI’s alleged tactics “appear to be having their desired effect.” Apple claims it has noticed “a recent trend of employees who are leaving Apple for OpenAI and taking steps to evade security measures,” including workers “ignoring outreach by security personnel to schedule exit processes and security reviews.”
Secondly there is a need in Chinese culture for events to be bustling with people. I remember going to the China South City wholesale mall in the Shenzhen region. Some of the car park was converted into basketball courts so that there would be the sound of people there, even if they were having fun rather than purchasing supplies for their business.
The problem for Rolex got much worse when this story breached beyond the Chinese internet into the feeds of western watch enthusiasts.
In 2024, Oracle made a $6.5 billion deal to build an data centre complex in Malaysia from which it could supply computing power to ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, and other foreign companies. Oracle’s facility in Malaysia was soon on track to become the second-biggest in the world, providing by one estimate more than one-fifth of China’s total A.I. computing power. Ellison is now powering the A.I. ambitions of China aka America’s biggest geopolitical rival.
Cybersecurity expert Steve Sims discusses how hackers are now using AI.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp says ‘something has gone completely wrong’ with how AI is sold | CNBC – Palantir CEO Alex Karp caused a stir by discussing what he says is growing unhappiness among U.S. businesses about the costs to access models from the biggest AI companies, like OpenAI and Anthropic. And he asserted that those customers are getting “no value” from the technology.
Axios AI+ |⛽ Trading compute – 1 big thing: Wall Street wants to trade AI compute like oil. This reminded me a lot of Enron’s doomed attempt to trade bandwidth in a similar way, which was the core offering of Enron Broadband Services.
Welcome to the 36th edition of my newsletter or as a bingo caller would say ‘three dozen’. And yes that’s the most uninspired yet functional bingo lingo I’ve come across on this journey so far. 36 seemed strangely appropriate as that was the temperature inside my house on the celsius scale most days this month.
There is no fancy symbolism of the homophones in the Chinese language for 36. But The 36 Stratagems are sayings and tactical manoeuvres used in areas of Chinese life from business to politics.
My personal favourite is ‘borrow a corpse to resurrect the soul‘ – take something that has been forgotten or discarded and appropriate it for one’s own purposes.
This month’s soundtrack is by Horalion who created a divine mashup of Daft Punk and Miki Matsubara. Matsubara is famous for work in city pop and anime soundtracks. Together Something About Us and 真夜中のドア〜Stay with Me sound sublime.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things that I’ve written
I explored moral licensing from agency behaviour to a global health crisis.
Consumer grievance is coming as a steady drumbeat from consumer and economic research and has an impact on marketing.
I curated things of interest from around the web including an interview from Jensen Huang in advance of his publicly support for open models and open weight LLMs as cybersecurity tools.
ICYMI – Top five shares on LinkedIn
Global brand strategy has got harder with tainted national brands. Europeans are now torn between the US and China.
Rolex’s use of chōngchǎng (paid gig workers) as a rent a crowd in Shanghai caught the attention of watch collectors around the world
Corporate earnings skewed agency growth targets due to the artificially high values of hyperscalers.
A video where Les Binet endorse Byron Sharp’s line on loyalty.
Books that I have read
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. Gnomon is a speculative fiction book set in the near future. The UK is totally surveilled by an AI. The main character Mielikki Neith is an investigator and is looking to the death of a suspect who dies in state custody. Neith explores the neural recordings of the dissident to try and work out what happened.
The recordings consist of four surreal impossible lives, but the lives are a form of hidden code designed to affect anyone exploring them. Questions then arise about the purpose of the surveillance system and whether it has undergone what could be called ‘model drift’.
It’s not the easiest book to read, but his rewarding as Harkaway takes you through the different worlds that Neith explores and her own experience in the real world.
This month I have been working my way through Dan Wang’s Breakneck. A book that looks at China’s development versus US development, written by a Chinese author who grew up in Canada. I am almost finished and it’s very readable.
The key thrust of the book is that China is a society governed by engineers and scientists, whereas the US (and by extension much of the west for that matter) is run by lawyers. In the US and the west that breaks down slightly but the point Wang makes is China asks what’s possible, the West winds its way through restrictions. I think modernism vs. post-modernism would have been more accurate short hand descriptors; as difference goes beyond government to the ‘industrial party’ and even science fiction like Liu Cixin’s TheThree-Body Problem.
Wang’s work has started to shape how I look about the ‘why’ behind the divergent approaches to LLMs and other products between the US and the west, but more on that another time.
Things I have been inspired by.
I am a long time fan of Kevin Kelly’s writing from his work with Wired magazine to the book What Technology Wants I have found his thinking right on the money. He reframes large language models as a latent spacedue to their massive compression of knowledge and information.
For instance it knows all Shakespeare plays, and it could create a new play that sounded exactly like Shakespeare, and can even quote famous lines in his plays, but nowhere in the model are the actual texts of Shakespeare. Instead there is simply the abstract information about all the plays, the plots, the characters, the words, the style, the references.
Until recently we might have thought that all the information about a thing would take up more storage space than the thing itself. That may be true for a single thing, but not for the aggregate of all things. That is because most things share a lot of common attributes with other things. The neural nets of an LLM do a magic trick by abstracting the information of everything at once, so that it uses the myriad common relationships between things and ideas to compress and abstract them into this virtual “latent” or hidden space.
Kelly reflects on this latent space as a new form of medium, implying more potential than a productivity hack. Kelly describes this latent space as a map built in millions of dimensions making it sound like science fiction or theoretical physics.
Gig Economy in China
Inspired is the wrong word, but I was surprised and shocked to find out by a piece from Think China that 44% of the country’s workforce now work in the gig economy.
“Most human skills will endure, even as they are applied differently. Three-quarters of the skills sought by European employers today, including problem solving, writing, and research, are used in both automatable and non-automatable work. This overlap means they are more likely to be applied in collaboration with AI than replaced by it, at least in the near term.”
Things I have watched.
German TV series Where’s Wanda made some light watching as a Germany family manages to stay together while searching for their missing daughter. It’s got humour, creative problem solving and a giant Sasquatch-type creature. I will leave it there so I don’t give away any spoilers.
I rewatched To Live and Die in LA for the first time in years. The film was written and directed by William Friedkin, and second only to The French Connection in his filmography of outstanding films. William Friedkin was part of the New Hollywood movement, alongside figures like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Bogdanovich.
The screenplay was based on a book by a former Secret Service agent and documents an investigation into a talented counterfeiter. Like Michael Mann’s Thief which demonstrated how to crack a safe vault with a thermic lance, Friedkin went into detail abut the photolithographic process that counterfeiters used prior to desktop publishing. You get fantastic performances from an edgy young William Defoe and William Petersen.
I found it as enjoyable to watch as I remember but I picked up on different things, particularly the detail in Friedkin’s introduction that showed the art and grim edginess of 1980s Los Angeles with retina-burning typography, with an interesting use of fonts to give ‘place’ and the cinematography which made the city a key character.
Useful tools.
Ever done research, or tried to pull in data from a website or table and had the format go funny. You then spend an inordinate amount of time fixing it? That’s where TextSoap comes in. Its a Mac app that cleans the data that you are bringing across, It has a number of built-in cleaners or you to choice from and also allows you to create your own one using its cleaner editor.
Hookmark cleans up weblinks, this helps with bit rot since a lot of links add additional privacy related information that stops working over time.
The sales pitch.
I am a strategist who thrives on the “meaty brief”. The kind where complexity, business goals, and human culture collide, requiring synthesis into actionable insights.
I have a decade-plus of expertise across the UK, EMEA, and JAPAC, I specialise in bridging the gap between high-level strategy and creative execution. I have been embedded within Google Cloud’s brand creative team, where I helped navigate the “messy steps” of global pivots with the rapid rise of Gen AI. Following the completion of this engagement, I have continued to partner with agencies and founders on high-impact projects. My recent freelance work includes architecting the brand narrative for a fast-moving startup, driving strategic creative for new business pitches, and developing a dynamic sports partnership activation.
I focus on what works: balancing long-term brand growth with short-term sales. I don’t just write presentation decks; I build campaigns that actually ship. I’m hired to pressure-test their ideas before they go live, helping leadership teams avoid expensive mistakes. I prioritise commercial reality, smart budgets, and measurable results over cosmetic solutions.
How I help leadership teams:
Pressure-Testing: I put clarity into complex roadmaps before you commit capital.
Cultural Translation: I bridge the gap between technical infrastructure and human adoption, across EMEA/JAPAC.
Commercial Grounding: I build strategy for campaigns that ship, prioritising measurable ROI over “hype” metrics.
The Strategic Toolkit:
Brand & Creative Strategy: From B2B infrastructure to luxury travel.
AI-Enhanced Planning: Literate in Google Gemini and prompt engineering to accelerate insights and creative output.
Multi-Sector Expertise: A proven track record across Tech & SaaS (Google Cloud, Semiconductors), Consumer Goods (FMCG, Beauty, Health), and High-Interest Categories (Luxury, Sports Apparel, Pharma).
I am an operator who reads—using a deep archive of industry expertise to ensure your next pivot isn’t just “new,” but actually sustainable. If you have a challenge that requires an all-in, hit-the-ground-running strategic lead, let’s talk.
Ok this is the end of my July 2026 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other, stay cool and enjoy the sun when you can. We have less than one month to wait until the next bank holiday.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful as this helps other people and the algorithmic gods of Google Search and the various LLMs that are blurring what web search means nowadays.
PS: Why Buzz Aldrin as this month’s picture? I try and have a photo that matches the theme, in this case 36. This photo taken during the Apollo 11 mission was from the film magazine 36/N – Trans-Lunar. A tenuous but cool link.
Chinese new year CNY 2026 also known as lunar new year, spring festival or Tết festival. 2026 marks the year of the fire horse. In the same way that the Super Bowl and Christmas are the stand out times of the year for advertising in the US and Europe, CNY 2026 will be the same for much of east Asia and Southeast Asia.
There has a large amount of tradition and rituals around celebrating the festival, which are rich seams of inspiration for strategists and marketing moments.
I featured an advert from Brunei for the first time.
As with previous years, Malaysia had a lot of campaigns running, many of which were partnerships with local musicians to collaborate on a seasonal song. One of the advantages of partnering with local musicians is their ability to cross post on their own channels broadening the videos reach.
In the Malaysian adverts that were storyteller driven, coping with aging relatives suffering with dementia came through as a common social theme.
Social video has been a great leveller. I have a featured a few videos from small businesses this year which were nicely executed despite operating with minimal budgets.
Coca-Cola in China was notable in that it showed strategic thinking closer to what we now see in the west with social-first ‘Instagrammable’ tactics.
Australia
Godiva
Anywhere up to 8 percent of Australia’s population have some connection to China, which explains why Godiva have done a Chinese new year themed range of chocolates.
Brunei
Flower Journal
Flower Journal is a florist shop based in Brunei, yet they have created a cinematic advert with great storytelling. The craft is arguably better than a number of the big brands featured this year. The work by local agency Cinekota really impressed me.
China
Adidas
Adidas made a film about a school football team and focuses on how the team is a ‘football family’. Reuniting with family is an important part of lunar new year. It’s also about looking forward to the future, hence the children’s wishes.
Apple
TBWA\ Media Arts, Shanghai teamed up with film director Bai Xue for Apple’s CNY 2026 advertisement. The film joins Apple’s series of ‘shot on an iPhone‘ mini movies.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola China took a social and experiential approach focused around togetherness. A drone show in Chongqing paired with fireworks that are considered part of China’s intangible cultural heritage was supported by social video clips of a famous father and daughter.
https://flic.kr/p/2rVFjbe
All of this was to address young adults dual sense of togetherness during spring festival as mainland Chinese call CNY 2026. Being together with friends a la Friends and This Life, as well as more traditional family connections.
Valentino
Valentino put relatively subtle lunar new year symbols into a Chinese take on an American diner. The galloping horse zoetrope and red accents throughout the restaurant from neon signs to red floor tiles. As for the film itself, it’s basically a video lookbook.
Hong Kong
Hang Seng Bank
Hang Seng Bank ties into the the importance of welcoming good fortune into your life at Chinese New Year. Celebrities dress as the god of good fortune giving wishes for flourishing prosperity to different neighbourhoods across Hong Kong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqYWpeDrtZ8
Malaysia
AEON
Japanese supermarket chain AEON did a Malaysian market specific film featuring a mix of well known entertainers. The giddy up line telegraphing its horse related theme and the cultural impact of K-pop is evident in the whole video.
Affin Bank
Affin Bank is consistent in their lunar new year campaigns. Each year they tell of how a famous business customer battled adversity to succeed. This time it was Malaysian book retailer BookXcess.
Affinity
Affinity is a Malaysian estate agent. The video creative is a pretty run of the mill reenactment of Chinese new year with the horse head mask hinting at the CNY 2026 theme. The song itself is a bit an ear worm.
Air Selangor
Air Selangor hits you with a gut punch of an emotional Chinese New Year story that felt like it came straight of the Thai advertising agencies rather than Malaysia. (Thai agencies are famous for wringing you through an emotional shredder leaving you drained after an insurance ad).
Alpro
Malaysia’s largest prescription pharmacy chain put together a humorous new year film based around the mechanic of three wishes.
AmBank
The film melds together traditions around fabric sharing and lion dance to tell a Chinese new year story of a community coming together.
Astro
Astro is a Malaysian holding company that has a mix of linear TV, connected TV and radio assets. Think the reach of the BBC, but a private enterprise.
Bamboo Green Florist
Bamboo Green Florist is a single shop business based in Penang. For a small business their Chinese new year advert punches above its weight.
Coca-Cola
The first of two appearances in this list by Malaysian group 3P.
GVRide
GVRide is a Malaysian ride hailing app, they sponsored a new year song music video by Namewee alongside other brands.
IJM Land
IJM Land is a Malaysian property developer (part of a larger conglomerate). They position themselves as “one of Malaysia’s property development”. The film sits at the tension between the love of heritage, accumulating wealth and the non-monetary aspects of CNY 2026 – coming together, family, building memories and legacy.
JinYeYe
JinYeYe sell seasonal hampers, so lunar new year is their peak sales time. Their advert is targeted at the global Chinese diaspora and they partnered with Tourism Malaysia alongside local musicians. A bee is considered to a symbol of blessings and represents sweetness, hope and companionship.
https://youtu.be/0YvLVF4TJAE?si=sn4nMWPwykr7WzjM
Lee Kum Kee
Hong Kong’s Lee Kum Lee were the inventors of oyster sauce and have a place in every Asian kitchen cupboard. But their advert is weak sauce (pun intended) that could have been knocked out on PowerPoint.
Listerine
Listerine just straight up sponsored the video of Malaysian producers 1119 for this new year themed music video.
Loong Kee
Loong Kee is a Malaysian food company who makes everything from processed meats to baked goods. This is at least the third year that they have partnered with local musicians who are internet-famous to collaborate on a new year themed song.
Lotus
Lotus supermarket was formerly part of Tesco’s international footprint before the UK brand divested itself of its international stores to Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group. This advert taps into family friction and a couple of nice wushu cinema referencing touches. It reminded me a lot of SingTel’s films from previous years.
It handles the diversity of Malaysia well, without the awkward approach that Malaysian Airlines went for.
Malaysian Airlines
Malaysian Airlines focuses on Malaysians coming home. Given that the airline is a government company. While ethically Chinese, and speaking Chinese at home – the woman is a devote muslim.
In reality that’s about 1-2% of the ethnic Chinese population – for ethno-political, social and cultural reasons that I don’t want to get into on this post. The video is as much about a government approved theme as it is about the airline.
Marrybrown
Marrybrown is a Malaysian quick service restaurant. It is really nice how the story moves through time with relatively small but important cues on screen.
Maxis
Malaysian broadband provider took an unusual angle bringing together two erstwhile business rivals in a spirit of shared community.
McDonalds Malaysia
Great storytelling but with a serious topic as middle-aged siblings deal with an aging parent with signs of dementia.
Nescafé Gold
Instant coffee brand Nescafé Gold goes down the sponsored music video route. But with a few noticeable differences:
Better product placement that articulates the customer moment.
A more diverse cast than most of the other adverts.
The video title Gongxi Kemeriahan – is a mix of mandarin and malay – gongxi meaning best wishes or congratulations and kemeriahan means excitement.
All of which are likely to because of Nestlé being a western multinational and the marketers are looking to target all Malaysians rather than just ethnic Chinese.
PMG Healthcare
PMG Healthcare is a regional provider of pharmacies, medical and dental clinics to private health insurance customers.
Mr Potato
Mr Potato is a local potato chip brand in Malaysia. Their CNY 2026 advert is a spoof of the Jackie Chan kung fu film Drunken Master.
Public Bank
Public Bank is a Malaysian headquartered bank. This year they have done an AR-based activation. Each Chinese new year you can go into your bank and get a pack of red envelopes and crisp new bills to give out to family, friends and junior colleagues. So this execution makes sense.
RHB
Malaysian bank RHB continued its theme of inspiring stories told in previous Chinese New Year campaigns through to its CNY 2026 campaign. This year tells the story of Komuniti Tukang Jahit, a small tailors shop that empowers women through sewing skills and fair income opportunities.
Setia
Malaysian house builder Setia takes a lighter comedic approach telling the story of a family’s new year celebration through the eyes of its youngest member. Its lightness of tone is in contrast to other adverts this year which are more of an emotional rollercoaster.
Shopee
Singaporean e-commerce platform Shopee partnered with local act 3P to a Chinese New Year song for its Malaysian ad campaign. Thoughout Asia lunar new year songs and playlists are all over TV, films, Spotify and YouTube playlists. This leans right into that trend.
SPD Racing
SPD Racing is a small workshop that service motorcycles and sell after market parts. This short video is really nicely executed, replacing parts on the motorcycle with red fittings in the same way that people would wear new red outfits on Chinese new year for good luck.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1x7RpOLHcTA
Tenaga
Tenaga is a Malaysian electrical utility. There is a nice bit of storytelling about a lion dance troupe. This could be rerun in future years given its lack of specificity to CNY 2026.
U Mobile
U Mobile is a Malaysian wireless operator. Their advert focuses on on the travel use case over lunar new year as more people travel rather than staying at home.
UCSI University
USCI is part of Malaysia’s private education system that sprang out of the positive discrimination of successive Malaysian governments towards Malays in comparison to Chinese and South Asian Malaysians. This was enshrined in article 153 of the Malaysian constitution, New Economic Policy, National Development Policy, National Vision Policy and the concept of Ketuanan Melayu which continues to be a pillar of government decision-making.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILuFokNxHck
In common with several other films here this year it focuses on the treasure of memories built over the festival and also has a dementia plot line.
Vida C
Vida C is kind of like an energy drink, in a number of Asian countries high vitamin C content is used in the same way that taurine and caffeine are in western energy drinks. They did a relatively subtle product placement in this comedic music video. It’s much less PC than western multinationals would allow.
Watsons
Watson’s is the Boots of Asia. Like previous years it tells a story of family coming together with the joy and chaos that usually ensues. It features Maria Cordero – a Macau born entertainer, radio and TV personality with a famous cooking show based in Hong Kong – but known throughout the region.
Singapore
Carlsberg
Carlsberg launched a pan-Asian campaign with a mix of horse themed packaging design and having it promoted by SKAI ISYOURGOD – a popular Malaysian rapper with appeal across Asia.
https://flic.kr/p/2rVJfn9
FairPrice
Singapore supermarket chain FairPrice focused on the small family moments of the new year celebrations and their ability to build lasting memories. The advert was created by TBWA\ Singapore.
Grab
At first I thought that this ad was aimed at the Malaysian market, but I think it’s aimed at both Singapore and Malaysia. It would work in either, even though some of the brands are Malaysia only like JayaGrocer. It’s unusual because of the amount of brand collabs in it, count them:
Vinda tissues
7Up
GXBank
Jasmine SunWhite Rice
JayaGrocer
Kyochon Chicken
Oriental Kopi
Subway
Secondly, there was the filming of an ad within the ad concept that Orson Welles would have enjoyed.
LVMH
LVMH’s drinks portfolio has been suffering from declining sales. Family get togethers are an ideal consumption moment, so it makes sense that Hennessy leant in with special packaging and a Singapore family reunion ‘kit’.
https://flic.kr/p/2rVCZcR
SIMBA
Australian owned mobile network SIMBA did a very simple sales promotion which is very much in keeping with its value proposition , but the horses are nicely done.
Singapore government
A comedic short film with relatively light social engineering aiming at harmonious relationships and community during CNY 2026. The family were framed as being salt-of-the-earth Singaporean Chinese living in old HDB flat. The universal food photography was very on point.
Taiwan
Coca-Cola
Coke did a really simple sales promotion with a giveaway competition attached to each purchase.
United States
Panda Express
Panda Express is an American fast food chain that specialises in American Chinese food. It kind of sits outside usual lunar new year traditions becoming a Roald Dahl style fantasy.
Vietnam
Coca-Cola
Really simple creative by Coca-Cola. They missed a trick by not creating something as iconic as the US Coca-Cola truck adverts. Instead they phoned in the creative with this spot.
Ensure Gold
Abbott Health’s Ensure Gold is a Complan-type drink designed to fortify health and restore strength. The film uses family union traditions to focus on the past, recover during the Tết festival and look to the future with a shared sense of resilience. The theme is even reflected when the family does traditional ancestor worship and we hear the wishes of their departed family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdSib8exz6I
Home Credit
Home Credit are an online financial services company. They provide credit cards, vehicle loans, pre-payment accounts and instalment payments for consumer products. The advert focuses on everyday people and how they prepare for Tết, including decorating the home, getting new clothes and a new karaoke machine for the family gathering.
Mirinda
Mirinda is a Vietnamese soft drinks brand similar to Tango. Their adverts were noticeable for their shortness. They were running 3 five-second spots and two 15-second spots. No real story, but there is energy, brand colours feature heavily and it gives off a joyous vibe.
MyKingdom
MyKingdom is a Vietnamese toy retailer similar to Toys R Us. Their mobile first content focuses on the challenges of parents looking to buy toys that will last longer than the spring festival.
Sunhouse is a home electronics brand. Everything from kitchen appliances to to cookware.
In the advert, they focus on starting the new year healthy, there is a belief in starting the new year as you would like it to go on.
Viettel
Wireless carrier Viettel subverts the idea of a family reunion storyline during Tết. Instead when the family can’t come home, an uncle visits his family members around the country.
As I find more CNY 2026 campaigns I will add them here.
