Balancing AI efficiency with human empathy: Key takeaways from ‘Grow with Braze Asia’

The marketing landscape has reached a decisive tipping point. As personalisation becomes the baseline expectation, trust has emerged as the new primary currency in customer engagement.

At the recent “Grow with Braze Asia” forum in Singapore, more than 250 industry leaders from across the region gathered to discuss how brands can navigate this shift by balancing machine-driven speed with human nuance.

The rise of ‘human-centred’ life cycle thinking

Opening the keynote session, Nate Kwok, life cycle marketing lead at Canva, addressed the central paradox of modern marketing: while we have more data and AI capability than any previous generation, many brands are still struggling to create programmes that truly resonate.

Kwok argued that while AI is an incredible tool for scaling and optimisation, it lacks the essential human qualities of judgment, emotional intelligence, and creative taste. He introduced the concept of “human-centred life cycle thinking”, a philosophy that places human emotions and needs at the heart of messaging.

To illustrate this, he shared Canva’s approach to its “Canva Create” conference campaign. Rather than a purely functional ticket-sale journey, the team developed a “feelings-first” strategy.

By identifying a core human problem – that people often feel lonely or socially awkward attending conferences solo – Canva created a “bring your team” or “bring your work bestie” campaign. The result was a human open rate of 29%, triple the normal benchmark, and 865,000 clicks back to the product.

Navigating the AI maturity gap

As Southeast Asia moves from AI experimentation to mainstream usage, a significant trust maturity gap has appeared. Sam Meyer, area vice president for Asia at Braze, noted that while 93% of marketers in Asia believe AI provides more accurate insights, only 53% of consumers feel truly “seen” by brands.

Meyer identified three critical trends for customer engagement:

• Closing the perception gap: Brands must move beyond possessing data to validating it and ensuring it translates into a better user experience.
• The rise of AI intermediaries: With more consumers using AI agents to interact with brands, maintaining a direct and value-added relationship is vital.
• The human connection: Machine efficiency is an amplifier, but the best engagement remains rooted in an empathetic, human-led review.

The fine line between personalisation and presumption

This tension between efficiency and empathy was explored deeply in a panel discussion focusing on responsible AI. Moderated by Zon Lim, vice president of marketing, APJ and MEA at Braze, the panel tackled how brands can automate conversations without losing customer trust.

Vikas Chanani, vice president of multi-brand and MVNO partnership (Giga) at StarHub, argued that responsible AI should reduce customer effort, but requires strict human guardrails. He noted that hyper-personalisation crosses the line when a customer asks: “How does this brand know this about me?” instead of thinking: “Wow, this is useful.”

Andrew Elturk, country lead at Contentsquare, added that AI is only as good as the behavioural data feeding it. He stressed that brands must look beyond acquiring the first purchase to solve for the “10th conversion” which is where true growth and loyalty lie.

Meanwhile, Mitra Daram, chief executive officer at CustomerIK, offered a practical framework for marketers: the “explainability test”.

“If you can explain why you are sending a message because the person did a specific action, you are in the safe zone,” Daram said. If a marketer cannot trace a campaign back to a concrete customer signal, the brand risks being perceived as intrusive.

Moving from signal to scale: The Endowus perspective

Endowus is a fee-only, MAS-regulated wealth platform, built on the belief that clients deserve institutional-quality investing at low and fair fees. Daniel Choo, senior growth lead at Endowus, shared the goal was never a race to the lowest acquisition cost, but building a wealth partnership that compounds over decades.

Central to that is knowing which signals actually matter. “The most dangerous signal isn’t a client redeeming their investments, but indifference. When a client goes quiet, that’s when you should take note,” Choo said.

To stay ahead of that window, Endowus uses Amplitude to surface behavioural patterns that indicate growing client commitment, and Braze to act on them through personalised and timely engagement designed around intrinsic motivations rather than promotional incentives.

“We’re not trying to bribe clients into staying. We’re trying to make sure they always have a reason to come back.”

Building foundations for contextual intelligence

Vasu Venkataraman, director of activation at PropertyGuru, discussed the unique challenges of building engagement systems for infrequent, but intense user journeys, where data is abundant, stakes are high, and what drives confident decisions is intelligence that’s timely and trusted.

Building that intelligence requires moving beyond raw page views to understanding a user's specific life stage and intent at a granular level, across multiple contextual layers. This enables hyper-personalised alerts for home seekers, value-led market insights for homeowners, and performance intelligence that cuts through volume for agents, all orchestrated in real time.

Venkataraman stressed that an integrated tech stack, unified data, and connected teams working towards shared goals are non-negotiable foundations for this level of orchestration.

Building an award-winning retention machine: How Viu automates personalisation

Taking home the AI-Powered Personalisation accolade at the Grow with Braze Honours Awards 2026, Viu was recognised for building a formidable “retention machine” that reduced long-term user inactivity by 96%.

Carrie Tong, assistant vice president of digital strategy and growth at Viu, showcased how the streaming platform achieved this by using AI to completely rewrite the rules of customer engagement. Moving away from static demographic segments, Viu leverages AI to continuously score viewing behaviour, tracking genres, content recency, and breadth of taste.

This implicit data, combined with explicit signals gathered through interactive gamified messages, allows the platform to dynamically group users into eight distinct personality types such as the “trend tracer” or the “hidden gem hunter”.

“These aren’t just generic labels,” said Tong, explaining these dynamic tags act as the engine for an intricate messaging strategy.

The result is a highly orchestrated journey where what a user watches at night directly influences the push notification they receive the next morning, which links to a personalised playlist on the home page, creating a journey where every touchpoint feels connected.

To scale this hyper-personalised approach across multiple markets, Viu also employs AI copywriters to generate on-brand, tailored messaging – proving that when executed correctly, automation can enhance rather than replace the human connection.

Grow with Braze Honours Awards 2026

The path forward

As the forum concluded, the consensus among leaders was clear: AI is not a replacement for human creativity, but a catalyst for it. By prioritising data hygiene, cultural alignment, and emotional resonance, brands can move beyond tactical notifications to build lifelong partnerships with their customers.

Acknowledgements

This event and article were made possible by our partner Braze.

Braze is a comprehensive customer engagement platform that powers interactions between consumers and the brands they love, helping marketers ingest and process customer data in real time to orchestrate contextually relevant campaigns.

To learn more about how Braze can help you increase engagement and elevate your customer experience, visit https://www.braze.com.