How Malaysia’s agencies are reshaping talent, tech and creativity in 2026

As 2026 approaches, agency leaders say the biggest changes in the creative industry aren’t driven by technology alone, but by how talent, collaboration, and culture are reshaping the way agencies work. After a challenging 2025, agencies are looking ahead with renewed energy and optimism, rethinking traditional big-team models in favour of leaner, specialist-driven structures.

AI and other tools are still speeding up work and surfacing insights, but leaders emphasise they can’t replace human creativity. The real edge comes from campaigns that are culturally aware and insight-led, resonating with audiences in context and community.

Connected ecosystems are replacing isolated campaigns, blending data, media, CX, and storytelling into seamless experiences. Meanwhile, money is flowing into immersive experiences, lean teams, and collaborative networks. Ultimately, culture emerges as the central focus. Whether it's about staying rooted in it or fostering supportive environments within agencies.

Below, A+M spoke with creative agency leaders in Malaysia to find out what’s top of their mind and how they are preparing for the next wave of industry change.

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Emir Shafri, chief creative officer of Publicis Groupe Malaysia

The past few years have been all about how: how to use tools such as Gen-AI to make work faster, prettier, and, let’s be honest, cheaper. But standing out through how is getting harder by the day. Anyone with curiosity and a Wi-Fi connection can make something look good with these tools. What will truly set us apart now is the why.

In 2026, creativity will belong to those who aren’t just better at how to produce work for people, but why their work should matter to them.

For us, it’s about fusing 'Human intelligence' with 'Artificial intelligence', not chasing tools merely for speed, but using them to fuel how we decode people, culture and context in real time. All to see audiences not just as datasets, but as human beings in all their beautifully messy, nuanced complexity.

In 2026, thriving will mean staying as obsessed with the why as we’ve been with the how. As we enter the age of AI slop at scale, the future belongs to those who stay deeply human: using tech not to replace instinct, but to amplify empathy. Or as the late legendary filmmaker and former Leo Malaysia ECD, Yasmin Ahmad, said, it’s about being “sharp observers with sensitive hearts”.

Farrah Harith-McPherson, chief growth officer of Naga DDB Tribal

The next big wave of change in the creative industry isn’t about moving from campaigns to connected experiences, and we’re already on that journey. The real shift lies in maturing this model: creativity, culture, data, and technology working in true sync to build brand ecosystems that are consistent, continuous, and culturally relevant.

AI will increasingly support insight mining, creative development, versioning, and optimisation, helping teams deliver sharper work faster. Clients are choosing ecosystems over single agencies, and Naga has built the Naga Network to assemble the right mix of specialist expertise while staying agile.

Hyper-local relevance is key, with cultural storytelling in Malaysia becoming more fluid, community-driven, and integrated across content ecosystems and social commerce. Looking to 2026, our investments will focus on immersive experiences such as AR/VR, AI collaboration, system integration, and embedding tech locally, while budgeting prioritises shared capabilities, lean talent, new revenue streams, and a supportive culture.

The ultimate focus meanwhile, is to build the Naga Network into a truly collaborative creative ecosystem, unlocking efficiency, creative quality, and sustainable growth. This will give clients seamless access to broader capabilities, giving talent richer opportunities, and allowing us to stay efficient while maintaining high creative standards. More importantly, it positions us not just as a creative shop, but as a connected partner that can solve problems holistically.

If we execute this well, it strengthens our entire value chain and sets us up for meaningful, sustainable growth.

Sharifah Menyalara Hussein (Lara Hussein), CEO and founding partner of M+C Saatchi Malaysia

The next big wave of change in the creative industry is how we think about creativity. Brands no longer live in single campaigns or at a single touchpoint. Consumers move across multiple platforms, including WhatsApp, TikTok, live experiences, even in real-world environments, often simultaneously.

This means we need to orchestrate connected ecosystems where every interaction works together seamlessly. It’s not just about execution; it’s about thinking differently across strategy, culture, and creative. AI plays a key role in this shift, but its impact is in execution, not in strategy.

AI helps us work faster, access data more efficiently, and raise the baseline of what agencies can deliver, but it can’t replicate the originality or cultural instinct that drives great creative.

Cultural relevance is central to everything we do. At M+C Saatchi Malaysia, we’ve developed a tool called Cultural Power—a proprietary strategic approach that uncovers the unspoken values, symbols, and societal tensions shaping consumer behaviour. Using AI-enhanced analysis and expert-led workshops, it helps us translate insights into campaigns that resonate authentically and emotionally from day one.

In 2026, our focus is to operate as a truly local agency that is locally managed, consistent in leadership and able to respond to the market in real time. We're keeping lean and agile while investing in the right people, which are talent with the skills and instincts to deeply understand Malaysian culture and turn that understanding into meaningful work. At the end of the day, creativity is still at the heart of everything we do. We just need to be more efficient and more passionate about it so we can create value and meaningful work for our clients.


Joyce Gan, partner and group client services director of Fishermen Integrated

While AI dominates headlines when we talk about “change,” my personal belief is that the shift that will impact the creative industry most is talent. Post-Covid, and with AI now in the picture, people simply don’t work like it’s 2019 anymore. This isn’t just a generational behaviour but a structural evolution, driven by several forces. The rise of freelancers and fractional specialists, young talent rejecting the old grind culture, cross-agency collaboration becoming normalised, and growing time pressures with higher expectations and profit demands are all reshaping the landscape.

Because of these forces, the old agency model is cracking.

The traditional structure of big teams, fixed roles, and long hours is becoming less relevant and less effective. Agencies must rethink how they assemble talent, collaborate, and operate. This also means client procurement needs to evolve; after decades, we remain stuck in man-hours, rate cards, and timesheets, when pricing should be based on quality of output, not hours spent.

The future of creative agencies should be defined by elasticity, intelligence, and shared value. Scale will not be about headcount but access—to specialists, part-time experts, industry veterans, niche agencies, and fractional strategists who can contribute when it matters. Talent curation, not possession, is the real competitive advantage. AI is only an ingredient; actual intelligence and human insight remain irreplaceable.

Nizwani Shahar, CEO of Havas Malaysia

The next year will be the year Malaysia’s creative industry moves from integration to intelligence. The next wave won’t just be about technology; it will be about how human creativity and machine intelligence can truly co-exist to drive brand meaning and commercial growth. AI will no longer be a tool but a partner to help us think faster, predict better, and personalise deeper.

At Havas, our focus will be on building an intelligent creative ecosystem where data, media, CX, and storytelling are designed to work in orchestration. We’re investing in tools that close the gap between content and customer experience, and more importantly, invest in people who can translate insights into ideas that move culture. 

From a budgeting lens, 2026 will be about precision - fewer, bigger, bolder bets that deliver both performance and purpose.

Ultimately, our ambition remains simple: to create work that’s meaningful, measurable, and human — powered by intelligence yet anchored in empathy. Because technology may change the way we work, but creativity will always define why we work.

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