7:30 AM
REGISTRATION
9:00 AM
Welcome Address by the Chair – Andreas Vogiatzakis
Executive Director, AMVPLUS ADVISORY
9:15 AM
SESSION 1: FROM FARM TO BRAND ICON
How Purpose-Led Brand Building Turned a Humble Dairy Farm into a Nationally Recognised Symbol of Trust
Founded in 2009 with just 60 cows, Loi Tuan Ee built Farm Fresh by applying marketing discipline where it matters most: Product Truth, Brand Clarity, and Executional rigour. In this session, Loi will share how a mission-led business becomes a competitive marketing system – shaping positioning, portfolio focus, pricing confidence, and precise segment targeting. He will share how these fundamentals unlock distinctive brand ideas, including the recent “Orange” campaign, and why consistency across touchpoints – not tactical noise or discounts – is what builds memorability, trust, scale, and long-term brand growth.
Speaker:
Loi Tuan Ee, Group Managing Director
Farm Fresh Berhad, Malaysia
10:00 AM
SESSION 2: BOLDNESS BUILDS TRAFFIC
Making Noise That Sells: How Etika Turns Disruption into Demand
In crowded categories where attention is scarce and budgets are finite, playing safe is the fastest way to be ignored! This interesting presentation will share how Etika Group of Companies has used bold, unconventional guerrilla marketing tactics to cut through clutter, spark conversation, and drive real commercial outcomes for its brand portfolio. From disproportionate noise to real traffic, the session shows how bold timing, executional bravery, and unexpected surprises turn attention into action.
Speaker:
Amy Gan, Vice President, Marketing
Etika Group of Companies
10:45 AM
COFFEE BREAK
11:15 AM
SESSION 3: WHY B2B NEEDS B2C THINKING
Lessons from Consumer Marketers: Ramping-up B2B Brand Strategy
through B2C Ideas and Thinking
This session will share a first-hand account of a B2C marketer’s successful transition into the B2B environment, highlighting critical shifts in mindset and strategy. Gladys will share how B2B brand strategy can be strengthened by adopting proven B2C mindsets and experiences. While audiences differ, core principles such as trust, emotion, storytelling, and relevance remain universal. Drawing on real B2C case insights, the session highlights how consumer-driven skills translate into complex B2B contexts. It also offers practical ways to integrate B2C ideas into B2B planning, encouraging B2B marketers to be more creative, take smart risks, and build brands that genuinely connect.
Speaker:
Gladys Goh, President
Nippon Paint Marine Coatings, Japan
12:00 PM
SESSION 4: CASH IS GETTING GHOSTED
From Payment to Power: Are eWallets Quietly Taking Over Brand
Influence in Malaysia?
Digital wallets are no longer just payment tools; they are becoming powerful brand touchpoints that influence how consumers discover, choose, and stay loyal to brands. As wallets evolve into everyday financial platforms, they are reshaping expectations around convenience, trust, rewards, and seamless experiences across the customer journey. This session will explain how accelerating wallet adoption in Malaysia is changing purchase behaviour, data access, and engagement opportunities, and how brands can unlock new pathways to conversion, loyalty, and long-term relevance in a cashless economy.
Speakers:
Ganesan Periakarruppan, Principal, Ipsos Strategy3, Malaysia
Kuan Sawu Fang, Senior Client Officer, Ipsos Malaysia
12:30 PM
LUNCH
2:00 PM
SESSION 5: BRUTALLY FRANK: 2 MARKETERS! NO SPIN!
No Spin Marketing: Brutal Answers and Workable Solutions to Your
Challenges from the Frontline!
From insights to brand building. From trade marketing to pricing. From communications to leading marketing teams across B2C and B2B. Enough theory. Enough recycled frameworks. This is your chance to Just Ask the Practitioners who’ve actually done the work. They have fixed what was broken, scaled what mattered, and delivered results when it counted.
Bring your toughest challenges. The uncomfortable ones. The “we’ve tried everything” ones. Pile up your questions. Fire them in real time.
Walk away with sharp, practical, no-nonsense ideas, hard-earned lessons, and solutions you can implement immediately — from those who’ve been in the trenches and won.
2:45 PM
SESSION 6: ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL: DEAD!
Case Studies: How Culture and Audience Insight Drive Breakthrough Campaigns and
Platform-Specific Content in Malaysia
In multi-ethnic Malaysia, one-size-fits-all brand building no longer works. Grounded in relevant and local case studies across different industries, demonstrates how localised, audience-first and culture-led strategies can serve as a powerful extension to global rollouts by delivering stronger engagement, deeper brand resonance, and measurable business impact; i.e. engagement, traffic and conversion. It also explains why platforms such as short-form video, social commerce, and emerging community networks like RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and Threads as well as other platform shifts and changes require distinct content and distribution approaches, and why treating them as interchangeable channels is a critical strategic mistake.
Speakers:
Kyian Keith, Partner & Director
Ju Yi Wong, PR & Influencer Marketing Engagement Manager
REISE Digital Malaysia
3:30 PM
TEA BREAK
4:00 PM
SESSION 7: ECOMMERCE VISIBILITY TO CONVERSION
Case Studies: Competing on the eCommerce Digital Shelf for Conversion and ROI
This presentation will share ideas and insights if your brand is striving to increase traffic and conversion in the eCommerce channel. In Malaysia’s eCommerce economy, brands win through visibility, relevance and conversion at the exact moment of intent. This session will share and advise how you must rethink eCommerce marketing through the lens of the Digital Shelf where the key pillars – Search, Media, Content and Pricing collide. Through real market experiences, KP will reveal how data-driven eCommerce strategies are redefining brand growth, and what brand builders must change today to stay competitive and win in the competitive eCommerce channel tomorrow.
Speaker:
Kshitij Pradeep, Head of eCommerce, Omnicom Media Malaysia
4:45 PM
SESSION 8: SUBSIDIES, SWINGS, SPEND
New Realities: How Malaysia’s Policy Shifts Are Reshaping Buyer
Behaviour & The Market Ecosystem
This presentation will unpack among others, how policy shifts and targeted social initiatives are reshaping consumer confidence, spending priorities, and category performance in Malaysia. It will examine demand swings driven by inflation, cost-of-living pressures, and changing household status, and how income segments are reallocating budgets and making trade-offs. Key questions include which categories and channels are proving resilient and gaining, where slowdowns are emerging, and how sentiment is evolving. The session will spotlight growth pockets and strategic implications, offering data-driven guidance on positioning, pricing, and marketing decisions for Q3 & Q4 2026 and into 2027.
Speakers:
Ang Swee Teng, Account Director
Jennifer Ng, Account Director
Numerator Malaysia
5:30 PM
Day 1 Concludes
In addition, and in-between for 2 days: Ten 60-Seconds Actionable Ideas and Tips
AI for ACTIVATIONS: From Leads to Lifecycle: Turning AI into Measurable Revenue Acceleration Across Every Channel
Speaker:
XP Ng, CEO, DriveFunnels Malaysia
Lead generation is vanity. Activation is revenue. While most teams celebrate impressions and clicks, competitive advantage is now built in what happens after the lead — conversion, enablement, orchestration, and lifecycle monetisation.
In Ten sharp 60-second bursts, this session strips away AI hype and focuses on execution: activating sales teams, automating nurture, optimising CRM intelligence, and driving multi-channel momentum at scale.
From automotive to FMCG to property, the message is blunt — AI is no longer experimental. If it’s not activating growth across your funnel, it’s exposing your complacency.
7:30 AM
REGISTRATION
9:00 AM
Welcome Address by the Chair - Andreas Vogiatzakis
Executive Director, AMVPLUS ADVISORY
09:15 AM
SESSION 1: DEFYING MARKET LEADERS
Nongshim in Malaysia:
Winning Amidst Heritage Brands in a Brutally
Competitive Category
This session will share how Nongshim built a strong foothold in Malaysia’s instant noodle market, gaining share in a brutally competitive category dominated by long-established heritage brands. Through clear premium positioning, targeting, rising consumer affinity for Korean culture, and sharply relevant marketing, Shin Ramyun differentiated itself and continues to build a loyal consumer base. The interesting presentation will reveal how focused brand strategy, disciplined distribution, and consistent communication helped Nongshim beat the odds, gain share rapidly, and emerge as a formidable challenger brand in a tough local marketplace.
Speaker:
Mohan Alagappar, GM & Director
GBA Corporation Malaysia
10:00 AM
SESSION 2: COLLAB! VISION! VELOCITY!
The Siti Khadijah Story: How Strategic Clarity Drove Sustained Growth
This session will share how disciplined marketing strategy transformed Siti Khadijah into a category leader in modest fashion. It unpacks how a partnership between Siti Khadijah’s leadership team and Roar Point focused on fundamentals: market segmentation, portfolio clarity, brand architecture, pricing discipline, and execution rigour. Instead of reinvention or short-term tactics, the work centered on sharper strategic choices and organisational alignment. The session also examines what made the partnership effective, from leadership alignment and intellectual rigour to speed of execution and trust in expertise. Together, these elements delivered sustained, scalable growth, including a 170% revenue increase within three years, and built competitive advantage.
Speakers:
Mohammad Munzir Aminuddin, Group CEO
Siti Khadijah / Enda Group, Malaysia
Long Yun Siang, Managing Partner
Roar Point, Malaysia
10:45 AM
COFFEE BREAK
11:15 AM
SESSION 3: MEDIA: REACH OR CREDIBILITY?
Beyond Reach: How Trust, Credibility, and Discoverability Will Redefine
Media Effectiveness for Brands
Media penetration trends are clear; reach alone is no longer the strategic challenge. What’s shifting is how audiences trust media; and how that trust reshapes consumption and influence. As confidence in unregulated digital creators softens and credibility anchors remain strong in mainstream channels, brands must rethink where belief is built, not just impressions bought. This session will share DATA & INSIGHTS, and challenge marketers to look beyond optimisation of reach and cost, exploring how credibility, regulation, and authority can become competitive advantages as brands are increasingly required to be discoverable, cited, and trusted inside AI-generated answers through stronger GEO foundations.
Speaker:
Yong Shel Vei, Senior Director
Annalect Malaysia
12:00 PM
SESSION 4: AI IS EATING SEARCH!
Beware Marketers! AI Platforms are Hijacking How People Search &
Decide, Rewriting the Rules for
Brand Building
This data-supported revealing session will explore how AI tools such as Gemini, Copilot or ChatGPT are evolving into powerful discovery and search platforms, challenging traditional engines like Google. It will share the implications for user and consumer behaviour, how insights are generated, and the resulting impact on brands and marketers. Using relevant local case studies, the session will highlight how AI-driven search will reshape decision-making and engagement, outlining key opportunities and challenges for marketers navigating the growing AI-Search era.
Speaker:
Jonathan James, Regional Lead for Agencies and Consultancies
Similarweb APAC
12:45 PM
LUNCH
2:15 PM
SESSION 5: INSIGHTS! INSIGHTS! INSIGHTS!
The Predictive Edge: Unpublished Useful Insights Defining the AI-Age Consumer
When research delivers meaningful insights, data transforms from passive reporting into strategic direction. In today’s algorithm-driven noise, competitive advantage lies in uncovering the DEEP INSIGHTS; human truths conventional dashboards fail to detect. In this high-velocity briefing, Julie and Ellana will share fresh, unpublished Malaysian data to surface what’s really shifting in 2026 and 2027. The session will reveal emerging lifestyle segments across key FMCG categories, expose overlooked retail nuances in East Malaysia, and unpack how AI is reshaping product discovery pathways. It will clarify evolving Gen Z and Millennial mindsets amid fluid loyalty – equipping Brand Builders with sharper insight, stronger conviction, and clearer decisions grounded in real market signals.
Speakers:
Julie Ng, CEO & Co-Founder
Ellana Selvaraj, Head of Market Research
& Customer Success
Vase.ai Market Research
3:00 PM
SESSION 6: ENGINEERING INSTINCTIVE CONVERSION
Heuristics in Marketing: How Brands Hack Attention, Trigger Decisions,
and Turn Instinct into Revenue
People don’t decide the way marketers like to believe they do. They are predictably irrational. They react – fast, emotional, instinctive – then justify later. People reach for mental shortcuts like scarcity, anchoring, familiarity, and social proof in their decision making. From “20% fat-free” labels and countdown deals to instalments, nostalgia, and algorithmic nudges, brands quietly design “friction and ease” to steer behaviour. This session will decode how heuristics, emotion, data, personalisation, and AI now shape attention, pricing, and conversion – and why brands built for instinct consistently beat those built for logic, while also examining the ethical line between nudge and manipulation.
Speaker:
Kiron Kesav, Chief Strategy Officer APAC
PHD
3:45 PM
TEA BREAK
4:15 PM
SESSION 7: NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR BRAND!
Stop Optimising What’s Easy to Measure. Start Building What Actually
Makes People Care
Brands don’t have an engagement problem. They have a meaning deficit. In a world obsessed with hyper-personalisation, dashboards, and relentless optimisation, brands are everywhere — and increasingly irrelevant. Drawing on over two decades of experience helping organisations get unstuck, PiWo challenges the industry’s comfort with data, frameworks, and “best practices,” and instead ASKS THE HARDER, MORE UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS about what truly moves customers. This session cuts through noise and clichés to reframe relevance into resonance, urging marketers such as you to stop optimising for attention and efficiency, and start building brands that stand for something, and therefore, matter.
Speaker:
PiWo Chia, Founder and CEO
Idealogic Lab
5:00 PM
END of BFM Brandfest 2026