With fragmented information and complex behavior, capturing true brand insights is harder than ever. Surveys often say “health first,” yet real choices show “price and taste first,” leading to misjudgments.

In the face of a reality where data is accurate, behaviors are fragmented, and motivations remain hidden, how can brands reconstruct their insight framework? By integrating results, behaviors, and psychology, how can brands identify false needs and uncover underlying motivations, reconnect with human nature, and ultimately strengthen decision-making capability and ROI?

KitKat, originally a British chocolate brand, has sustained strong sales for over 45 years while developing a unique path in Japan. Through the phonetic link between its name and “good luck” (Kitto Katsu), it has become a symbol of encouragement during exam seasons. This has extended into mail-able gift packs, regional editions, and seasonal launches, with over 400 flavors to date—evolving into a collectible and a cultural icon embedded in everyday rituals.

This also highlights a key insight: data can tell us what consumers watch and buy, but not why a brand gains emotional and cultural meaning. In a category shaped by emotion and culture, consumers are not just buying products, but a lifestyle and a sense of identity.

So the questions are:

• How can brands go beyond data to identify and amplify cultural resonance?

• How can cultural narratives be translated into product experience and content?

• How can brands avoid common pitfalls and build lasting cultural relevance?

(Source: KitKat Japan)

In bilibili’s 2025 “Top Products” list released earlier this year, food & beverage consumption is clearly becoming more emotion-driven. Around 40% of the featured products are IP collaborations, showing that younger consumers are no longer just paying for taste, but for emotions, passions, and a sense of belonging.

At the same time, while AI is boosting content production efficiency, it also risks creating homogenized, “machine-made” content. In an era where attention is lost in seconds, how can brands truly capture young audiences and build deeper emotional connections? Short-term sensory appeal may drive traffic, but high-quality content remains the most authentic and lasting way to engage.

As "consumer insights" are repeatedly mentioned and gradually become a safe but hollow buzzword, marketers may need a more honest conversation that does not shy away from real-world friction:

When insights enter the decision room, are they truly the starting point of decisions, or merely used afterward to justify outcomes?

When insights conflict with growth targets, resource constraints, or personal judgment, how do brands actually make trade-offs?

And which insights, seemingly right in direction, fail to be executed due to timing, organizational, or cost constraints?

This panel brings together consultants and leading brands to discuss both methodology and frontline practice. Focusing on how insights are generated, evaluated, prioritized, and executed, the session will explore a critical question: in an increasingly uncertain business environment, how can consumer insights genuinely support key decisions and be translated into sustainable growth capabilities?

In the era of short video and social media, content is the main battlefield for brand growth. Yet many still follow the old “produce, post, wait” logic, resulting in short-lived, low-efficiency work. An effective system should be productized—modular, multi-platform, and reusable.

Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke created a global template; McDonald’s built modular “Hash Brown at Breakfast” assets; Saturnbird unified its story under “Sustainable Coffee Living”; Eastroc activated modules like “hard work” and “late-night hustle.” Each turned content into repeatable growth assets—extending lifecycle, broadening reach, maximizing ROI.

In a culture chasing virality, how can brands build a sustainable content system that transforms one idea into a long-term, reusable asset?

As more Asian companies pursue international expansion, many face a common challenge: strong success at home does not automatically translate into success abroad. Building brands and businesses across markets requires more than exporting products or scaling distribution. It requires the right operating model, capabilities, talent, cultural understanding, and brand-building system to support sustainable growth. This session explores the organizational and marketing realities behind global expansion and offers a practical perspective on what it takes to build the foundations for long-term international success.

 * Includes a tasting session where we reimagine the format of convenience food.

In a fast-moving creative landscape, brands are often caught in a cycle where attention peaks quickly and disappears just as fast. Yet brands that truly commit to long term personality building are rarely those making bigger marketing moves. Instead, they focus on turning small, but punchy creative ideas into lasting assets — ideas that become memories, transcending the familiarity of everyday life so relationships between people and brands flourish long term.

 - At a music festival, we Unusual Service reframed marshmallows as “emotional remedies”. Through role play, culinary doctors delivered playful diagnoses and prescribed marshmallow treatments such as heartbreak menders or scurvy busters, replacing transaction with care and building emotional connection.

 - To mark the launch of a new book, one brand translated mischievous storytelling into a multi-sensory chocolate experience, turning narrative twists into unpredictable flavour moments and words into mouthfeel, allowing the story to move off the page and into the body.

 - Addressing a real frustration for their target audience in shared living environments, Domino’s transformed disposable pizza packaging into a reusable security device, shifting the brand from a one-off consumption moment to a lasting presence in the home.

 - To celebrate both a historical and cultural holiday a pizza brand wanted to transform a savoury cult classic into a portable brand artefact that travelled beyond the meal occasion, keeping the flavour “on the lips” in both a literal and cultural sense. Come and try it for yourself. Also you’ll have the chance to blind taste test some familiar flavour in an unfamiliar form. Curiosity required.

In this interactive session, the UK-based Unusual Service team will share their long term perspective, offering brands inspiration for fun, concrete creative actions that do not just generate attention, but stay, are used, and become part of everyday life.

The Chinese market is entering a new and unfamiliar era: slower growth, intensified competition, and a shift toward zero-sum dynamics. Traditional innovation formulas are rapidly losing their effectiveness. While new product launches continue to increase, fewer are delivering meaningful growth. The food and beverage industry in China is now confronting the reality of “innovation inefficiency” alongside rising “innovation anxiety.”

With traffic reaching its ceiling and homogenization accelerating, blockbuster products may seem like a shortcut, yet often lead brands into deeper competition and uncertainty. The question is no longer whether to innovate, but how to innovate effectively.

This session will unpack how functional, emotional, and social values are being redefined, and introduce three high-impact innovation strategies for the “age of intense competition,” helping brands navigate uncertainty and unlock more sustainable growth.

As a traditional meat brand, Shuanghui has recently stood out in marketing. In Meituan Instashopping’s latest scenario-based brand ranking, Shuanghui placed in the top 10 across multiple occasions—from breakfast and afternoon tea to workplace meals, local leisure, and travel—and even outperformed snack brands like Lay’s and Want Want in the “late-night cravings” scenario.

From selling products to owning occasions, and from functional consumption to emotional connection, Shuanghui is redefining its growth logic.

• How can a meat brand enter occasions like afternoon tea?

• How did it outperform snack brands in late-night consumption?

• How can traditional brands leverage occasions and emotion to unlock new growth?

Data is everywhere, yet turning it into real business value remains difficult. Despite heavy investment in data infrastructure, many organizations still struggle to activate data and translate insights into action—especially in the food and beverage industry, where unstructured data dominates and customer journeys are highly fragmented.

In this session, the Global Head of Digital Commerce Marketing at Mondelez will share how the company uses its dCommerce practices to embed data and analytics into everyday business operations. Through examples of precision marketing, continuous optimization, and strategic big bets, the session will explore how data is structured and activated, how it supports decision-making and optimization loops, and how these capabilities ultimately drive sustainable digital growth.

As AI becomes widely applied in creative production, efficiency is surging and the “industrialization” of creativity is accelerating. At the same time, a series of deeper questions are beginning to emerge:

- When AI can generate content at scale, will originality be diluted?

- As consumers become aware of AI’s role in ad creation, will trust be affected?

- When “AI-powered” itself becomes a marketing hook, how can brands avoid it being just a superficial concept?

- As large volumes of low-quality content flood the market, how can brands uphold their aesthetic standards and core values?

This session will focus on how brands, in the age of AIGC, can create content that captures attention, drives sharing, and delivers real results. Drawing on practical methods and real-world experience, it will explore more actionable and effective creative approaches.

Singapore has long served as a hub for innovation and decision-making for global F&B leaders such as Nestlé, Mondelēz, and PepsiCo. At the same time, it has emerged as a key AI hub—NVIDIA has established the headquarters of its global AI technology center network there, and Heineken has launched its first AI lab in Singapore. This progress is underpinned by a systematic investment in AI talent and capabilities since 2017, with the national initiative AI Singapore playing a pivotal role.

In marketing, the challenge has shifted from “whether to use AI” to “how to build, integrate, and sustain AI capabilities.” In reality, many teams still rely on tools, external agencies, or a few individuals, making it difficult to embed AI as an organizational capability.

Sengmeng, who previously worked at NVIDIA, has been involved in national AI capability building as well as the development of global standards such as ISO and IEEE. He has also contributed to the advancement of professional roles such as Chartered AI Engineers and Certified AI Practitioners.

In this session, he will explore:

- Which AI capabilities should be built internally for long-term advantage?

- How can AI evolve from individual expertise into organizational capability?

- How can capability frameworks and talent structures translate AI investment into real business impact?