Building a regional agency business from the ground up requires more than replicating what has worked elsewhere. For Angeline Tan, General Manager, Brazen APAC, which is the Asia Pacific expansion of Brazen MENA, operating under the RAIYN Global Group. In her first few months of building the agency across diverse Asian markets have reinforced the value of listening, local understanding and better questions over ready-made answers. With experience spanning both agency leadership and client organisations, Tan brings a perspective shaped by seeing the industry from both sides of the table.
In this conversation, she discusses the assumptions leaders need to rethink about APAC, where AI belongs in creative work, what clients truly need from agencies, and how she is building a regional team.
Building a market from zero calls on different instincts than running one that’s already at scale. What’s one instinct from your agency career you had to unlearn in these first few months?
The instinct I had to lose was waiting until things were ready. In an established agency you go to market with the full apparatus behind you, the credentials deck, the case studies, the named team, the process. Always with a sense of being “completely armed.” I had to unlearn the instinct to arrive with answers. Having spent many years in leadership roles, experience naturally gave me frameworks, reference points and a certain confidence in knowing what works. However, building a market from ground zero has reminded me that experience should give one better questions, not make me overly certain of the answers. In these first few months, I have had to resist the temptation to replicate a successful model from elsewhere. In hindsight, there was real excitement too, in being able to build my own model of success. It’s a rare opportunity, rather than one to be afraid of. My role has been to listen deeply, understand where the genuine opportunities are and build from the realities of each market rather than from a predetermined agency playbook.
“There is humility in starting again. You may bring years of experience to the table, but the market does not owe you relevance.”
You still have to earn trust, demonstrate value and remain open to having your assumptions challenged. Turning that into daily excitement changes the whole lens through which I see the landscape.
Agency leaders often pitch APAC as one growth story. What’s the assumption you had to actually let go of once you started building here yourself?
Leaders need to let go of the assumption that regional scale comes from regional uniformity. APAC is often discussed as though it is a single, fast-growing market. In reality, it has always been a collection of highly distinct markets moving at different speeds, shaped by different cultures, social nuances, commercial conditions, media environments and, most importantly, expectations of trust. Neighbouring markets as close as Malaysia and Singapore can respond very differently to a common proposition. One may be more receptive to relationship-led engagement, while another may expect greater evidence, precision and proof before committing. Neither response is better. They simply reflect different market realities. The opportunity was never to make every market behave in the same way. That ignores the reality, and what we already know as an industry. It has always been to build a regional proposition strong enough to be recognisable, yet flexible enough to be meaningful locally.
“Effective regional leadership is less about standardisation and more about creating coherence without erasing difference.”
“Effective regional leadership is less about standardisation and more about creating coherence without erasing difference.”
You’ve led both agency side and inside client organisations. What does an agency typically misjudge about what a client actually needs, something you only saw clearly once you were sitting in the client’s chair?
Very simply, agencies sometimes mistake the brief for the entirety of the problem. When I sat inside client organisations, I understood much more clearly that a client is rarely managing only the communications challenge presented to the agency. I was navigating internal stakeholders, commercial pressures, operational constraints, competing priorities and the need to build confidence in a decision across the organisation.
Clients often don’t need more ideas. They need clarity, sound judgement and a partner who can help reduce complexity. A strategically brilliant recommendation is only valuable if it can survive internal scrutiny and be implemented successfully. So, the thing agencies misjudge is what they are being hired for: ammunition, and that bit of cover.
“The agency that makes the client look prepared and clear-sighted in a room the agency will never sit in is the one that gets renewed, and it usually has very little to do with the creative.”
I also came to appreciate the importance of consistency. Clients don’t only need senior agency leaders during the pitch or the important presentation. They need experienced judgement to remain close to the work when circumstances change, or difficult decisions have to be made.
Having been a client, the experience made me a more empathetic agency leader. It taught me to ask not only, “Is this good work?” but also, “Will this genuinely help the client move forward?”
Your research argues AI and human creativity should co-create in advertising, not compete. As a leader building a team from scratch right now, how are you actually deciding where AI belongs in the work and where it doesn’t
Thank you for touching on this. My research in value co-creation has been a personal academic mission of mine. I begin with the value we are trying to create, rather than with the capability of the technology.
AI belongs where it can expand our intelligence, accelerate discovery and remove unnecessary friction. It can help individuals and teams analyse large volumes of information, uncover patterns, explore alternative directions, and move more efficiently through repetitive parts of the process. Once used well, it creates more room for people to think, question and create.
Where I draw the line is when efficiency begins to replace judgement.
“AI should not be allowed to make the final call on components such as cultural meaning, emotional sensitivity or the truth of a human experience.”
It can suggest possibilities, but people must remain accountable for deciding whether an idea is original, appropriate and capable of forming a genuine connection. This is particularly important in APAC, where language, humour, symbolism and social context can shift significantly between markets. Something that appears technically correct may still feel culturally wrong.
My guiding principle is that humans own the “why” while AI strengthens the “how.” The profile I look for is the hybrid one: fluent in the technology, unembarrassed about using it, but valued for judgement, cultural intelligence and the ability to sit in front of a client and be trusted.
Leading across different markets means success can look different by culture, not just by client. How do you judge whether the work is actually landing, in a market where you don’t have years of instinct to read it by yet?
I’m fortunate that APAC, and Southeast Asia in particular, isn’t an unfamiliar region to me. More than a decade managing brands, clients and teams across the region has given me a strong feel for its dynamics, but also taught me never to assume familiarity makes a market predictable. APAC is one of the most complex and highly nuanced regions.
The real value of regional experience is not believing you already know every answer. It is knowing which differences matter, which questions to ask and which signals to pay attention to.
I tend to assess whether work is landing through three lenses, namely cultural resonance, stakeholder response, and tangible outcomes. Does the work feel authentic to the people it’s intended for, in language, emotional cues and cultural context? Is it generating the right quality of conversation among audiences, clients and media? And is that response translating into outcomes like trust, consideration, advocacy or commercial impact?
The balance between those measures will differ by market. Success in Singapore may be shaped by evidence, credibility and clarity, while in Malaysia, relationships, cultural familiarity and emotional connection may carry greater weight. Other Southeast Asian markets will have their own distinct dynamics. Applying one regional benchmark to all of them can therefore conceal more than it reveals.
My role is to bring the benefit of regional perspective while ensuring that local voices remain close to the decisions. That is how I intend to create work that is regionally coherent but genuinely meaningful in each market.
A year from now, what would tell you you’ve built the kind of regional leadership team you set out to build, not just in the client wins, but in how the team makes decisions, challenges each other and operates across markets?
“I would know if I had built the right team if good decisions no longer depended on me being in every room.”
I want to build a team with shared standards but independent judgement. People should feel confident making decisions close to their markets, while understanding what we stand for collectively as Brazen APAC. They should be able to disagree constructively, question senior viewpoints and raise difficult issues early, without feeling that doing so threatens trust. And I believe this can only happen when team dynamics are strong internally.
I would also want to see generosity across markets. Regional leadership can become territorial if people protect information, relationships, or opportunities. The team I hope to build will measure its success partly by how willingly people share knowledge, open doors for one another and bring the right expertise into the room, regardless of where it sits. Client wins will matter because they give us the opportunity to grow. But the deeper achievement would be a team that combines ambition with humility, moves with pace without losing care and understands that regional scale is built through strong local relationships. If we can challenge one another honestly, make decisions without unnecessary hierarchy and still remain united by a clear sense of purpose, I would feel that we had built something capable that will last.
Read more: Chirag Galundia at talabat: The Ad You Didn’t See Already Won
