The APAC marketing landscape is rapidly evolving, with advances in CX, personalisation, and AI creating both challenges and opportunities. We interviewed seven influential B2B and B2C marketing leaders to explore the trends shaping 2026. Geoff Main, managing director & founder at Passionberry Marketing, predicts ‘Human through AI’ will become the norm, where high-emotion interactions are handled by humans and routine ones by well-trained AI agents. This approach focuses on proper escalation rather than speed alone, with AI moving from novelty to profit center, backed by clear business cases targeting efficiency, accuracy, and revenue. He also foresees customer journeys—via chat, SMS, email, and in-person—rebundling seamlessly around context, making context continuity a critical board-level metric. Iris Chan, marketing and growth leader, anticipates wider democratisation of AI agent creation through no-code platforms, enabling non-technical users to design customised AI agents. As AI agents proliferate, consumers will increasingly desire authentic, humanised interactions, especially in high-value or high-stakes scenarios, reinforcing the demand for emotional connections post-Covid. Buying journeys will also continue to consumerise, evolving from personalisation to hyper-individualisation that tailors experiences based on personal preferences and history. Pip Stocks, director at Pip Stocks Consulting, asserts that CX has surpassed mere convenience; customers now seek to feel understood emotionally. Winning brands will blend empathy and technology to create experiences filled with reassurance, excitement, trust, and joy, shifting from journey mapping to emotional mapping. AI will serve as a subtle yet powerful enabler of smarter, faster, customer-centric decisions, transforming data chaos into insights, and fostering creativity and compassion to better understand customers rather than just scaling speed. Dr Anna Harrison, founder at RAMMP, argues that AI is evolving from a productivity tool to a confidant, with its most common uses in 2025 being therapy, life planning, and personal growth. AI recommendations, for example through ChatGPT’s InstantBuy, will feel like personalized advice from a trusted source rather than mere search results. Marketers must acknowledge AI as an intimate relationship, not just a channel. Fabrizia Roberto, fractional CMO & founder of The Silva Spoon, highlights that in 2026, experience will lead while technology supports human creativity, and fractional leadership will become standard.

Brands that succeed won’t focus on content volume but on creating emotionally memorable touchpoints that build engagement and trust through physical spaces, digital rituals, and service-led branding. AI, now embedded in marketing tech stacks, is no longer a differentiator; success depends on how well it is applied to understand customers and craft unique connection strategies beyond automation. Satya Upadhyaya, marketing technology leader, states that personalisation in 2026 will transcend basic merge variables, with winning brands treating each interaction as a unique connection moment. AI-powered hyper-personalisation will enable “moment of one” experiences using dynamic content, real-time context, and micro-communities, facilitated by event-streaming and live decisioning. Responsible personalisation—built on transparent data, consent, zero-trust frameworks, and risk minimisation—will become the new trust currency. Generative AI will scale creative personalisation, but marketers must protect authenticity, brand voice, and context. AI will redefine marketing as an adaptive system combining human creativity and machine intelligence to optimise segments, channels, spend, creative content, predict behaviors, and orchestrate experiences within defined guardrails. Stuart Matthewman, B2B marketing leader & CMO, emphasizes that most CX issues stem from failing basics—lack of clarity, speed, and follow-through—not complex journey problems. The winning companies in 2026 will promptly respond, solve problems at first contact, and avoid masking operational flaws with polished language. Regarding AI, he expects boards to demand clear, measurable outcomes within 3-6 months—such as faster processes, reduced waste, or new revenue—shifting expectations from pilots and demos to demonstrated business impact. Budgets will be retracted if AI fails to perform as real technology rather than a promise. In summary, 2026 will witness AI deeply integrated into marketing and CX, not as a standalone novelty but as a strategic enabler of human-led, emotionally rich, hyper-personalised experiences. Success hinges on blending technology and empathy, prioritising customer trust and context continuity, and delivering tangible business results from AI investments.