Advertising to Chinese Malaysians in 2027: what’s actually working

February 2027 is going to be a pile-up

Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February. Ramadan is expected to start on the 8th, Valentine’s Day is the Sunday after, Chap Goh Mei lands on 20 February, and Hari Raya Aidilfitri is expected around 10 and 11 March.

1. 6–7 FebChinese New Year
2. 8 FebRamadan expected to begin
3. 14 FebValentine’s Day
4. 20 FebChap Goh Mei
5. 10–11 MarHari Raya Aidilfitri (expected)

That’s four big occasions in about five weeks, all competing for the same media space and production crews. We saw a smaller version of this in 2026, when CNY arrived as Ramadan began. Ryt Bank released a lo-fi hip-hop music video mixing CNY and Raya lyrics, and Marketing-Interactive reported it became Malaysia’s most-downloaded app during CNY.

If your CNY 2027 plan is still a translated English ad, February will swallow it whole.

Decide early whether you’re running a CNY-only campaign, a shared festive story, or both, because the creative and media are planned differently. Second, don’t sleep on Chap Goh Mei. It’s a second chance at attention, after the CNY noise dies down, with a built-in romance angle.

Xiaohongshu is where the research happens now

Earlier this year I was out with some friends, the very “banana” kind who barely read Chinese, when they pulled out Xiaohongshu (XHS) to find a dessert place to go to next. Then it kept happening, with other friend groups and with co-workers. A friend asked me to write an XHS review for her new pilates studio, and a few shops offered discounts if we posted one. These days I open the app without thinking whenever I’m planning a group outing.

The data says the same thing. A July 2026 Malay Mail report on AnyMind’s influencer marketing study describes Malaysians starting product research on Xiaohongshu (XHS) instead of Google or TikTok. AnyMind found it took 28.27% of Lifestyle and Home influencer spend in 2025, mostly through nano and micro creators rather than big names. Marketing-Interactive puts the user base at 4.3 million across Malaysia and Singapore, with most Malaysian users aged 16 to 34, female and Chinese.

In practice, write titles in Chinese around what people actually search. Get your product reviewed by KOCs (key opinion consumers) a few weeks before the peak, so the posts are already there when people start looking. Hit us up for some XHS grassroots KOC packages, and we can arrange it hassle-free for you. And give people a reason to 打卡: a photo-worthy corner, a limited item or something worth posting about.

The New TikTok Smart+: how we’d set it up

Smart+ used to be a black box. In October 2025 TikTok rebuilt it so you choose how much to automate, one module at a time. Targeting, budget, placements, bidding and creative can each be left to TikTok or set by you. It covers Traffic, Sales, Lead Generation and App Promotion campaigns.

How it works

Each ad now works like an asset group, with its own landing page and up to 50 creative assets. TikTok mixes those assets into combinations, tests them and moves delivery towards the ones that perform. Symphony, TikTok’s creative AI, can suggest new assets and apply automatic enhancements such as resizing, quality boosts, translation and dubbing. Since January 2026 you can preview every combination before launch, and reporting shows results by creative, text and enhancement.

Search runs on the same system. Automatic Search Placement shows your in-feed videos as sponsored results when people search on TikTok, matched on relevance rather than keyword bids, and you can add negative keywords after reviewing the search terms. This year TikTok also added Smart+ Search Ads and announced Search Hubs, brand pages at the top of search results.

How we’d set it up for Chinese Malaysians

• Set the audience yourself, automate the rest. Choose location, age and Chinese language manually so the system starts with the right people, then let TikTok handle budget and placements.
• Check every automatic enhancement. Auto-translation and AI dubbing won’t sound like someone from Kepong. Review Symphony’s changes in the preview, and switch off translation and dubbing for Chinese creative unless a native speaker has checked it.
• Give it different ideas, not more of the same. Up to 50 assets are allowed, but the algorithm can only test what you give it. Start with a handful of genuinely different Chinese-language videos: different hooks, different creators, and Mandarin mixed with the Cantonese and Hokkien people actually speak.
• Write for search in both languages. Search placement reuses your in-feed videos, so put the words people search for into captions and on-screen text, in Chinese and English. Check the search terms weekly and add negative keywords.
• Leave it alone for a week. TikTok says performance usually settles after about 25 results or 7 days in the learning phase, and edits can restart it.

Creators still matter most. The best CNY 2026 example was KitKat Malaysia sponsoring the Kuan Family’s music video “That’s马Way”, followed by meet-and-greets and limited-edition shaped bars.

Chinese media has moved to your feed

Chinese newsrooms now reach a lot of younger readers through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, alongside newer Chinese food, lifestyle and luxury platforms. That’s why press buying increasingly includes digitorials and social activations as well as print space.

星洲日报 Sin Chew Daily

Malaysia’s biggest Chinese newspaper, with active Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube channels, plus 百格 Pocketimes, its video platform for video-first stories in Chinese.

U玩食 by 东方日报 Oriental Daily

Oriental Daily’s eat-and-play platform: “where to eat, where to go” content that younger readers share.

Nanyang Press lifestyle titles

ILifePost 爱生活, a lifestyle news platform, and long-running women’s titles 都会佳人 Citta Bella and 风采 Feminine.

Goody25

A Chinese-language lifestyle, food, travel and entertainment site, ranked the top Chinese-language site in Malaysia by Alexa when iMedia invested in it in 2020.

名人 NOBLE

A Chinese luxury lifestyle title acquired by Heart Media in October 2025, with a RedNote platform planned. Useful for premium property, finance and luxury brands.

A good digitorial package is more than an article. Ask for the written feature plus a short vertical video, posts on the publisher’s own social accounts and paid boosting to reach beyond existing followers. Afterwards, ask for views, engagement and clicks, with platform screenshots.

Where to put your outdoor ads (actual places, not “Chinese areas”)

“Target Chinese areas” isn’t a location brief. These figures show the share of registered voters who are Chinese in a few KL constituencies, from the August 2022 electoral roll, one of the most detailed public breakdowns available.

• 90.5%
  Kepong, KLJinjang, Kepong, Metro Prima, Taman Petaling
• 77.1%
  Cheras, KLPudu, Shamelin Perkasa, Taman Connaught, Taman Midah
• 71.6%
  Bukit Bintang, KLBukit Bintang, Chow Kit, Brickfields, Desa Petaling, Salak Selatan

Outside KL, Tanjong (George Town) and Bandar Kuching have among the highest shares of Chinese voters in the country. At state level, Census 2020 puts the Chinese share at 44.9% in Penang, 41.6% in Kuala Lumpur and 32.8% in Johor. And when we plan street by street, areas like Kuchai Lama, Sri Petaling and OUG in KL, SS2 and Damansara Utama in PJ, Puchong, and USJ and SS15 in Subang Jaya are always on the shortlist to check.

Match the format to the place

In KL, digital street buntings assigned to specific areas let you cover neighbourhoods like Kepong or Cheras. In Selangor, licensed lamp-post buntings do the same at low cost. Billboards work best on the main roads into these areas, and malls and transit catch people on the move.

Malls, temples and schools

Over CNY, families spend a lot of time in malls buying festive goodies and looking at the CNY decorations. In-mall digital screens near entrances, escalators, supermarkets and festive bazaars reach them in the middle of their shopping, which suits retail, F&B and FMCG brands.

Temples like Thean Hou, with its red lanterns, draw big crowds too. Think photo moments or sampling nearby with the right permissions, not hard-sell ads on temple grounds.

Chinese schools are often overlooked. Malaysia had 1,302 Chinese national-type primary schools (SJK(C)) in 2022, and about 20% of their pupils were non-Chinese by 2020, according to ISEAS. There are also 63 Chinese independent high schools. School-area OOH and school event sponsorships (with the school’s approval) reach parents from every background, which suits education, enrichment, F&B and banking brands.

For every outdoor ad, Bahasa Malaysia must be given priority, in larger letters and placed above the Chinese text, under Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka’s terms. Plan the layout for both languages from the start.

The ang pow went digital, and it’s a channel now

Sending ang pows by phone is normal now. For CNY 2026, Touch ’n Go eWallet offered Money Packets that can be shared to WhatsApp or WeChat, GrabGifts sold festive e-ang pow vouchers with designs like “HUAT AH!”, ShopeePay supported transfers, and every major bank supported e-ang pows through DuitNow, with Maybank’s MAE app even running a Scan & Win contest.

You can advertise inside the ang pow

Here’s the part you may not know: e-wallets and super apps sell ad space, and some of it sits right inside the ang pow moment. TNG offers branded placements such as sponsored Money Packet and transfer page designs, homepage banners and emails to its users. You could, for example, run a branded CNY Money Packet, so ang pows sent with it carries your brand’s festive branding from the moment they were created to the moment they were opened.

Grab has its own advertising arm, GrabAds, covering in-app placements, in-car branding and ads on its vehicles. For CNY 2026 it made one festive film featuring eight brands, from Vinda to GXBank.

I’d take a branded ang pow over the usual plain template any day.

A CNY 2027 plan that isn’t boring

This is roughly how we’d run it. The exact mix depends on what you sell.

Oct – Nov 2026

Book creators, digitorials and outdoor sites in your target neighbourhoods before festive inventory goes. Decide on CNY-only or a shared CNY and Raya story. Brief XHS KOCs.

Dec 2026

Shoot creator content in Mandarin, with local dialects where it fits. Make six to ten video variations for TikTok Smart+. Get outdoor artwork checked for the Bahasa Malaysia rules.

Early Jan 2027

Let Xiaohongshu reviews build up before the rush. Bring the digital ads live to kick-start the learning process. OOH goes up.

Late Jan – 5 Feb

The peak. Run your e-ang pow or GrabGifts giveaway, a creator meet-and-greet or pop-up, and retarget everyone who engaged.

6 – 20 Feb

Switch to greetings, keep in mind that Ramadan begins around 8 February, then come back for Valentine’s and Chap Goh Mei on 14 and 20 February.

Things Malaysians will roast you for

• Google-translated Chinese. Someone will screenshot it, and it will travel.
• China or Taiwan slang. Malaysian Chinese has its own mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and English. Write like a local.
• Your Instagram key visual, reposted on Xiaohongshu. People there expect real reviews, not ads.
• Forgetting Ramadan starts two days after CNY. Plan your tone and timing for both.
• “Chinese areas” as a location brief. Name the neighbourhoods.
• A Chinese billboard without Bahasa Malaysia on top. It can get rejected, and redoing artwork in January is nobody’s idea of fun.