The agency that outlasted the model it was built on.

Gavin Tan founded REBL in Singapore in 2016. He started REBL because he believed great strategic and creative work didn't need a network behind it to be worth something.

For several years, it proved exactly that. REBL grew through multiple offices across Singapore and Malaysia, built a genuinely talented team, and earned the trust of brands that don't give it easily — Hitachi, Wacom, Adobe, Grab, HBO, the Prime Minister's Office Strategy Group and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore. The awards followed: MARKies Gold, multiple Marketing Excellence Awards across social media, digital and media strategy.

Then the industry changed around us. Government tender rates that had been low-balled through COVID and never recovered, manpower and rent costs that kept climbing, and the early wave of AI beginning to erode how clients perceived creative and strategic work.

At the end of 2024, Gavin made the only call that made financial sense — and the hardest one he has made in his professional life. Letting go of a team that had shown up every day, cared about the work, and trusted him with their livelihoods was not a strategic decision. It was a gut punch.

The clients who mattered stayed. In May 2026, Gavin relocated to Phnom Penh — not to escape anything, but to build something. REBL today runs on senior judgement backed by an army of AI tools. The ratio of output to overhead has never been better. The quality of thinking behind it has never been sharper.