The last post on this blog went up in May 2023. A lot happened in the gap.
REBL went through the kind of restructure that sounds clinical in a press release and feels nothing like that in practice. We let go of the full team. Gave up the office. Rebuilt from scratch with a completely different operating model. It was the right call financially, and one of the hardest things I've done in this industry. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
What came out the other side is something that didn't exist when this blog started — a solo operation backed by AI tools that genuinely do what the hype says they can, managed by someone who's been doing this long enough to know when to trust them and when to override them. The overhead dropped. The output didn't.
The clients who were worth keeping stayed. Some had been with REBL for more than five years. That kind of continuity tells you something.
In May 2026 I relocated to Phnom Penh. Not to escape anything. To build something. Cambodia's digital marketing industry is where Singapore's was around 2014 — nascent, underserved and moving fast. The difference is that I can see what's coming, and I'm here before it arrives.
So. The Dispatch is back. Here's what it's going to cover.
Cambodia from the inside. What's actually happening in the Cambodian digital and creator economy — from someone on the ground, not from a market report.
Honest industry takes. Things that are worth saying in an industry that has a strong preference for saying things that sound good rather than things that are true.
AI and marketing — the real version. How these tools actually perform in a live campaign context, where they save time, and where the instinct of someone who knows the work still matters more than what the model produces.
SEA performance intelligence. What's working across paid media, content and creator management in Southeast Asia right now — from campaigns we're actually running.
One post a month. Written by someone still doing the work.