Creative studio Koto has opened a Singapore office to expand its footprint in Southeast Asia. This is the shop's seventh global location and second APAC outpost after Sydney.
Mark Teal has joined as growth director, APAC, effective March 2026. He is the agency's first Singapore hire and will lead the agency’s expansion in the market.
"Singapore has a $128 billion digital economy across sectors. As an agency born and bred out of building digital businesses, the city-state is the key place to set up shop," Teal told Campaign Asia in an interview.
Teal brings more than two decades of experience to the role. Most recently, he served as chief marketing officer at VCCP Singapore between 2023 and 2025. Before that, he led client growth at VML from 2021 to 2023 and was general manager at Mezzo Labs from 2020 to 2021. Earlier in his career, he held digital marketing and business development roles at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett.
In Singapore, the studio had previously worked with gaming fintech company Coda, for which it completed a rebrand, and Riot Games, and delivered design work for League of Legends. Koto's client roster spans Amazon, Google, JP Morgan, Lyft, Meta, Mars, Microsoft, Netflix, Tripadvisor, and WhatsApp.
On expanding the agency's target verticals, Teal identified fintech and venture capital-backed startups as priority areas, alongside consumer packaged goods. "We help a lot of startups build their brands from scratch, and those tend to be digitally native companies. That's a channel Koto has as an understanding of that a lot of agencies don't get involved in," he added.
Koto operates as a network of around 150 people across Sydney, London, New York, Los Angeles, and Berlin. For Singapore, Teal said he is taking a demand-led approach to building out the local team. He added that the studio is also targeting business in other markets in SEA, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Teal said Koto's Singapore presence is a long-term commitment. "We're interested in investing in and contributing back to the industry here. It's important not to just set up a business, generate revenue, and not participate."
Source: Campaign Asia-Pacific
