Navigating PR in Southeast Asia 

Southeast Asia presents a lucrative opportunity for Indian companies looking to expand beyond domestic borders. With its fast-growing digital economy, young workforce, and strong trade relations with India, the region offers a promising landscape. However, navigating the diverse cultural, linguistic, and regulatory environments requires a measured and educated approach – particularly in engaging critical business stakeholders.

The first step in market entry is understanding Southeast Asia’s diversity – cultural, social, and economic. A practical approach is to begin with English-speaking markets like Singapore and Malaysia, which share historical and economic ties with India. These markets offer an easier transition due to familiar business cultures, ease of engagement and Commonwealth regulatory environment.

Beyond language and culture, it is essential to stay informed about national economic priorities, to truly appreciate media trends and news cycles. Similarly, connecting with and engaging business chambers of commerce provides access to not only contacts but valuable insights about policy making, national agendas or focus. The ubiquitous trade shows and networking events enhance visibility, but engaging with senior journalists delivers not only media coverage but also offers another source of market intelligence with strategic advantages.

Media access, and free speech varies across Southeast Asia. While Singapore and Malaysia are mature media markets, other countries in the region are under stricter government supervision – with Vietnam practising greater censorship. Thailand and Philippines tend to vacillate between draconian, confusing censorship to vaguely laissez-faire control in keeping with the political changes and administrations. Indonesia has generally enjoyed a relatively open media and news environment since 1999.¹

Another critical factor to consider is building a compelling narrative that captures the press or media attention. Aligning the brand’s value proposition with local trending stories or topics typically generates far greater interest than brand or product centric content. In the more mature media environments like Singapore and Malaysia, pitching issues based content by way of media interviews and thought leadership delivers better returns on effort than distributing press releases or brand promotional content. In contrast, markets like Indonesia, Thailand, and India, press release distribution tends to garner coverage.

Language can make or break media outreach. In Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, English is commonly used in business communications. However, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia require local-language business and media engagement. Having in-country representatives who can articulate issues close to home in local languages delivers a far more powerful impact than visiting foreign executives. However, opportunities to leverage visiting senior executives and brand evangelists must not be disregarded. They can be effective and compelling as macro or global trends commentators, especially when they are prepared in advance and in tandem with skilled translators.

For any public relations (PR) campaign to be successful in this region, it is imperative to line up the business story or message with the local content and news needs.

Typically, we urge our client spokespeople to be familiar with the country’s leading business stories gleaned from leading titles including The Business Times (Singapore), New Straits Times (Malaysia), Business World (Philippines), Bangkok Post (Thailand), Jakarta Post (Indonesia). The business broadcasters like Channel News Asia, Astro Awani (Malaysia), Nikkei Business, and ANC (Philippines) are very effective resources for visiting spokespeople to get a pulse on the national agendas.

In summary, PR in Southeast Asia is varied, multi-cultural and multi-lingual. However, it does not need to be complex, convoluted, and difficult to implement successfully. Partnering with an experienced business (B2B) public relations firm requires learning about the region, and investing to equip them with the knowledge to sell your value proposition.

Recognising that a one-size-fits-all PR will not work, is key to success in the region. Work with a partner who understands and is able to communicate your brand value, while navigating local market channels for a nuanced approach.

Priority Consultants has been a trusted partner for multinational Fortune 500 companies for well over four decades. With offices and presence in 12 cities in the Asia Pacific region, the firm is an award winning established Public Relations partner to clients in the technology, supply chain, transportation, real estate development, and financial services industries.

If your organisation is looking for a partner to engage in media or influencer relations in Southeast Asia or requires strategic guidance for market engagement, we would be pleased to assist.

Call and let’s chat.

Reference

1. Multilayered communications – a snapshot of Indonesia’s media landscape