Hazel Ong

According to a Nielsen survey on Global Corporate Sustainability (CSR), “66% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for sustainable brands” and “sales of consumer goods from brands with a demonstrated commitment to sustainability have grown more than 4% globally.” With a wealth of information at their fingertips, consumers everywhere feel empowered to support organisations that are committed to promoting change in the economy, environment and society at large. In an age of immense data flows, how can brands rise above the noise to get their targeted messages…

There’s no escaping the ever-growing threat of the “fake news” label – for media, and potentially as a huge PR crisis for communicators. According to Cision’s 2017 State of the Media Report, journalists said that regaining trust amidst the rise of misinformation and fake news is one of the greatest challenges facing the media this year. 91% of journalists report that the public trusts them less than before. PR professionals and communicators face the same challenge as the media and must be careful to avoid the appearance of false or deceptive content.…

  The recent South Korea’s political corruption and presidential scandal which sees the country’s first female president Park Geun-hye impeached, first started at Ewha Womans University over the scandal of alleged favoritism towards her longtime friend, Choi Soon-sil. However, amidst this political crisis, the Blue House (executive office and official residence of the South Korean head of State) remained silent despite the public’s outcry. After the local TV station JTBC started reporting on the scandal, it aroused the public’s curiosity further and even when the sound of disapproval compounded by…

[Tweet “5 Key Facts about Korea Media Landscape”] What do you know about the media landscape in Korea? Regardless of your advanced concepts, it’s changing tremendously. As South Korea is a world leader in Internet connectivity, it boasts one of the fastest average connection speeds. To put this into perspective, digital media and mobile devices are the major factors of change for the media environment. The influence of web portals for the news environment is growing tremendously. Social media is becoming a critical pathway for finding, sharing and reading news.…

[Tweet “15 Best Storytelling Visuals of 2016”] We are all visual creatures. When we are presented with large chunks of information, we need visuals to help us process and remember the content. When press releases with visuals are distributed to the media, the number of views is 1.4 times more than text-only releases, and video releases receive 2.8 times more views. Hence it is important for PR and corporate communications professionals to have a mix of multimedia assets in their releases to maximise the chances of their releases getting picked…