Brand Visibility in the LLM Era: Why PR Holds the Advantage in Southeast Asia

Brand discovery is changing, whether most organisations are ready for it or not. As large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity become default starting points for questions, visibility is no longer about who ranks highest on a search results page. It’s about who shows up inside an answer.

Adweek* recently described LLMs as the new information gatekeepers, synthesising content rather than pointing users to links. What matters to these systems isn’t volume or optimisation tricks. It’s whether information looks trustworthy enough to repeat. That distinction is subtle, but it changes everything.

Globally, Reddit has emerged as one of the most-cited sources across major AI platforms. Not because it is polished, but because it is messy, opinionated, and visibly human. The conversations there follow real questions, real disagreements, and real consensus-building. That’s how models learn what “helpful” looks like. But Southeast Asia doesn’t have a Reddit equivalent. And that’s exactly where the opportunity lies.

Reputation Is Becoming an Input, Not an Outcome

The mechanics behind LLM visibility mirror something PR professionals have always understood, even if it was hard to quantify before. Earned reputation travels further than paid exposure. It gets repeated. It gets referenced. It becomes the default answer.

As language models try to reduce hallucinations, they lean on patterns of credibility. Brands that appear consistently across trusted environments are easier for AI systems to surface with confidence. Those that only exist in controlled brand assets are not.

This is where the current fascination with “Generative Engine Optimisation” often goes wrong. Treated as a technical discipline, it quickly becomes another optimisation race. In practice, it is simply PR logic applied to a new interface:

• Credibility built through earned media and expert positioning.

• Assets designed to be referenced, not just consumed.

• Presence across multiple independent environments, not one owned channel.

In the LLM era, visibility is less about reach and more about whether others are willing to cite you without being prompted.

Southeast Asia’s Fragmentation Is an Advantage

Southeast Asia is often described as complex because trust is fragmented. Platforms, languages, and norms vary sharply by market. From a PR perspective, that has always been true. From an AI perspective, it now matters more than ever.

Local forums remain where credibility is tested:

• Pantip in Thailand, where expertise is challenged publicly.

• Kaskus in Indonesia, where grassroots opinion still carries weight.

• Lowyat and HardwareZone in Malaysia and Singapore, where tech and consumer credibility is earned slowly.

• Tinhte and Webtretho in Vietnam, where lifestyle and family trust dominate decision-making.

These are not channels where brands can parachute in. They reward fluency, restraint, and consistency. Done poorly, participation backfires. Done well, it leaves long-lived signals that AI systems learn from.

As more regional and localised language models are trained on Southeast Asian data, these signals will not be diluted by global noise. They will become stronger.

What PR Actually Does Here

This is where PR quietly becomes structural. Not as messaging, but as orchestration.

In practice, that means:

• Knowing when not to engage.

• Helping experts show up as people, not spokespersons.

• Managing conversations that evolve over weeks, not campaigns that peak in days.

• Applying crisis instincts to everyday community participation, before anything escalates.

These are not new skills. What’s new is that the outcomes now influence whether a brand appears inside an AI-generated answer at all.

What This Means for SEA Brands in 2026

A few implications are already becoming hard to ignore:

• Multilingual storytelling is no longer a localisation exercise. Language choice affects how credibility is interpreted.

• Community reputation feeds AI visibility directly. Silence and missteps are both remembered.

• Isolated wins don’t travel far. Ecosystems do.

• Measurement will need to expand beyond Share of Voice to something closer to “Share of Model.”

Southeast Asia’s cultural depth is often treated as a complication. In an AI-shaped discovery environment, it becomes a moat. Generic global narratives struggle here. Lived, local credibility does not.

PR, in this context, stops being a support function. It becomes the system that makes brands legible to machines precisely because it makes them credible to humans.

At Orchan, this is the lens we use when advising organisations navigating AI-era visibility shifts. Reputation, participation, and regional context are not separate conversations anymore. They are the same one.

For discussions on PR-led approaches to AI-era visibility in Southeast Asia, reach us at changenow@orchan.asia / +603-7972 6377

Adweek article: The Secret to Brand Visibility in the LLM Era