Orchan Consulting | Asia Sdn Bhd

Trust isn’t built by what brands say. It’s built by what people experience. Across Asia, consumers interact with brands in multiple ways: news coverage, social media, websites, WhatsApp messages, and customer support. Yet many organisations still operate in silos, with PR, marketing, and customer experience functioning independently. Here’s the challenge: if your press release sounds inspiring but your support replies feel robotic, people notice. If your ad promises one thing and service delivers another, trust quietly erodes…… often before you even realise it. By 2026, silos won’t just slow teams. They can limit credibility and loyalty. But the path to integration isn’t straightforward. Differences in team priorities, tools, budgets, and culture mean seamless collaboration is aspirational, and achieving it requires more than wishful thinking. Why Convergence Matters Consumers Experience Brands as a Whole Audiences don’t separate PR, marketing, or customer service. They experience your...

Every week, a new “miracle” lands in someone’s WhatsApp group: A Chinese virtual human sells a million dollars’ worth of lipstick in minutes. A Korean digital idol earns more than half the celebrities on your billboards. A virtual girl group racks up 300 million views on Douyin before lunch. And of course, someone forwards it to the boss: “Why don’t we do one of these also?” We get it. The numbers are dazzling. The production looks flawless. But here’s the thing: East Asia has developed very specific playbooks for virtual influencers. Southeast Asia is experimenting with its own mix of humans, AI, and stylised characters, and that’s what actually works here. Why East Asia Can Sprint While Southeast Asia Is Finding Its Own Pace 1. Budgets shape the game A top-tier hyper-real virtual human costs between  RM3.5m–RM20m to build, RM200k–RM600k monthly to maintain. In China or Korea, scale and platform support make it work. In SEA, that level of investment is mostly for supe...