Orchan Consulting | Asia Sdn Bhd

What if the most powerful asset in your PR strategy isn’t what your brand says, but what others say about you? In 2026, earned media isn’t making a comeback. It’s being re-priced. Across Asia, we’re seeing a shift in how people discover, evaluate and decide on brands. As AI reshapes search and recommendation, audiences are no longer persuaded by polish alone. They’re persuaded by proof; what journalists, analysts, creators, customers and independent voices say about a company, not what the company says about itself. Search is no longer a list of links. Platforms like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Perplexity behave more like answer engines. They don’t just rank pages. They synthesise authority. Imperfectly, sometimes unpredictably, but consistently enough to favour brands that appear credible across the web, referenced by others and grounded in real-world validation. That quietly changes the role of PR. For brands across Asia, earned media is no longer just about awareness. It now influe...

Performative versus purposeful has become the dominant way we talk about brand communication in Southeast Asia. It is a useful provocation, but it only tells part of the story. Many communication failures don’t come from bad intent or cynical leadership. They emerge from misaligned systems, structural constraints, or uneven change. Brands can sound fake not because they are lying, but because their organisations aren’t set up to speak clearly. This isn’t a defence of performative PR. It’s a clear-eyed look at why it happens, when it can still serve a function, and why moralising oversimplifies the challenge. If you missed our first article in this series, Performative or Purposeful? Decoding Brand Communication in Southeast Asia , you can read it here: https://orchanpr.blogspot.com/2025/09/performative-or-purposeful-decoding.html The False Binary The performative–purposeful debate travels fast on LinkedIn. It signals values and sparks conversation. But in practice, it flattens reality....