Orchan Consulting | Asia Sdn Bhd

What if the conversations shaping your brand never appear on your dashboard? In 2026, the most influential discussions about brands are no longer happening on public platforms. They are unfolding quietly inside WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, Discord servers, and closed communities you cannot see, scrape, or track in real time. This is dark social. And in Asia, it is not a fringe behaviour. It is the default. For PR leaders, this changes the job fundamentally. Visibility is no longer the main challenge. Relevance is. If your strategy is optimised only for public platforms, you are managing optics, not reality. Many organisations still confuse activity with influence. Why Dark Social Now Dark social has existed for years. What’s changed is its weight. More than 70 percent of online sharing now happens through private channels. Across Asia, platforms like WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, and Telegram dominate daily communication. Gen Z and Millennials, in particular, prefer private spaces for...

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 ...

Purpose is not a statement. It is a sequence. Ignore that sequence and purpose collapses under scrutiny. In Southeast Asia’s hyper-connected markets, brands are no longer judged by what they say but by how structurally believable their communication is. Campaign-led purpose creates visibility. Trust is another matter. This article introduces Orchan Next --  a decision system shaped by regional advisory work -- designed to help leaders move from performative signalling to purposeful communication without triggering reputational backlash. Why Purpose Breaks Down Most purpose failures are not driven by bad intent. They stem from structural misalignment, and communication absorbs the damage first. Leadership wants to say the right thing. Teams want to move fast. Markets reward visibility. Culture rewards restraint. Operations lag behind, and communication bridges the gap, which can fracture especially in organisations where operational capacity or decision-making speed is constrained....

Southeast Asia is a region full of contrasts. Cultures, religions, economies, and political viewpoints exist side by side. In this environment, global events often ripple through local markets in unpredictable ways. The recent consumer boycotts of Western fast‑food brands in Malaysia and Indonesia, driven by solidarity with Palestine, show how geopolitical sentiment can affect everyday brand choices. But the reality is rarely black and white. What began as social‑media calls in late 2023 led to real outcomes: some outlet closures, revenue pressure on brands like McDonald’s, KFC, and Starbucks, and faster growth for local alternatives. Yet geopolitics is only part of the story. Emotion, identity, economics, pricing, and post‑pandemic habits all play a role. A Human Story Within Larger Forces Take Lailatul Sarahjana Mohd Ismail*, a Malaysian mother who started frying chicken at home when her children craved fast food but familiar brands felt off-limits. That simple choice grew into Ahmad...

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....

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...

Walk through any Malaysian city and the shift is unmistakable. One toothbrush in the holder. One meal packed neatly for one. One person signing the lease on a studio apartment. What used to feel temporary or unusual is now quietly becoming the norm -- the rise of the Solo Economy . Across Malaysia, the traditional family household is no longer the sole driver of consumption. Household sizes have been shrinking, from 4.3 in 2010 to 3.8 in 2020, and today, nearly 45% of Malaysians are single. That’s almost half the population redefining what independence, convenience, and value look like in everyday life. However, most brands still see this through a narrow lens; assuming “solo” means young, urban, and financially carefree. The fact of the matter is that it’s far more complex, and far more interesting. The Many Faces of the Solo Economy The Solo Economy isn’t a KL-only phenomenon, nor is it made up solely of high-spending professionals chasing experiences. It’s a diverse mix of peop...

A major Malaysian telco announces a flashy sustainability pledge on Earth Day: green filters, eco-hashtags, celebrity endorsement etc. Thousands of likes overnight. Weeks later, customers discover nothing has changed in their carbon-heavy operations. Cue viral thread, boycott calls, and corporate comms teams breaking into a cold sweat. In Southeast Asia’s hyper-connected markets, “performative” moments aren’t just awkward -- they’re career-enders.  Performative communication is smoke and mirrors; the virtue signaling without the virtue. The glossy press release that promises the world but can’t even deliver a paper straw. The diversity campaign launched for PR points, while the boardroom still looks like it’s stuck in 1985. Purposeful communication ? Stories rooted in intent, backed by action, delivered with consistency. And in a region where 25 million Malaysians (74% of the population) live online, the watchdogs aren’t asleep. One skeptical TikTok or WhatsApp rant can dismant...