With the Singapore Grand Prix just around the bend, the city transforms into an arena of sights, sounds, and experiences. F1 fans buzz with excitement, creating a prime opportunity for global brands to engage meaningfully with Singapore’s diverse audiences. Capturing this connection often begins with tuning into the local pulse. To uncover how brands can do this effectively, Telum Media spoke with three local PR experts, who shared insights on crafting campaigns that are not only attention-grabbing, but built to last.
Root your message in the city
For Joscelin Kwek, Founder and Managing Director at Muse & Motif, the key lies in crafting campaigns that feel homegrown rather than imported. “Our audiences, while globally connected, are proudly local with discerning cultural preferences. Momentum is harnessed from excitement, and excitement is generated when we reflect the pulse of the city and make audiences feel something real,” she says.
Danielle Chow, Country Lead, Singapore at Mad Hat Asia echoes this view, noting that the Grand Prix has transformed into a cultural moment that spans racing, lifestyle, entertainment, and community. “Brands should connect with Singaporeans using passion points such as food, music, innovation, and sustainability, and weave them into experiences that feel naturally rooted in local life,” she explains.
Trust the local teams
Often, the role of local PR teams is central in shaping this authentic experience. Joscelin points out that campaigns only reach their full potential when local teams are treated as co-strategists rather than executors. “By empowering locals to design concepts unique to Singapore, brands gain more than market access - they gain campaigns that resonate deeply.”
Autonomy is equally crucial, says Rajiv Menon, Head of Singapore at Sling & Stone. “Give local teams the budget, freedom, and trust to co-create campaigns. Ask them what will work here rather than trying to retrofit a global idea. That’s how you make a campaign authentically Singaporean.”
Danielle highlights how local PR teams, together with their partners, bring cultural intelligence that global playbooks often miss. “They understand the nuances of language, audience sentiment, and timing. Co-creation is key, so by working with local partners and involving homegrown creators and communities, brands can reflect Singapore’s diversity authentically and create experiences that resonate on a deeper level,” she explains.
Beyond the surface
Even with local insight, brands sometimes stumble when localisation is treated superficially, a pattern Joscelin observes: “Sprinkling in cultural symbols or a phrase in Singlish doesn’t cut it. Local audiences can tell when it’s performative. Brands need to approach localisation as a cultural strategy, not cosmetic adaptation”. Rajiv echoes this, recalling infamous missteps like KFC’s early Chinese translation of “finger-lickin’ good” as “Eat your fingers off” when the brand first entered the Chinese market. “Don’t try to retrofit a global idea. Lean on your local team to understand the unique challenges, passions, and true moments of joy for Singaporeans. With these hyperlocalised insights, you can build a campaign from the inside out that is authentically Singaporean,” he explains.
Scaling campaigns across markets
With Singapore positioned as a communications hub for Southeast Asia, it also means global brands face the challenge of designing campaigns that balance local authenticity with regional scalability. Danielle points brands to the way forward: adopting a Singapore-first, region-ready mindset. “Campaigns should be deeply anchored in the Singapore context, then adapted for scalability across Southeast Asia with modular assets. Each market has distinct cultural identities, so regional consistency should come from shared brand values while execution flexes to reflect local flavour,” she suggests.
Rajiv offers his perspective: “Focus on perfecting the regional story first, and then build a framework that allows the core idea to be adapted with local flavour for each market. It's about owning a consistent narrative, with different chapters for each country. Think of it as Star Wars - the core story of good versus evil remains the same, but you get to see how it plays out in different worlds with different characters.”
For Joscelin, she underscores the importance of core ideas that travel. “Singapore’s Grand Prix provides a regional stage across Southeast Asia, so the most effective campaigns establish central concepts such as innovation, sustainability, and community, while giving each market the freedom to express these ideas in its own cultural language,” she notes.
Keeping the momentum
Brands have the opportunity to keep the F1 energy alive by turning the excitement into meaningful, long-term engagement that extends beyond the main event. Joscelin observes that the racing event has come to symbolise precision, innovation, performance, and sustainability, and she emphasises that brands can carry these values throughout the year. “In Singapore, this might mean linking F1’s speed and innovation to Smart Nation initiatives or tying its global stage to sustainability conversations that resonate locally,” she suggests.
Danielle adds that these efforts can be through community partnerships, creator collaborations, or ongoing storytelling. Building on Danielle's points, Rajiv highlights the power of audience-first storytelling. “What Netflix did with Drive to Survive is a brilliant example. They didn't just show the sport; they showed the human stories behind it. They made the sport a year-long conversation. Brands need to do the same. Focus on turning passive spectators into active participants and fans of the brand,” he observes, illustrating how emotional connection and local relevance can sustain interest well beyond race weekend.
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Digital culture hasn't killed narrative: our need for stories that make sense of the world endures. Timeless techniques still create opportunities - including in financial communications - and the greater power that technology gives us also creates greater responsibility.
We like reading at Ashbury, which delights me because I've always believed that the best communicators are also people who read widely and regularly. Advisers and writers need to consume much more than news; they also need to be learning about influence, engagement, and meaning in the broadest sense through immersion in culture in all its forms.
So I was intrigued when a colleague mentioned in the office that she had read a book called The Crisis of Narration by the Korean-German philosopher, Byung-Chul Han, and I decided to read it. Han argues that what he calls "Phono Sapiens" has lost the ability to create narratives that connect people and give meaning to the world.
It's hard to disagree with the notion that rich narratives have declined in our screen-addicted society. Many of us prefer curating our image on social media to telling, or listening to, a real narrative. I'm sure fewer of us have the attention span to listen to a long tale than in the days of ancient Greece, for example, when teams of performers would recite the whole of the Iliad and the Odyssey from memory. Some academics think that the Iliad alone would have been performed over three nights in sessions of four to six hours each.
Homo Fabularum
That doesn't mean narrative is dead, though, or that good narratives have lost their power. Whether we like it or not, we still need their structure to make sense of reality. Or, as Han puts it, "turning being-in-the-world to being-at-home-in-the-world." While we may be addicted to being Phono Sapiens, I think that we're frustrated Homo Fabularum, or story people. Real, deep, and fulfilling stories are what we're looking for - but rarely find - when we're scrolling.
Han thinks that real narratives are quite distinct from mere storytelling, which he sees as a tawdry, superficial, and commercialised activity.
"Through storytelling, capitalism appropriates the narrative and submits it to consumption. Storytelling produces narratives in a consumable form. It charges products with emotion. It promises unique experiences. We buy, sell, and consume narratives and emotions. Stories sell. Storytelling is storyselling."
I think Han is dead right in one way here, but is also ignoring one colossally important fact that makes his distinction between narratives and stories meaningless.
He's right that stories sell. They always have and they always will. Our minds are designed to hold on to stories and use them as an interpretive key to more complex realities. Philosophy and psychology may seem distant from everyday financial communications, but they are not. Storytelling is in fact essential to commercial influence. Let me give you some simple examples.
I listened recently to Rwandan officials talking to prospective investors about the new Formula One circuit they are building near Kigali for the African Grand Prix. There's a planned luxury hotel that will look out over the track. You'll be able to look out over it from the hotel's infinity pool. Because of the area's landscape - rolling hills around a lake - you will have the impression while sipping your cocktail in the pool that the Formula One cars are heading straight at you, before they dip down and turn away. It's a lovely, simple story that I'd bet has been repeated by many people who heard it. That story will surely help to attract investment to the project.
A friend who attended a presentation that a world-famous asset management CEO gave to a group of private investors told me how this individual reacted when one investor asked why he'd never heard of the company and what they really did. The CEO replied with something like: "All you really need to know about us is this. From the moment you wake up, you're using assets that we own. The electricity from your kettle comes from power stations we own. We own the cellphone network you use to make calls. We own the railway you use to go to work. If you invest in our fund, you can own them too."
Even well-chosen metaphors are simple stories that stay with audiences as cognitive keys. Another asset management CEO I know introduces her firm - which owns a number of different brands - as the Louis Vuitton of asset management. It always gets a laugh and it's immediately memorable.
Changing conditions
What Han misses, though, is just how much the world has changed since communities were held together by narratives told by firesides and charged with mysteries, gods, and otherness. There were no brands or multinational corporations in Homer's day (or were there, if you consider the polities, rulers, and pantheons of the time? Answers on a postcard, please). Very few people could read. The technology available for publishing narratives was therefore simple: communication was in person and oral.
Yet these conditions were changing centuries before smartphones arrived, thanks to the movable printing press (around 1440) and its successor technologies: newspapers (1605, depending on what you call a newspaper), radio broadcasts (1906), TV broadcasts (1926), and the Internet (the first website went live in 1990).
Economic structures were transformed by joint-stock companies (since 1553), publicly-traded companies (1602), banks (early 1400s), central banks (late 1600s), and limited liability companies (early 1800s) among many other developments. Printed advertising itself may be a thousand years old: a copper printing plate advertising a Liu's needle shop in Jinan, including a rabbit logo and slogan, dates back to China's Northern Song dynasty (960-1276).
What this meant, first in Europe and then over centuries in the world beyond, was that business became bigger and often more international, brands became more prevalent, and societies became more urbanised.
In 2026, many of us will see dozens, if not hundreds, of advertisements a day. And while research on this is patchy and dated, it's possible that over half of the editorial media coverage we consume has been influenced by public relations professionals. I'd be surprised if it wasn't more in business and finance news.
So Han may be right about the decline of classical narrative, but the fact is that the conditions that supported the kind of communication he valorises have been disappearing for centuries. For better or worse, we storysellers have replaced the bards. We intermediate a big part of what counts as narrative in today's world. So what does that mean for us?
Story lessons
First, we shouldn't forget what we can learn from the great traditions of narrative. How did bards manage to hold people's attention night after night for six hours at a time? Strong characters, whether relatable or extraordinary. Dramatic tension. Memorable tropes. Surprises. All these techniques are available to us today.
This is why we do executive profiling and encourage CEOs to develop their presence on LinkedIn. It's why we might juxtapose a bold strategy or idea with the consensus view. It's why we reassure audiences with familiar wording (growth opportunities in Asia, anyone?). It's why we love stories about 150-year-old banks launching products based on cutting-edge technology. The scene changes and the centuries roll past, but a lot about narrative remains the same. That's hardly surprising: channels and formats may change, but our neurological make-up and essential psychology don't.
Second, we shouldn't lose sight of the power that comes from creating an image in the mind's eye. Stories that can do this stay with people, like the racetrack and the cars heading straight into the infinity pool, or being the Louis Vuitton of asset management.
Finally, companies with long histories also have a particular advantage in fulfilling the traditional purpose of narrative, which is to give people a hold on the world. When any organisation has been around for centuries, its particular story maps onto a recognisable arc of history more generally. It can be a constant over generations, part of a shared patrimony. And longevity itself can acquire an aura: if a company has been in business for so long, there must be a reason for it. Long histories can have drawbacks too, but on balance they are invaluable reputational assets.
Power and responsibility
We should recognise that intermediating reality to audiences is a serious responsibility. Communicators' duty to act responsibly has only increased along with our relative power. Narratives used to take years to spread, constrained by the tyranny of dangerous seas, bad roads, and illiteracy. Abundant data and the analytical power of artificial intelligence (AI) mean that we can now be more targeted, more relevant, and more influential than ever before, while achieving impact in seconds.
If we're honest, communicators have not been very consistent in acting with integrity throughout history. Too many have succumbed to the temptation to use the power that comes with creating narrative to mislead and manipulate others. Today's data- and AI-enabled communicators need to do better, for all our sakes.
I'm confident that the author of The Crisis of Narration would dismiss the idea of responsible storyselling in financial communications as an impossibility. Han gives the impression that we humans are powerless to resist the way that digitalisation is reducing us and robbing us of meaning. I think he's seriously underestimating people's ability to create narrative and the extent to which we continue to seek out real narrative in spite of digitalisation. And I think he's underestimating the immutability of narrative power, and its ability to transcend new channels and formats.
Smartphones and social media aren't likely to be the final word in the way we communicate in the financial context or any other. New forms and mechanisms will emerge - and I see no reason why narrative won't adapt to these too.
Narrative isn't in crisis; it's just moving with the times. That's in its nature because narrative is deep in ours. Financial communicators need to grasp this, make intentional use of techniques developed over millennia and sell stories responsibly.
Key takeaways
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Narrative is adapting, not disappearing. Channels and habits change, but people still seek stories that connect them and help them make sense of the world.
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Traditional storytelling techniques still work. Strong characters, dramatic tension, familiar tropes, and surprises remain valuable tools for corporate communicators.
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Make complex ideas memorable. Vivid mental images and simple, relatable examples help audiences understand, retain, and share a story.
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Put organisational history to work. A long history can connect a company to a shared past, offering continuity and strengthening its reputation.
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Greater influence demands greater responsibility. Data and artificial intelligence increase the speed and precision of communication, making integrity and the avoidance of manipulation more important than ever.
Adam Harper founded Ashbury in January 2020. He was previously Head of Communications for Greater China at HSBC, where he was also Regional Head of Communications for Global Banking and Markets, Asia-Pacific.
Before joining HSBC, Adam was a Vice President in Credit Suisse's Asia-Pacific Corporate Communications team and Asia Editor at EuroWeek. He has worked in Asia since 2004 and is a graduate of the University of Cambridge.
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Andrew Ho has joined EDP APAC as Communications Lead, supporting communications across the region.
His role spans media relations, brand engagement and internal communications, working with teams across Asia Pacific to deliver on the organisation’s communications priorities and strengthen its regional profile.
Andrew’s prior communications experience includes roles at PRecious Communications and Ellerton & Co.
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On the consumer front, the agency has been appointed by MILO Malaysia to provide communications strategy, public relations, media relations and on-ground activation support for its MILO Malaysia Breakfast Day, Energy for Good, Merdeka Day and Triple Advantage campaigns.
Jessica Funk, Brand Manager & Sustainability Lead at MILO Malaysia, said: “Perspective stood out for its strategic thinking, creativity and understanding of our various campaign objectives in its pitch proposals.
“Beyond its strong media relationships, the team demonstrated a willingness to embrace new challenges and deliver impactful, human-centred storytelling, whilst demonstrating an understanding of how to bring these stories to life in an authentic and meaningful manner.”
Other wins under the agency’s consumer and brand communications practice include Nescafé, Sun Lolly and ShopeePay.
The agency has also secured accounts under its corporate reputation and thought leadership practice, including the GEAR-uP programme under Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance, Asia School of Business and IJM.
Across its GEO offering, Perspective Strategies has secured two accounts: Mercedes Benz Malaysia and a retainer with Paramount.
The agency has also collaborated with technology partner Entermind AI, combining intelligence, frameworks and optimisation capabilities with communications strategy, corporate narrative and stakeholder engagement expertise for clients.
Tan May Lee, Partner and Executive Director of Perspective Strategies, said: “Our collaboration with Entermind brought together complementary capabilities across technology, research, branding and communications to reveal opportunities that were previously hidden. That enabled us to sharpen our PR activities to drive brand narratives for the client.”
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