Fintech Media in Asia Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

Fresh from Hong Kong FinTech Week and the Singapore FinTech Festival, Tim Williamson has been interviewing journalists about how Asia-Pacific (APAC) is setting the pace for global fintech. Tim has deep relationships with some of the biggest voices in fintech journalism as APAC Managing Director at Telum Media, the region’s leading media intelligence platform that connects journalists with public relations experts. 

Tim Williamson, APAC Managing Director at Telum Media

Breaking Banks podcaster Brett King (who is also a fintech executive) tells Tim that he and his journalist peers are sure about one thing: China is winning. Tencent’s WeChatPay and AliPay conducted $52 trillion in mobile payments across their networks, a number that’s many times higher than China’s GDP. Brett told Tim, ‘if you want to be in the heart of fintech over the next couple of decades, you need to be in Asia.’ 

Archie Group got Tim’s perspective on conducting fintech public relations in APAC at a time when seemingly startups from every country are getting into the game. 

Archie: You recently produced an insightful report that showed COVID has thrust the communications function in Asia to the top. Why is that?

Tim: The Asia Pacific Communications Survey 2021 was based on responses from 450 communications leaders from across the APAC region, which is obviously a hugely diverse region made up of markets from Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong to China, Indonesia and the Philippines. We found that COVID brought the communications function to the top of the table in APAC in terms of decision-making, with 77% of respondents saying COVID had reinforced or elevated the communications function at a strategic level. The survey also found that COVID is prompting consumers to recognize the role and importance of traditional media as trusted sources of information. And after a year in 2020 of battening down the hatches, companies and brands now have an appetite to get onto the front foot again. 

Archie: What communications priorities stood out for brands in Asia this year?

Tim: If 2020 was all about managing the crisis, transition to work-from-home and employee communications, the emphasis has shifted slightly in 2021 to be more externally focused and prepared for the new normal. With APAC in various stages of COVID management and lockdown in 2021, brands and companies turned to communications, sometimes over other forms of marketing, to support their transition to new business models and modes of doing business. Purpose has also been pushed to the forefront. With that in mind, brand-building, thought-leadership and reputation management were some of the biggest communications priorities.

Archie: Tell me about the networked community platform you’ve built at Telum Media: How does it work?

Tim: We connect technology and fintech reporters—stretching from Australia-New Zealand up through to China—to PR executives and fintech clients looking to gain exposure. Our platform enables PR executives who subscribe to Telum to search and identify which journalists to pitch or send press releases to in any of our markets. It also allows reporters to tell the PR community what they are interested in and how to engage with them, and we do that in a whole bunch of ways such as real-time news stories, interviews and media shout-outs for commentary. It’s all about helping marketers and communicators navigate the media in APAC and really target their pitching to get the best results.  

Archie: We know China holds an outsize role in the region for fintechs, but what are some other countries that journalists and PR teams should look to as increasingly prominent tech hubs?

Tim: The region is incredibly dynamic and there is a lot of investment capital here to be employed. In addition to Singapore, Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area in China, you can add India, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, which are all incredibly tech savvy. Tech in Asia spans everything from advanced semiconductor manufacturing and robotics to crypto and blockchain, to digital banking, e-gaming and e-commerce. If you look at Indonesia, there are some very exciting companies emerging at scale. Indonesia has a population of 270 million, two-thirds of whom have smartphones. Australia has growing tech and fintech industries. Out of the top 10 tech hubs globally identified in the KPMG Technology Industry Survey, six were in APAC.

Archie: Can a tech startup in Asia rely on PR in hubs like Singapore and Hong Kong, or is every country different?

Tim: It’s tempting to view APAC as a market as you would the US or the UK. In reality it’s highly diverse, with billions of people and multiple languages, so it’s imperative to understand exactly what you are trying to achieve and which markets matter to you and adapt your strategy accordingly. Singapore and Hong Kong make great launch pads for the region outside China and you can run effective communications campaigns across both markets. You need to be locally relevant, you can’t just pump out press releases with global partnerships and US stories, as nobody will care. There has to be a local angle and sometimes in the local language as well. If you are trying to penetrate a market you need to take time to understand how that market works, ‘who’s who’ in the ecosystem, what role the government plays, what channels you can reach your target audience on for your digital communications (e.g. WeChat in China). What doesn’t work too well is adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. That said, tech is global and Asian audiences may well pick up on coverage in global tech publications and podcasts.

Archie: Who are some of the top fintech journalists you read and listen to?

Tim: There are so many good writers in fintech here. A few that Telum has recently spoken with are Jame DiBasio, founder and editor of DigFin; Angie Lau, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News; Jamie Lee, Deputy News Editor at Singapore's The Business Times; Brett King, futurist, author, fintech entrepreneur and host of Breaking Banks Fintech Podcast; Arocha Phurmtaveepol, Editor-in-Chief at Techsauce in Thailand; and Eisya Asshafina Eloksari, Business Reporter at The Jakarta Post.