Press Release in Thailand

Beyond the actual strict formatting of a press release (which you can learn for yourself through online articles if you wish), the “newsworthiness” is everything, and it’s up to you to be able to supply the topical content and flowing story.

Imagine you are an unknown artist who will be exhibiting at a forthcoming local gallery event. Simply telling your local newspapers this fact alone is not likely to get you published. Rather, you say that the gallery event is an important occasion as it raises the profile of your town in the art world, and as a resident of this town, you are representing your city on a national stage. This is PR at its most basic, and before we get on to writing our press release, we need to make sure our key messages, positioning statement and bio are complete.

If your parent company, client, boss or work colleague asks you to write a press release, hammer them for info. What are you being asked to write about? If it’s a new product, get the ins-and-outs of what it does, how it works and why the market should care. Writing a press release about something you don’t fully understand will result in an epic fail, 100% of the time – an aimless mess of text that an editor will correctly identify as not helpful to their publication or online news platform. You MUST ask the person assigning this task to you to brief you correctly on ALL information you are likely to need to achieve the communication objective.

Always think big picture. A press release about a 25% growth in profits will interest your investors and staff, but your local populace won’t care and therefore the piece may not be newsworthy. Instead, explain that because of your growth in profits, your facility has added 30 jobs to the local economy, and sources materials from local suppliers for the good of your town. Relevance is key; if you talk about your community or city in the press release, then you’re likely to engage these collectives. Don’t just talk about you or your product; talk about the market, and why you are leading it.

Beyond these “story crafting” tips, you are essentially tasked with creating a document in its industry standard format, which must be adhered to closely.

Ostensibly, to relay news and advise media organisations of your latest happenings, in the hope that they will publish something and the general public will see it.

In reality though, a highly strategic agency like Gemini sees it as both a three-dimensional logic puzzle and a vehicle for artistic and creative storytelling expression in equal measure.

For example, your headline; people will often say that the purpose of the headline is to stand out in a busy editor’s mailbox, which is untrue, because a good PR firm will be pre-approved with all media organisations due to their consistent content relevance and established relationships with key media.

The first paragraph of our press release is key. Whilst many PR firms launch straight into whatever it is they want to say in the first paragraph, we treat it with the respect it deserves, layer it with relevance, and optimise it for SEO while we’re doing it. The purpose of our first paragraph is to reinforce the headline and explain its meaning, whilst echoing our key messaging.

As a further example of the care and skill that needs to be invested in press release creation, the first paragraph is a key vehicle for reinforcing your brand positioning, brand promise, brand USPs and vision. It will also further explain the reason for the creation of the press release in an enticing way, whilst setting up the following content for consumption, which will drip with relevance, core targeting, and establishing proofing points to back up your claims via the key messaging.

We are very passionate about our press release authoring, and vanquish every other Bangkok PR firm in this regard.

We can guarantee the press releases we create for you will be of the highest possible quality. We are able to provide examples relevant to your industry from our back catalogue of over 20,000 published press releases, so please ask us via the contact form.

Please also follow this link if you wish to learn more about how to avoid common mistakes when writing a press release in Thailand.

Many, but in quick summary (please contact us for help):

• Introduction of document identifier
• Company logo
• Headline and sub-heading
• Region and date identifier
• Body text introduction
• Opening para
• Last line of opening para (the set-up)
• Second para (free creative space)
• Known facts & missing highlights
• Executive quotation
• Closing para with further proof
• Social media emphasis
• Page breaks
• Boilerplate
• Representation status
• Media contact info