12: The Future of PR in Asia Pacific

Public relations professionals are well-versed in crystal ball gazing, being the eyes and ears of the organizations, and clients that they counsel. In planning public relations programs, as we saw in Chapter 3, practitioners are trained to examine what has gone before in an organization’s history and map out where the organization is right now, to understand where it wants to be going in the future.

Attempting to analyze public relations across the Asia Pacific region, based on its past, present, and future status is beset with complexity, when you factor in the cultural, linguistic, political, and economic differences across some of the largest and smallest populations, active and inactive markets, richest and poorest nations, most educated, and under-educated countries on earth. Added to which, the industry itself comprises many parts that make up the whole; each with its own challenges from consultancy and in-house issues to the specialist sectors of financial, health care, consumer, crisis management, and public affairs, for example.