Telum is looking to highlight the diverse and vibrant agencies in the Southeast Asian PR agency landscape in upcoming editions of our PR Alert. We want to encourage networking, business opportunities, and to celebrate the great initiatives being worked on around the region. If you'd like your agency to feature, get in touch.

What services does Grow Public Relations offer?
Grow Public Relations is a boutique PR agency that focuses our work on venture-backed start-ups and SMEs. We believe in building small giants and strive to raise their reputations through media publicity and awareness among key opinion leaders. Our core service offering is public relations. We also support clients in other forms of external communications such as content creation.

What size is Grow Public Relations?
Grow PR’s current team size is 10 -12. We have B2B and B2C practices covering industries across technology, food, education, healthcare, and skincare among many others. Some of Grow PR's client portfolio includes brands such as ShopBack, SoftBank Robotics, Maxi-Cash and Ayam Brand.

Where does Grow Public Relations have an office?
The Grow PR team works remotely and we have colleagues based in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Do you have a particular area of focus?
Our area of focus is on venture-backed startups and SMEs. Within this category, we are pretty much industry-agnostic having a client portfolio across varying industries.  Working with young brands requires a different approach as our main role is to raise their profile. It is incredibly exciting to work with startups and SMEs as the impact of our work is evident. We get to see investors, customers and partners coming to our clients and this excites us.

Who is the founder and why did they start the agency?
Grow PR was started by Christel Goh, a PR practitioner based in Singapore in 2018. Christel is also the founder of a social enterprise in the eldercare sector. During the course of her career, Christel was approached by many small business owners to run PR campaigns for them. These freelance stints eventually led to her starting Grow PR. Through the years, Christel’s focus has always been on start-ups and SMEs and this vision to create impact in the industry still stands strong today.
 

Christel Goh

Tell us about the leadership team.
The Grow PR leadership team comprises PR professionals with decades of experience in the field across agency and in-house communications experience. Grow PR’s mandate is to ensure that our clients will always be able to readily access an experienced account lead who is able to provide strategic counsel, when needed.

What is next for Grow Public Relations? What is the five-year goal?
Grow Public Relations’ plans for the next five years is to strive for growth for the team and for our clients' businesses. When we refer to growth within the team, we are not just referring to the size of our team but we are looking to promote a strong sense of mastery, meaning and autonomy within our team members in the years to come. We also aim to continue to support the start-up/SME landscape by equipping them with tools to better raise their profiles in an increasingly crowded space.

In a sentence, describe your ideal relationship with a journalist.
An ideal relationship with a journalist is one where having worked together for a good period of time, we are closely aware of the journalist's interests and the information they specifically require for their work. The journalist would also know exactly the clients we have on our portfolio and is ready to reach out for what they need.

Any key PR trends your agency is keeping an eye on?
As we focus on start-ups and SMEs, it can be challenging to get media interest without any prior history to back them up, therefore embarking on a PR campaign is akin to building a brand story for our clients. Today’s media landscape is even more saturated and to help our clients stand out, branding, crafting content and narrative are becoming even more pivotal for coverage opportunities.

Thought leadership for our clients is vital in positioning a new brand in the market, and that leads to the awareness of knowing how personal branding works and why it is important for start-ups founders and CEOs as well as SMEs, which led to the recent launch of our Reputation Mastery Bootcamp.

What skillsets do you look for in new hires?
Apart from showcasing strong skills in public relations, we are looking for people who are open and interested in the world of start-ups and SMEs. We also look for PR professionals who are comfortable working in a small team and join us with an openness to take on new challenges.