Telum caught up with Marjorie Poon, Co-Founder and Operations Director at DIFY as she shares what inspired her to run her boutique agency and the challenges her team faces handling PR for emerging sectors like Blockchain, FinTech and esports.

What led you to co-found DIFY in 2018? 
Prior to DIFY, the bulk of my work experience was in local start-up companies such as Love, Bonito. It was through this that I developed an interest and appreciation for local companies and home-grown brands. As a collaborative person who thrives in teams, I enjoyed being in teams of small sizes as I personally find that there is a stronger bond within teammates, and I like cultivating meaningful relationships with the people I spend so much time with! 

In my last employment, I discovered alongside my co-founder that there was a gaping need for tailored PR and marketing services for emerging markets. Also, the lines between PR, digital marketing and campaigns have become more blurred. With our varied experiences in these areas, we felt that it was the right time and we were the right people to start our own boutique agency to address the growing need in the market. 
 
COVID-19 has left a significant impact on businesses across industries including PR and comms. What measures have the team at DIFY taken to overcome these challenging times? 
The COVID-19 pandemic's global impact has tested the adaptability of businesses worldwide. We too, had to make adjustments. Events and activations are one of our core services and the restrictions on events put a halt to 1/3 of our business model. We took the opportunity to study virtual solutions that would allow continued engagement despite physical barriers. We have since been able to advise clients on the endless possibilities of virtual experiences and support them with our virtual event capabilities. 
  
The current situation calls for businesses to adopt creative solution to keep up with demands from clients. Has there been a shift in terms of the creative strategies at DIFY? 
We often emphasise the need of going digital to our clients and have always been eager to improve on our processes. We are in the midst of working with one of the SME Centres (under Enterprise Singapore) to come up with smart solutions that will benefit us and reduce the strain of the manual processes in client management. We hope that these solutions can be useful to our clients, staff, and even other agencies. In short, we too are upskilling ourselves as demand grows in order to keep up with the changing needs of our clients and their consumers. 
 
Do you think that the pandemic has made PR and marketing more important than ever in any businesses? 
Yes, yes, yes! PR and marketing are ways of engaging and communicating with your consumers and target audiences.  Amidst this pandemic, it is no longer about just standing out from the crowd, it is about sustaining your connection with your audience and making sure that you are not left behind and forgotten especially amongst other businesses that have chosen to ramp up their PR and marketing efforts.   
 
DIFY serves clients from emerging markets like Blockchain, FinTech and esports. Can you share with us how is PR different in these sectors than versus mainstream businesses? 
The main challenge for these sectors is to capture the attention of the mainstream audience. It is easy to overlook these emerging markets, and pay them less attention because it is difficult to change the mindset of the general public. Hence, our role is to bridge that gap between these sectors and the audience. There is usually a lot of education involved to lower the barrier of entry and to make these sectors look more "approachable". It takes the effort of everyone in the industries to make this happen, but we do sense a paradigm shift taking place from when we first started DIFY! 
 
Personally, do you find that building meaningful professional relationships is more difficult in the virtual world? 
I am quite introverted, so the virtual world has helped me with establishing and maintaining professional relationships since it has created some spatial and temporal boundaries. Such boundaries are important as it allows me to be more comfortable with meeting new people virtually, without worrying too much about making small talks and being awkward! It is all about perception, the virtual world can be a tool in networking and relationship building if used the right way.