E50: Patriotism and PR disasters: What global brands MUST know about Vietnam
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It's really unpredictable, so don't gamble on that. Some scandals can go away quickly, but some remain forever. Especially some scandals relating to the patriotism of Vietnamese people. When you do something with the image of Vietnam, always check it twice.

Welcome to You Don't Know Vietnam, the show that demystifies Vietnam for global audiences by talking to the creatives, trendsetters and business owners who are taking on the market. Forget what you thought you knew about Vietnam, it's no longer that, as you're about to find out.

I'm Ian Paynton, co-founder of We Create Content, a content agency that helps global brands enter Vietnam and connect with Vietnamese consumers. We make global brands relevant among Vietnamese audiences on a daily basis with always-on, hyper-local content. On the 50th episode of You Don't Know Vietnam, I'm talking to PR expert Minh Duc.

He tells me why 2025 is such a big year for Vietnam's PR and media sector and what you need to know about Vietnamese patriotism as a global brand. He tells me how to avoid PR scandals, how social seeding can be used to shift the online narrative in Vietnam, maybe more than you might expect, and how to build a good relationship with Vietnamese media professionals.

He also gives tips for global brands entering the market who want to make an impact and shares what he would do with a $100,000 PR budget versus what he would do with very limited budget.

As we get to episode 50 of You Don't Know Vietnam, I would just like to say thanks for following along. I hope you're enjoying it. And as always, do hit subscribe on your preferred podcast channel and share it with your friends or business colleagues who you think would like to learn a bit more about Vietnamese business and culture insights.

Hi Ian, how are you? I'm good, thank you. Thanks for joining me on You Don't Know Vietnam. It's nice to meet you again. We met before, right? We've met a few times before and it's really nice to finally have you on the show. And I think it's really important right now because I get the sense that there's a bit of a shake-up happening in the...

media, journalism and PR landscape in Vietnam. What's going on? What you have observed is quite precise. It's a big change in Vietnam media landscape when some newspaper used to be under some government ministry, but now they changed the ministry. And I think it signifies the country's ambition to make media work more effectively and efficiently. And these changes are really important for PR people like me to follow because

Well, like they changed the key contact person that I used to work with and possibly there could be some changes in the direction of some newsroom. I'm trying to follow him closely and I also encourage other friends working in communication to do so.

If I'm hearing you correctly then, newspapers belong to different ministries and the ministries are changing around a little bit in terms of leadership and structure. And that's affecting which newspapers are linked to which ministries and the contact people and everything's a little bit uncertain and in transition. Is that correct? Yeah, I like the way that you summarise it as duration. Is there anything about...

Vietnam's journalism and media space that you think global audiences might not understand? Is there something particularly unique about the way Vietnam's journalism media space works? Well, the first thing that people, when they do journalism or they do communication in general in Vietnam, that they need to understand is that newspapers in Vietnam

quite controlled by the government. So everything needs to follow some standard and guidelines. And if they want to do PR or marketing or communication in Vietnam, they should know about that. And also there are some popular trends in newspaper.

and in the media landscape in general in Vietnam that people need to follow strictly. For example, within this year, I believe that the patriotism will be the key trend or will be the key phenomenon for the media landscape in Vietnam, that if companies from other countries want to jump into the Vietnamese market, they will need to pay more attention to it.

Tell me more about that. What's going on there? My country is the 50th anniversary of reunification in Vietnam. And I believe that this is a great challenge for communication activities. From what I have observed, patriotic sentiment and the beauty of Vietnamese people or Vietnamese life will be the central point of communication activity. As you can see, because I know that Ian, you have lived in Vietnam for a few years,

You can see that this year many viral products in the market is following that way. It focuses on celebrating the lives of Vietnamese people. From the music show Anh trai vượt ngàn trong gai, the new MV of the singer Hoa Minh Dhi about the beauty of our hometown, to the new film of Hoang Thuy Linh We are Vietnamese People.

You can see they are all about Vietnamese culture and Vietnamese people. Vietnamese people have a strong patriotic sentiment and it's really valuable. And you can see that kind of value echoing in the communication and media landscape this year.

Why strongly? I've always observed that national pride is a huge thing in Vietnam. And I've always said to global brands that tapping into that is definitely a way to connect with Vietnamese people and consumers. But it seems that in 2025, that might be amplified even more and turned up to 12, right? I don't think tapping into that is enough, Ian. I think they need to really mean it. They really need to show that they love the country.

They come here with a sound and good intention or sincere intention. Because tapping in national pride is a double-edged sword. It could be good, but it could be harmful if you don't do it carefully. How have you seen people get it wrong? Do you follow the case of the Chagi, a new multi-brand from China recently?

No. Yeah. So, okay, long story short, a few days ago, Chagi, a new brand of milk tea from China, it was strongly boycotted in Vietnam because on their website, they showed the wrong map of the East Sea of Vietnam. So that is a new example of the national boycott if the foreign brand violates the Vietnamese pride. They need to leave the market almost immediately.

So it just happened like a few days ago and it was still viral on the Internet now. That example just signifies the importance of the foreign companies to really pay more attention. They need to be so careful because they can easily be boycotted when violating that sentiment, that national pride. Yeah, it's easy to get wrong, isn't it?

Yes, it's really easy to jump off the cliff. I always say, check your maps. Whatever you do, check your maps. Check your maps, the first thing to do. Like that was the case a long time ago and it's still definitely the case today. What other things do you think are easy to get wrong with regards to leaning into national pride in Vietnam or things that you might do or say that are going to

piss a lot of people off. I remember there was a case of the photographer a few years ago. He came to Vietnam. He took photos of Vietnamese people, but he did it in the wrong way. He was exploited the image of Vietnamese people and he sold that kind of image, but he was boycotted because the way that he conducted was unethical. So if you come to Vietnam to do business, try to not exploit the Vietnamese people.

You need to come here with a good intention to bring the good thing to Vietnamese community, to celebrate, to embrace and to respect the culture, not like come here to exploit the culture and bring it back to your country. Vietnam is still affected by their colonization.

in their mindset. So when Vietnamese consumer, they feel like they are being exploited, taking advantage of, they will fight back really hard. So the shadow of history is still affecting the mindset of many Vietnamese people. And it's never really been a place where you can just come, smash and grab and get away with it. And that's still relevant today.

Yeah, poor is still like a big thing that people still talk about today, colonization and decolonization. And it doesn't just affect the history side, it also affects the mindset of people, which affects their maybe consuming behavior. They may not like the friend from country with the bad history with Vietnam, but they can prefer some friends from country with a good relationship with Vietnam from the past to the present.

So what would be the best way then if you wanted to harness national pride as a way to maybe get some earned media this year? Considering that there's a massive restructure, editorial focus might be looking at positive cultural stories given the significance of this year. How do you think a brand can harness that in an authentic way without it feeling like they're exploiting media?

the pride that can be found among Vietnamese people. For my experience, more than 10 years working in newspaper and communication, I realized a really interesting insight that media and PR in Vietnam tend to favor outsiders, foreigners who show their love to Vietnam, a sincere and honest love.

You can see many discourses in newspapers about foreigners such as like "Oh, I came to Vietnam as a tourist but I fell in love with the country so I stayed" or like "I love outside and Vietnamese culture so I want to introduce them to other countries, such as Asia." So if you want to do business in Vietnam and you want to do more with media and PR, you need to love my country. So that is the rule of thumb. You can do many ways to show your love.

You can do something casually, simple way. Some people, they love to wear out there. Sometimes I find it's quite performative, but it works to some extent with some people. You can do more. You can do more sincere things. You can do something deeper. You can contribute to some kind of poor community. You can support local good.

That could be the thing that you could do to show the love to Vietnam. I mean, loving can be expressed in many forms and ways. But as long as you can show that kind of thing to the Vietnamese consumers, to the Vietnamese community, and they see that your love is very sound, sincere, and respectful, then it's fine.

So as long as you're being authentic and respectful... It will be fine. I could not show you a particular way to show your love because it doesn't sound right when I say, oh, you need to do that, you need to do this. Right, Ian? Yeah. So it's coming from a place of sincerity, authenticity, of respect. You're not tone deaf. You're plugged in culturally and you're being sensitive to Vietnamese values. You probably can't go wrong. Have you seen...

Examples of giving back going wrong? I mean, I know there was that example of Katina, right? Oh, you know the context, right? During the typhoon, the Katinas, they say that if a customer buys a drink, they will contribute. I remember 1,000 and 2,000 Viet Nam Dong to donate to Yagi. It was a case of cross-marketing, but they did it so poorly.

I mean, brand-centric activities during that kind of time is a terrible idea. It should not be about your brand when it should be supporting people in it, and you should do it in a less commercial way. Imagine you sell a cup of drink for like $50,000, and you only contribute like $1,000 per cup. I think it reveals many things about the consumer. First, they expect the brand to be socially responsible.

and companies should join hands in supporting communities in need. Second, many consumers expect brands to be sincere with their intentions, not just a moment to do more branding and PR,

I think a good PR person needs to know when they could incorporate your activities and to which level. Well, definitely not during a hard time of Vietnamese people like Jackie Tai Phu. Don't do branding a lot during that kind of time. It's really sensitive. Do you think Katina's intention was good? They just miscalculated it slightly?

It's really hard to evaluate the intention of Cartina. Maybe they had a good intention. Having a good intention is not enough. Having a good intention needs to follow with a good execution. You cannot make the excuse that "Oh, I have a good intention but the execution was poorly done." No, they are intertwined. You cannot separate it from each other. They need to take responsibility for that.

It sounded like a bit of a PR crisis. How did it actually unfold? So they make an announcement and then there's negative comments, people are piling on, it gets boycotted. What did the crisis look like? The crisis was really bad because it was a really hard time for Vietnamese people. It started from a single post on the Facebook fan page of Cattynap that they will do that thing for the victim of the giaghi, donating 1,000 VNĐ for each cup of drink sold.

People, they saw it and they were so angry and they share and they talk about it. I had never seen that kind of fast boycott with a brand in Vietnam. I say everything moves fast in Vietnam and a PR crisis can really flare up super quick. How would you say that brands can safeguard themselves from this happening? Many people, they believe that because the scandal tend to move so fast, so they don't care about that.

And they believe that the consumer, the audience will forget about the scandal maybe in the next week or maybe next days when they have other things to concern about. But I need to tell you that don't gamble your brain on that kind of thing. Don't. It's really unpredictable. So don't gamble on that. Some scandals can go away quickly. Yes, luckily for them. But some remain forever.

especially some scandals relating to the patriotism of Vietnamese people, like I said. Some big companies can go through scandal resiliently, but small company cannot do that. That's the advice for any company if they want to do something that they might think it can upset consumers. Don't upset them. You don't know what kind of thing can escalate.

Especially when you do something with the image of Vietnam, always check it twice. We had a great experience working for Netflix. As an agency, it was a really good partnership. They treated us as their guide into Vietnam. They knew they wanted to speak to Vietnamese consumers, but they also knew they weren't close enough to Vietnamese culture. And they actually called us their scouts on the ridge. You can imagine that we're on the mountain looking down saying, yeah, it's okay. That's okay to publish. That's not okay to publish. Yeah. Yeah.

There were times though, when, you know, things were released on the streaming platform that we hadn't got the chance to sense check and did backfire and flare up a little bit on social media. There were some lessons learned even then. And I remember when that happened, there were so many thousands of people flooding to the Facebook page and they were all like saying exactly the same message. Well, it could be like, it could be the sitting bot saying,

Maybe you have some rivals who don't like you and they hire someone to do seeding. And doing seeding is also a very popular tactic in PR. I hear about that a lot, seeding. What is it? Simply like if you want to spread the news or you want to increase their interactivity in a post, you can hire some people and they can have some Facebook clones which don't exist and they won't trust you.

Wow.

In PR industry in Vietnam, newspaper, they normally care about what is happening on social media. To them, news means something is happening on social media. So many companies now, they are pouring a lot of money on social media, including seeding or influencer affiliation, influencer endorsement. And if you have enough people doing seeding, maybe your post could go viral and

Newspaper can pick it up and they write a news about that. Kind of took me by surprise when I realized it was a thing. You know, I'm a big believer in like organic. Yeah, I read some articles

analysis about the newspaper industry now in the world. And many people, they say that it's really unfortunate when many reporters and journalists now, they just depend on what is happening on social media to decide the level of authenticity, to decide the level of caring. So what is concerned on social media means that it's concerned by the public.

And many companies, they know that they can control that kind of narrative. And they know that when they make a fuss on social media, newspaper will pay attention to that. Journalists and reporters would pick up on that. Instead of like talking to newspaper, instead of paying money to newspaper, they just spend more money on social media. They control the narrative on social media because they believe that newspaper will

Take that thing. There's that kind of thing that we are doing now with the PR industry because investing on paid content on newspaper is quite expensive sometimes. So sometimes we need to find a cheaper way to go around. Social media could be a cheaper way now. And we could hope that some reporter could pick that new on social media and feature on newspaper. It's not 100% guaranteed.

But it happened with many companies, with many issues. That's why we do a lot of meetings and social content. So create a hype in order to get earned media.

Is it the case in Vietnam where you might be able to send a press release to a journalist? Expect to get it covered? Or do you have to pay money? Yes, in Vietnam, you still can send a press release to newspaper and they still put it on their newspaper sometimes.

I think that the most important thing is you need to build up a good media relationship with them. So sometimes you can send a mass press release to all the newspapers that you know, but sometimes you need to pitch and you need to talk to the reporter individually. The chance of getting featured on newspaper depends on your relationship with newspaper. If you have a good relation with many newspapers, you will have more coverage.

If you don't have, you need to pay money. I see. I hear about relationship building a lot on this podcast. And it seems like it's true in PR as well. You know, keep your relationships with individual journalists strong. I think it's really important to PR people. And to me, it's one of the most important skills that a person working in the PR industry needs to obtain.

If they cannot build up a good relation with media, it's really hard for them, not only in pitching, but also in crisis communication. So what does managing a good relationship look like with journalists in Vietnam? What does a good relationship feel like? Well, that's a very hard question, Ian, because there's some things that you can do that I can tell you on the surface. There's so many things below the surface that I cannot tell you. I want to know those things.

I mean, the easiest way for you to maintain a good relationship with their newspaper is trying to maintain a two-way conversation. If you need them, you send them emails, you send them the press release. So when they need you, you also need to do something to support them. That's the rule of thumb. But many people cannot do that. I know that situation. Also, I think talking to them...

daily maybe not daily but weekly or monthly is important you need to show that you care about them and the caring is not just about your company or your friend so you need to talk to them individually talk more about other things not just with the stuff from your company because they know that you're not sincere you just talk to them because you want to feed them news

So not only when I build the relationship with the newspaper, with the reporter or journalist, well, I try to talk more to them about other things. I try to keep them as my friends instead of just like working partner. In some special days like the Day of Journalism, June 21st, and also on some special occasions like Tet holiday, I think it's important to do something like send them some thank you cards.

If you are allowed to send them something like flour, well, you could do that. But I know that many companies, they don't allow their PR staff to give money to buy flour to their journalists. But at least you can send a thank you card for your appreciation to them. I think that is some tactic that you can do to maintain a good relationship with a journalist on the surface.

I couldn't go deeper, Ian. You can. Come on, you can give me one thing from the depths. No. What sort of thing are we talking about under the surface? Marketing advertisement is so easy to talk, but PR, there's so many sensitive topics they never tell you. So don't expect a PR person to talk to you everything that they know.

in the public place like a podcast. But what I hear though is make sure the relationship with your journalists are not just one way. You're not just going to them in times of need. It's give and take. It's making sure it's win-win for everyone. And I think like we said earlier about coming from a place of authenticity, I think like even

even when you're making friends and building a network here, I think that needs to come from a place of authenticity as well. And it would take time. Yeah, definitely. It should come from the place of authenticity and sincerity. Yeah. And it's not going to happen overnight either, is it? Building this network and building trust in Vietnam. Yes. That's why...

Not only when companies want to hire PR specialists, they need a person with a certain amount of working experience because they know that, for example, a student graduating from college, they could not do that kind of media relationship properly. No experience, they have no networking, and they even lack the practical knowledge of the market. That is a tough thing for the PR industry.

So I couldn't deduce then that for a global brand coming to Vietnam to do business, to connect with consumers, to tell stories, that you probably shouldn't be tempted to hire junior when it comes to PR. It's still unfair if I say that they should not hire junior. Junior also needs space to develop. If no one gives them the chance to develop their skills, how can they become senior? But...

If you have the plan to come to the market quickly and you want to get the coverage as quick as possible, a senior PR executive is more favored. But if you have a long-term plan in Vietnam, not just like one or few years, you want to be like...

a factory in Vietnam and you need a PR team, then you should try to balance between senior staff and junior staff. Because please, juniors, students and fresh graduates, they also need room to protect and they need room to grow.

I think I meant hire only junior without some seniority because it could lead to mishaps. Yeah. They need senior to advise them because this kind of industry is really sensitive and just one mistake could lead to the deadly consequences for many companies. It did happen in the past. Like the case, I just told you about Jaggi, a new multi-brand. They

Ian, they already hide a space, a model and brick space in Greenhead Street, the most crowded street in Saigon. They set up everything. But because of the scandal, they need to put out everything. They leave. They quit it. Yeah, they're gone. Everything was gone. I remember there was a billboard of that Mewty brand a few days ago. But yesterday, it was clear. Wow.

So they wasted money on renting a place. They wasted money on investing on many things. And just because of the mistake with the map, now they're gone. Attention to detail seems really important in this field. It's really important with the details in PR. Yeah. Because like one minor mistake could lead to very bad consequences. Yeah.

So it's 2025. We know that there's a bit of a shake up with Vietnam's media landscape. We also know that the sentiment and narrative this year is quite a lot about national pride, given the importance of 2025. Let's say a company has PR budget for the whole year to spend and it's $100,000.

What would be your top level advice to them in how they break that down? Well, it's like a test for me. $100,000 is around 2.5 billion Viet Nam Dong. With many companies, for example, companies in consumer product industry, $100,000 is not a big number. It is quite a small number in their marketing and PR budget.

But with many companies, $100,000 could be like the whole year budget to do PR

If I have that sum of money, $100,000, and I need to spend it wisely, I will invest heavily on social media. Group sittings, influencer endorsement, trying to build community and channel to help me build up my content. So that is the thing that I want to do. So I will just focus on mainly on social media. Maybe I can spend a little bit of it on traditional content

PR strategy like newspaper, but I can guarantee that most of it will go to social media. That includes coming up with the idea, creating the content, telling the stories around it. So I was going to ask you as well about what if a company had very limited budget? Well, when I used to go for an NGO and you know that like the 8 cents of an NGO is like we don't have a lot of budget. The budget for PR is almost zero. So

In the case that I don't have a big budget, what I had to do is first, I need to do everything in-house. So instead of paying money for someone to write a content for me, I need to do it all by myself. That's the first thing. Second thing, instead of paying money for newspaper, I would try to pitch more. I send more press release. I talk to them. I try to take use of my big network of reporters and journalists so they can help me to spread the news.

And also I need to depend on some cheap tactic. For example, yes, sitting is a cheap tactic. And you know that the agency market is now very competitive. And many agencies, they will try to lower the price as much as possible to keep the customer happy. Customer like me. So sometimes I still can find some agency offering me a very low price.

So that's the way that I do to keep my company, my organization run smoothly without a big budget. I'd like to end these episodes by asking you, what are you most excited about for Vietnam's future? I think my country is developing quite quickly and there's so many hopes about the booming of economy of Vietnam. But in particular, what I feel is the most excited is about the digital transformation

and the booming of technology industry in Vietnam. It's a new trend. Well, not technically new, but the country is heavily focusing on it. They invest a lot of money and budget on it.

And in upcoming year, I believe that Vietnam will develop technology quite quickly and fast compared to their global market. I could not say that we can catch up with the global industry, with the global market. But let's see and let's hope that many new digital transformation, innovation, new opportunities could appear in Vietnam for their technology industry. And...

Ian, you know that I'm working for a company in Vietnam as a PR manager. So I'm very excited about all the stories which are going to happen in Vietnam surrounding the tech industry, because I know that there will be a lot of room for me to improve my skills and also a lot of things for me to talk about within that media landscape.

You've been listening to You Don't Know Vietnam. I'm Ian Paynton from We Create Content. I'd like to thank DJ Jace from The Beat Saigon for their epic soundtrack and a massive thank you to you for making it all the way to the end.