In a panel webinar appearance at the AsiaStartupExpo, hosted by beSUCCESS Media Group in collaboration with AsiaTechDaily and KoreaTechDesk, Wise Up PR founder, David Claxton, spoke in detail about how Asian technology companies can achieve international awareness.
The panel discussion, entitled “Global Voice: Helping Asian Innovation Speak to the World” offered Asian technology firms an insight into how they can break into English-speaking markets through investing in brand and media relations.
Moderated by Aditi Dave, Editor, KoreaTechDesk, joining David for the session also included Jean Lee , Head Of Marketing Communications at bitsensing, and Urska Vracun, an EU-based Business Consultant.
Listen to the Full Webinar Discussion
Key Discussion Topics
In a wide-ranging conversation, the discussion covered the following key issues:
- How a one-size-fits-all approach for Asian technology companies to messaging, brand and earned and owned channels falls flat internationally. Panelists discussed the need to tailor and localize to maximize international awareness.
- Despite being technology businesses, speakers discussed the need to humanize storytelling to achieve cut through with ideal customer profiles (ICPs).
- Wise Up PR highlighted its work with bitsensing in the city of Verona, taking a quite technical story on the installation of an intelligent transportation system (ITS), and building a mainstream narrative that resulted in top-tier media coverage for the Korean brand.
- The session delved into the role of AI tools for content generation, as well as which social media platforms work best for B2B communications and audiences.
Transcript
Aditi, KoreaTechDesk: So let me introduce myself. I am part of B Success Group, and I head the Korea Tech Desk, which is an online media publication promoting writing about the Korean startup ecosystem.
For the panel talk today, we are going to obviously concentrate on Asian innovation — how Asian startups can expand globally to the English-speaking world, and what is important for them to showcase when they invite or attract global investors and companies.
On the panel, we have Jean Lee. She is Head of Marketing and Communication of bitsensing. David Claxton is the founder of Wise Up PR from the USA. Urska Vracun is a business development consultant from Slovenia.
Maybe we will start with Jean. She can quickly give an introduction of herself.
Jean Lee, bitsensing: Yeah, hi. Thanks for having me. I’m Jean from bitsensing, Head of Marketing and Communications. I’m in charge of everything that has to do with marketing and PR.
bitsensing is a radar technology startup that develops radar solutions for autonomous vehicles, mobility, smart cities, digital healthcare, and etc.
Urska Vracun: Yeah, hello. I’m Urska. I’m a business development consultant based in Slovenia in Europe. I advise startups and established companies on entering other markets. I mostly work currently with Chinese and Korean companies.
I also am part of an investment group. I focus mostly on user experience and maybe some documentation things for companies and communication. So that’s my job.
David Claxton, Wise Up PR: Thanks so much for having me on this webinar, Aditi.
In terms of my own background, I’m the founder of Wise Up Public Relations. We’re a PR agency based out of Boston with a global footprint. Our main service areas are media relations, content creation, and social media support. Most of the team are former journalists.
We’ve actually worked with a host of South Korean clients in the past. It’s been a real growth area for us. In terms of my own background, I was also a writer for a sports business publication as well.
Aditi: Okay, thank you. Maybe we can start with the questions and the panel talk quickly.
So my first question is, how can Asian startups specifically tell a global story? How do they maintain the authenticity of Asia and still have a tailored message for global investors, companies, and collaborations?
So maybe, David, you can start with that.
David: Perfect, yeah. I think what you said there, Aditi, is the critical part — that tailored piece.
If I look at it purely from a public relations standpoint, it’s about nuance. Messaging does not just work for one audience. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. It has to be nuanced. It has to be multi-level. It has to be across sectors.
If a startup has different types of customer segments, messaging should be looked at from a local, regional, and international level, and then even sectoral.
And that’s the key piece. I think maybe at a startup level it’s not always known instantly, and it’s a lot of work as well — defining who those audiences are, those customer profiles, which publications they read, how do we reach them.
It’s a big tract of work. And if you want to get a public relations function up and running within an organization, that’s how you start — messaging pillars, founder stories, which geographies are we focused on.
So really, that upfront work is where you should be spending your time, and it will pay off in the long run.
Jean: Yeah, so at bitsensing, we kind of transitioned from technical specs to human-centered storytelling.
We used to talk more about features — how long range our sensors detect, how well it captures data, how accurate it is. It was very performance-focused. But now we try to explain how our radar helps safe driving, smart cities, and better sleep monitoring.
We experienced that it’s always important to talk about the problem and how we solve it, and not just how strong or how good our technology is.
Right now our long-term vision is fixed as “Radar Everywhere. Better Life with Radar.” Everything else gets adapted around that. We tailor the tone and level of formality depending on the audience, whether it’s an investor presentation or a social post.
But one thing is that it is always consistent to our vision and our brand identity. We also want to talk more about real-life situations instead of just technical things.
Urska: I would say one of the biggest challenges is that they struggle to find what the real problem is on international markets.
The problems we face in Europe as users are different from the ones users face in Korea. The point for every startup is to find the problem to solve. If you’re not solving a problem for a user, you’re not going to be successful in any market.
Like Jean said, it’s important to focus on the user and see what their issues are and solve those.
Another thing is visual imaging. For Asian startups, graphical user interfaces with a lot of graphics and animations are very common. For a European, that can be very distracting. If I open a user interface with too many graphics, I might close it because we prefer clean, minimalistic styles.
David: For sure. It actually involves bitsensing and Jean. It was a story we worked on together.
bitsensing was installing its radar solution into the city of Verona in Italy. We could have looked at that from just an installation perspective — we are putting this technology in this city.
Instead, we decided it was a story about one of Europe’s most historic cities coming into the smart city age. The technology was helping to make roads safer and improve traffic flow.
We pegged it to Romeo and Juliet, since Verona is famous for that. It was a very consumer-led story. We had great visuals and a great spokesperson.
We were able to package it as a simple story that people could understand — bringing a 700-year-old road into the new generation of road safety.
That resulted in impactful global coverage. And it helped the sales function. Other cities saw what happened in Verona and directly reached out to bitsensing.
Urska: When it comes to pitching, you have to know which problem you’re solving.
If one founder decides something is a problem and builds a solution, but later finds out it’s not a universal problem, that’s a huge issue.
Another thing — when pitching to European investors — it’s important to be direct.
In many Asian cultures, communication is indirect. Long sentences, not getting to the point. For a European investor, it’s “get to the point.” Make your sentences short and clear.
David: Definitely.
First question: are you ready for PR?
PR is not something you can turn on and off like a tap. The most successful campaigns are long-term.
It’s similar to sales. You can’t email an investor once and expect a response. It’s about relationships. Journalists are busy. One pitch won’t get attention.
It’s not about blasting out a press release. It has to be targeted and relationship-driven.
Urska: I advise startups to use social media as much as possible — but the appropriate platforms for their audience.
ChatGPT can be useful, especially when you need help structuring thoughts. But users can recognize AI-written content.
We want to know there is a human behind it. In Europe, that human touch is very important.
Jean: For social media, we tried Instagram and Twitter, but since we are very technical and B2B, we focus mostly on LinkedIn.
We also have our own blog. I do use ChatGPT and AI tools because our marketing team is only myself, so it’s difficult to create everything alone.
However, AI tools have limitations. They don’t generate accurate technical visuals, especially for radar beams and sensors.
So we limit AI usage and sometimes work with agencies or external crews for more technical content.
International Media Relations for Korean Technology Companies
At Wise Up PR, we support a range of Korean technology companies with international PR and media relations designed to fuel global growth. To learn more about our approach and experience, speak with our team.