PRecious Communications enters Philippines, names new country lead

PRecious Communications has established local operations in the Philippines as part of its Greater Southeast Asia expansion strategy. At the same time, it has appointed Paolo Alba (pictured right) as the client service director and country lead for the Philippines.

In his new role, Alba will be responsible for building relationships with key stakeholders, business development initiatives with potential partners, and recruitment of top talent in the next three months. By year-end, he envisions doubling the current Philippine headcount and bringing more value to local and regional players in the fintech, insurtech, healthtech, and startup industries. He will also report to Prayaank Gupta, vice president, growth and innovation, a PRecious spokesperson told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

According to the agency, Alba has over nine years of experience in corporate branding, reputation management, and crisis management. Throughout his tenure in Fleishman Hillard and Ogilvy, he provided strategic counsel for local and global companies across the healthcare and pharmaceutical, insurance and insurtech, financial services and fintech, telecommunications, real estate, media and entertainment, and consumer goods sectors. Additionally, he ran crisis workshops across the markets and provided counsel on issues and reputation management initiatives. 

With its expansion into the Philippines, PRecious hopes to bring more value to brands such as loyalty and data-focused marketing platform Society Pass, global trend forecasting company WGSN, a regional cloud-based anti-money laundering monitoring software, and other emerging companies in the fintech, insurtech, healthtech, and startup industries. 

Lars Voedisch (pictured left), managing director and founder of PRecious Communications, said that the agency has been aggressively strengthening its presence across the region to better complement its clients' marketing strategies in Southeast Asia. With Southeast Asia being the next frontier for global brands due to its burgeoning digital economy and rising mobile engagement, PRecious Communications is building on this momentum, and expanding to the Philippines to extend the same brand of strategic communications support to local and foreign brands looking to strengthen their presence across the country, he explained. 

In fact, based on the Asian Development Bank’s Asian Development Outlook 2022, the Philippine economy is projected to grow by 6% and 6.3% in 2022 and 2023 respectively, with more brands and companies setting their sights on the Philippines amidst the market’s strong investment momentum and bullish GDP outlook. 

Meanwhile, according to Gupta, most of the agencies' partners in Southeast Asia have identified the Philippines as a strong emerging market and key growth area for tech-enabled industries. "With the local economy projected to grow in the next two years, PRecious Communications’ entrance reaffirms our commitment to be a strategic and responsive partner for clients as they strengthen their presence across the region," he added.

“I have been working alongside Voedisch and Gupta to identify strategic ways to support our clients in the region as they grow their businesses in this market. PRecious competitive advantage is our ability to provide regional capabilities and local expertise in every market we operate in," he said. Alba explained that now that the agency has established its local operations and has a dedicated team in the Philippines, it can start bringing the same value to local partners that wish to expand across Southeast Asia. 

As of now, PRecious Communications plans and executes client communications programmes across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The agency recently clinched gold for PR Team of the Year (Agency) at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's PR Awards 2022. Its clients Tiger Brokers and Stroke Services Improvement Team also each won silver for Best PR Campaign: Banking/Financial Services and Best CSR Communications respectively. 

Just last month, the agency appointed Arundhati Saha as director of strategic advisory to lead the its new technology practice, PRecious EDGE. In her new role, Saha was tasked with providing high-level advisory to PRecious’ growing portfolio of global, regional, and local technology brands. These include AppsFlyer, Princeton Digital Group and Tech Data, among others. Prior to the appointment, Saha led the regional marketing and communications strategy for Havas Group, and also worked with OMG APAC, where she assumed the role of marketing communications director.

In a previous conversation with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Voedisch said that expanding the team strategically and appointing senior leaders reflected the agency’s commitment towards strengthening its capabilities as an integrated communications agency for the Greater Southeast Asia region. “I am excited to work alongside Saha to elevate our PRecious EDGE team to greater heights across markets, as she brings strategic insights, creative execution and real thought leadership experience to the team,” he added then. 

Meanwhile in February, PRecious Communications named Jose Raymond as director of strategic advisory, where he helmed the PRecious INC practice, which provides high-level advisory to global, regional and local corporates. At the same time, it also named Joel Cutinho as senior manager for PRecious EDGE, the agency's B2B tech practice.

Raymond was most recently founder and chief strategy officer at SW Strategies for five and a half years, where he founded SW Strategies after close to eight years of experience in the communications space, helming senior roles at Sport Singapore, Singapore Sports Hub and Asia Pulp and Paper. As for Cutinho, he has 10 years of experience in reputation management, executive and strategic communications, issues and crisis management, as well as client servicing, according to the agency. He has worked in agencies such as Havas Middle East, Fleishman Hillard, Archetype and Adfactors PR.

These two new hires come on the back of three other hires it made last December to aid in the agency's growth - Daniel Tan, John Paul Palileo, and Georg Ackermann. Among the list of brands it works with include Guocoland Singapore, Ziptrak, Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts, Nippon Paint, Traveloka, and Poh Heng. Voedisch previously said that it is seeing more brands keen to jump into sustainability initiatives. To that end, it is also solidifying its agency’s strength in ESG communications. This has resulted in PRecious witnessing almost 50% year-on-year annual growth in Asia Pacific last year.

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