Nothing, right? Cause you’ve hired them. You pay them money. They work for you. It’s their job to generate media whilst you go about your business. Right?

Actually, nothing could be further from the heart of a healthy relationship between an agency and a client. Unless there’s regular contact between key decision-makers who are vested in the prominence of their business, you’re not going to get very far.... Read more

We all want our press releases to go viral. For the wire services to pick them up. For Yahoo to run the news on their home page. For Google to elevate our news prominently on their News homepage. But this rarely happens.

What does happen? Well, according to one recent study by RealWire, four media organizations will run your news. Here’s a link to the study. Check out the table immediately below. This seems a credible study. The surveyors looked at 1,044 releases dispatched between Sept. 2010 and March 2011. These releases circulated news by major brands — BMW, Panasonic, Warner Bros., etc.... Read more

Last week, Conde Nast Traveler magazine revealed the results of its Reader’s Choice Awards for 2010. We at Mandarin Media were thrilled — three of our clients in Vietnam made the list — but not all that surprised.

I lived in Southeast Asia for three years. Vietnam for two. During that time, a smattering of friends and relatives came to visit. We traveled up and down the country. From the sensory overloaded streets of Saigon to the majestic mountains of Dalat. From the broad beaches of Danang to the spellbinding bay of Halong. And when they got on that plane to return to Australia or America, the parting comment was always on the order of, “I’m so glad I came. I had no idea how beautiful this country was.”... Read more

In the New York Times today, there’s this about hoteliers and TripAdvisor Reviews. The gist of the article is this: That some hoteliers are mad to the point of boiling mad, lawsuit mad, about hotel reviews that are so negative and so uniformed they border on libel.

The temptation to go overboard on the negativity is always there. I once checked out of a Saigon hotel at 10:00 pm after construction started in the building next door, in the room next to mine. My walls were literally vibrating from sledgehammer blows. I made arrangements at another hotel and checked out, paying for a mini-bar charge.... Read more

In the Atlantic this month, there’s an insightful article about a realm of tourism with a weird name — thanatourism. The thana part comes from the Ancient Greek, thanatos, which means ‘personification of death.’ This word isn’t in the dictionary yet, but Wikipedia’s got it.

The Atlantic article explored Cambodia’s embrace of thanatourism, from Tuol Sleng to the Killing Fields to Pol Pot’s last hideout. It’s a tough sell for tourism authorities, marketing the macabre aspects of your history. But I’d stop short of saying that thanatourism is a form of pandering.... Read more

One of Vienam’s leading newspapers, Thanh Nien, reported Oct. 13 that 2,000 Russian tourists will be flying in direct from Russia to Cam Ranh’s airport, the gateway to Nha Trang. Direct. Nha Trang direct.

Good for the Russians, and Vladivostok Air. They’re opening up the interior of Vietnam in a way that no one else is. Vietnam’s built up its interior (i.e. Danang, Hue, Hoi An), trusting that ‘they will come.’ But it’s not happening, at least not yet.... Read more

It may come as some surprise that both principals behind Mandarin Media — Jim Sullivan and myself, a couple of Boston-bred Americans — have been working in and reporting from Asia on golf, tourism and development issues since the early 1990s. Jim’s narrative is perhaps better known: He was on assignment for Bicycle magazine in 1992, pedaling the length of Vietnam, when he met his future wife, in Hue. He would parlay that hopelessly romantic story into a book deal with Picador — Over the Moat was published in 2004 — and would go on to report from Vietnam in the New York Times and National Geographic, among other titles.

My story is not so high-profile, or fairy-tale. But I was reminded of it when Jim, unbidden, sent me the image below. Indeed I was founding editor of Golf Course News Asia-Pacific. We published this international golf business journal out of Hong Kong starting in 1993; we mailed it to every course in Asia-Pacific and supported it with many trips to the Singapore-based Golf Asia trade show. On one of those trips, in 1996, I made my first visit to Vietnam and played Nick Faldo’s design at Ocean Dunes, in coastal Phan Thiet. The course was so new, the cups had not yet been cut. Superintendent Chris Gray was my host; he would go on to grow in dozens of projects across Asia for IMG. ... Read more

When we launched this ‘PR’ dealio in 2005, we weren’t sure what kind of traction we’d gain. All we knew, as long-time writers and editors, was that we were tired of receiving story pitches and press releases that didn’t resonate with us — pitches and releases that were clearly coming from folks who didn’t understand our job. We thought we could leverage our knowledge of what journalists want into a media relations business that actually worked.

Five years later, we’re still at it. We’re hiring at a rate we’ve not before, and we’ve got more clients than ever.... Read more

For ten years, I worked as an editor in the medical equipment industry. The big service providers often talked about what it was that distinguished them from other providers. What was this, pray tell?

Service. They provided more meaningful service.... Read more

That Ho Chi Minh would have much preferred American/capitalist backing to Soviet/communist backing may come as some surprise to many Westerners. But the record’s pretty clear.

A year after delivering his famous speech from Hanoi’s Opera House steps declaring independence from French colonial rule (borrowing liberally and deliberately from the U.S. Declaration of Independence), Ho’s 1946 letter to Harry Truman — appealing to the U.S. for support in throwing off the yoke of French occupation — is not so famous, but should be.... Read more