BCW launches offering to help companies navigate Asia’s rise and Geopolitical Implications

BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe), a leading global communications agency, has launched Navigating Asia’s Rise and Geopolitical Implications, a new corporate and public affairs offering to help global clients manage risks and opportunities across key markets in the region. BCW’s solutions include context building, comprehensive risk mitigation and stakeholder engagement strategies.

“This year, clients have had a growing need for issues management counsel, specifically related to managing COVID-19 responses, but also in adapting to the fluid geopolitical context,” said Matt Stafford, APAC President, BCW.

“In fact, it is our counsel on navigating geopolitics and related impacts that has been the most sought after, thus we are formalizing our offering. This is all about helping our clients mitigate risks and maximize opportunities. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it, and no companies are immune to these challenges. It’s now just a question of how prepared they are to address them.”

Led by BCW APAC’s Corporate and Public Affairs practice, which includes risk and reputation experts across the region, the new offering provides a comprehensive range of services across three pillars. These include:

  • Essential Context in a Changing Environment: Delivering an in-depth understanding of key aspects of the evolving situation for global companies in Asia- Pacific (with particular focus on China, India and Indonesia). This series of workshops and seminars cover essential historical, cultural and political country context, as well as specific governance areas such as China’s Corporate Social Credit System.
  • Reports and Recommendations to Mitigate Risk: Ensuring companies are aware of the commonly encountered pitfalls suffered by global brands is essential to mitigating risk. This range of comprehensive reports and recommendations covers external communications audits, sensitivity playbooks customized to brands and sectors, issues and crisis preparation, and an in-depth examination of a company’s Corporate Social Credit System scorecard in China.
  • Scenario-Testing and Preparation: Building team competency and testing systems is key to effective crisis management. BCW uses a proprietary crisis simulation platform combined with incisive understanding of the behaviours and attitudes of key stakeholders to pressure test real-life potential issues and crises across multiple scenarios relevant to a range of organizations. Also available are tailored monitoring services which will ensure a company is best positioned to track significant policy and industry changes, as well as coverage and conversations that impact business and reputation.

“Against the backdrop of COVID-19 and the fraught geopolitics in Asia-Pacific, we are seeing the difficulty companies and other organizations are facing in balancing the interests and expectations of stakeholders across the region and across the world,” said Douglas Dew, Managing Director and Head of APAC Corporate & Public Affairs, BCW. “An in-depth understanding of the region and specific countries in it has never been more important to global organizations. Drawing upon a diverse team of colleagues with experience in government, politics and the media across key markets in the region, we are helping clients navigate increasingly complicated, high-stakes situations.”

In recent years, BCW has advised many leading companies from around the world on how to understand and manage the growing geopolitical complexity across the Asia-Pacific region generally and in relation to China in particular.

“As China moves ever closer to becoming the world’s largest economy, further up the value chain and closer to the tech frontier in many areas, global business leaders and corporations require an increasingly sophisticated, nuanced and multi-faceted understanding of the country and its people,” said Qu Hong, China CEO, BCW.

“This understanding is vital – and needs to go well beyond keeping up with day-to-day developments – to effectively calibrate business strategies and align communications and public affairs to the needs of a multitude of stakeholders that will support them in the years and decades to come.”

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