PANONY

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I lead business development for a company developing blockchain technology and products. We are headquartered in San Francisco and were looking to grow in the core Asian markets. Our company has about 40 people. We serve clients all over the world, in 6 continents. I oversaw business development and Asian PR and marketing

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire PANONY?

We were looking to expand our presence in key markets in Asia, specifically China and Hong Kong. We had already developed a presence in the US and had a small, but strong following in Asia when we engaged with Panony and we wanted to double down on that.

We went with an outsourced partner because hiring in Asia was not something we felt comfortable doing at the time. Panony helped us with media placement, PR (interviews, etc.), and business development efforts throughout Asia.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to grow our revenues (via increasing our ‘assets under management’) by working with both institutional clients and retail users in China and Korea. For landing the retail users, we believed that press and media placement would be the easiest way to go about doing this.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We spoke with several vendors that were in our extended networks. We spoke with only vendors who focused on the Asian markets. We went with Panony because of the kindness of the team, ease to work with, and transparent pricing.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Panony was brought on to help us grow our brand recognition, and as a result revenue, in the Asian market. The work was predominately focused on landing us media and press placement in Asia.

This included industry-specific publications, as well as, more general publications, e.g,. Bloomberg.

They also assisted with translation work to keep us up to date on Asian-market happenings, running our Chinese and Korean blogs, writing original pieces about our company, doing business development work with local clients, amongst a bunch of other things I am probably forgetting. They were basically an extension of our company

What was the team composition?

I have worked with most members of the Panony team in-depth, including the firm’s co-founders and principles in each region. Their founders are actively involved with their clients. They also have staff dedicated to each region (e.g., 1 person is focused solely on Korea, while another solely on China).

This guarantees that they are experts and trusted thought leaders in their respective regions. They also have designers on staff who can quickly produce high-quality work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We have had many tier 1 media placements in China and Korea, including mainstream television interviews in Korea. I am not sure how we could have possibly done this without Panony.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflows between our teams was flawless. Before I lead coordination with Panony, they did coordination with a team members of ours who was based in the United States.

Since they are based in Shanghai, timezones can be a challenge, but they were flexible to be convenient for our team in the US. They are also able to work with several members on our team without issue, getting media placement for several people on our team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their work ethic is pretty relentless. Even in times when we felt like we weren’t doing anything newsworthy, they were able to keep getting us media placement.

They are very creative and are always thinking about how we can well-frame projects we are working on. They are also skilled writers. They have strong media connections that they are able to effectively leverage

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that come to mind. They truly were excellent.