If Your Product Is Best Experienced, PR Matters More
- May 26
- 2 min read
Not every product can be properly understood through a press release, advertisement, or social media post alone. Some brands are built around experience. Restaurants rely on atmosphere and service. Hotels are shaped by how guests feel during their stay. Consumer products such as cameras, smartphones, footwear, and lifestyle products often need to be used directly before people truly understand their value.
In these cases, communication becomes less about simply increasing visibility and more about creating opportunities for people to experience the product firsthand. This is where PR becomes especially important.
Some Products Are Difficult to Explain Through Advertising Alone
In today’s digital landscape, brands often focus heavily on content distribution, paid advertisements, influencer visibility, and short-form social media content. While these channels remain important, they are not always enough for products that are naturally experiential.
A luxury resort cannot be fully understood through room photos alone. A restaurant’s identity is difficult to communicate without experiencing the food, atmosphere, and hospitality in person. Even products such as cameras or smartphones often benefit from direct interaction before audiences can genuinely appreciate their quality and functionality.
This is why communication strategy should follow how audiences naturally understand the product.
For some brands, the most effective approach is not simply telling people about the product, but allowing them to experience it directly.
The Indonesia Challenge: Building National Awareness Outside Jakarta
For brands operating outside Jakarta, this challenge becomes even more significant.
Although Indonesia’s audience is geographically diverse, much of the national media ecosystem remains concentrated in Jakarta. Major publications, editors, journalists, and creators are still largely based in the capital city.
For hospitality, lifestyle, and F&B brands located in Bali or other regions, building nationwide awareness often requires more intentional communication planning. Relying solely on advertisements or digital content may not fully communicate what makes the brand special. In many cases, bringing media and key opinion leaders directly into the experience becomes far more effective.
When Experience Becomes the Strategy
For brands built around experience, communication strategy often needs to go beyond traditional advertising or digital promotion. In hospitality, lifestyle, and F&B, this can take the form of media trips or hosted experiences that allow journalists and creators to understand the brand firsthand. For consumer products such as cameras or smartphones, the strategy may involve product seeding, where media and key opinion leaders are given direct access to experience the product naturally within their own environment.
We have applied this approach across different campaigns over the years from organizing media experiences in Bali for nation-based publications s Localoka Tequila launch, to hosting key media at Renaissance Bali Uluwatu Resort & Spa to experience the property and Roosterfish Beach Club directly.
For Leica Camera AG, product seeding became part of the communication strategy by allowing selected media and creators to use the products firsthand rather than relying purely on technical explanations.
While the execution may differ, the principle remains the same: some brands are understood more effectively through experience than explanation.
