Go Communications to lend PR expertise to Niche CC

Sara Pathirana

GO Communications Group, which retains a strong regional presence as one of the biggest independent PR networks in Asia, has announced its partnership with Niche Corporate Communications (CC), one of the first Public Relations (PR) agencies in Sri Lanka which was founded by Nayomini Ratnayake Weerasooriya, in Colombo.

CEO, GO Communications Group, Michael De Kretser and Chairman, Go Communications Group, Bob Chua was in the country for this initiation.

“With this opportunity to work out strategic relationships and acquire world class expertise from Go Communications, Sri Lankan companies and organizations can be taken to a higher and global level.

Our aim right now is to penetrate the areas of tourism especially with the economy in Sri Lanka seeing fruition and also other business potential out there. The country will definitely be able to benefit through a venture of this aptitude, where we look at it in terms of value,” Founder/ Managing Director, Nayomini Ratnayake, Weerasooriya said.

GO Communications Group, which was voted Malaysia’s best PR agency, 2012, for four years running, had produced some of the most memorable and best-known PR campaigns in Asia, a special one being the Singapore Girl; the campaign for Singapore Airlines. Michael De Kretser, who is originally from Sri Lanka, is also a highly respected and widely recognized professional in his field.

“GO Communications is in the right place at the right time and I feel that fate had played a great hand for a moment like this. To be back on home soil to initiate a venture where a middle income country like Sri Lanka could acquire that professional public relations to build brands and boost the country’s economic growth.

With the growth in tourism, where it is recorded at a rate of one million tourists visiting Sri Lanka annually, indicators for the business already looks good,” De Kretser acknowledged.

Currently, Public Relations is a US$500 million industry with an annual growth of 80%. Experts predict that by 2014, the industry in the Asian region alone would touch up on US$ one billion mark. Local and multi-national companies can gain a great height through PR services and a country can employ the advantage of native experts who will give that insight through their cultural understanding and run the company rather than having outsiders’ in.

“Consumers today are more educated than they were before and they have acquired discerning tastes, especially with the noticeable growth in social networks in the media platform, in which the consumers themselves drive change,” De Kretser further added.

GO Communications is a company with over 150 staff and is growing annually in revenue and profits by 25%. Its clients range from various reputable companies from a wide range of fields worldwide that include Nikon, Unilever, National Geographic, Mitsubishi and Shell Gas among them.

The company also benefits from the insight of its employees who have backgrounds in the field of Journalism, Digital Media, Health & Fitness and Media Training to name but a few.

Bob Chua, Chairman of GO Communications stated,” DNA of our company is to identify the opportunities for high growth and the richness of the natural resources available and work on it.

That would be a major reason why we have chosen emerging markets like Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, who attain so much potential.”

“We would focus right now on taking a step on the opportunities out there with regards to tourism. Sri Lanka needs to be given more attention to in terms of publicizing, where many countries in the South Eastern region still don’t know about our country.

International companies will also get a taste of Sri Lanka through this venture where we can focus on emphasizing potential business investments into Sri Lanka,” Nayomini concluded.