Blog post
September 30, 2024

Narrative Intelligence Event in Singapore: navigating the media landscape in SEA, via LLMs and more

We hosted our very own event around narrative intelligence in Singapore, where we welcomed top minds from the PR & Comms, marketing and finance industries.

The agenda of the event was to understand how the media landscape is evolving with the sudden influx of different narratives – and how brands must navigate this very landscape. With the event, we took the opportunity to showcase our audience intelligence platform Pulsar, and how it can help users understand the communities, trends and (you guessed it) narratives that matter to them.



Power of Narratives

Joanna Arnold, Pulsar Group CEO, kicked off the event with a welcome address, and Prashant Saxena, VP of revenue and insights for SEA, took the audiences through a demonstration of our Narrative AI tool and how it enables users to see narratives building around a particular topic.

This was followed by a quick Fireside chat with UOB’s Gary Low who spoke about the power of understanding narratives in the banking sector with Tarika Khandadi, Account Director for Customer Experience for Singapore.




Macro issues that shape Narratives

Our panel discussion, facilitated by Prashant Saxena and Client Solutions Director, Syaz Yusof, centred on how media intelligence and social listening have evolved in recent years, the strategies that brands can adopt to tackle misinformation, and controlling emerging narratives around crises.

Our expert speakers, Dr. Andrew Prahl from NTU, Kelly Weber from Aquila Clean APAC and Ramanathan Vythiligam from Unilever touched upon the importance of teaching LLMs in universities, how brands’ legal teams need to be involved in anything related to Gen AI and how it’s important that social media opinions don’t clutter the already cluttered social media space that help shape these narratives.

Finally, we presented a series of short insight case studies stitching together narratives that have emerged in finance with an exclusive peek into our Buy Now Pay Later report for the SEA region, topical social themes like ‘What is Iconic?’ with emphasis on the Singapore brand and media view around women in sport and gendered narratives.

This gave our audiences a glimpse of how our tool can capture the kind of audience & media narratives that have become essential for brands.

Isentia combines its deep regional expertise with Pulsar’s advanced audience analysis to help governments and businesses interpret narratives and craft effective communication strategies in today’s fast-paced world. It is therefore critical to understand these emerging themes, and brands must realise that we’re at a crucial junction where narratives merge with audience intelligence.

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The way different audiences perceive the same piece of news can be  very different, depending on their culture, the way the news is being communicated and any number of contingencies.

These disparities can mount up until, in the end, these  audiences are living in completely different realities.

One of the biggest challenges for PR professionals in the region is the hardening of "siloed realities." Audiences are fracturing into smaller, self-affirming groups that rarely overlap. If your communications strategy relies on a one-size-fits-all message via mainstream media, the content might not have many takers. 

The great divergence: the voice to parliament 

A vivid example of this is Australia’s "Voice to Parliament" referendum.

If audiences were only exposed to the major broadsheets or watched traditional evening news, the conversation often centered on legal structures, constitutional law, and high-level political endorsements. The nature of these discussions were formal and policy-heavy.

But on social media, specifically TikTok, the reality was entirely different. The "No" campaign gained massive traction through short, punchy, and often emotive content that bypassed how complex the policy discussions were entirely. Creators or influencers spoke directly to fears about land rights and personal costs, arguments that were barely present in the "mainstream" policy debate.

https://www.tiktok.com/@jack_toohey/video/7278214751178591506

This resulted in a campaign that validated the opinions of audiences exposed to the mainstream media , but completely neglected what audiences were speaking about on social media. The two spaces were in their own siloes, the audiences never really spoke to each other and they just echoed within their own walls. 

The language of silos regionally

When we zoom into Southeast Asia, these silos are often built around language and culture. A corporate crisis plays out very differently in a multi-lingual market like Malaysia or the Philippines. 

As a comms director, relying solely on English-language monitoring, would end up missing a large part of the broader conversation.

Breaking the walls 

How do we connect these separated worlds? We need "bridge builders."

The era of the generic corporate spokesperson is fading. To navigate silos, brands need to engage personalities who have credibility across the divide. This might mean identifying a "Key Opinion Consumer" (KOC) who is respected by both corporations and everyday users. Or finding a financial influencer who can translate complex corporate sustainability goals into language that resonates with sceptical Gen Z investors. Many accounts on Instagram and TikTok in the financial education space have much larger audiences. The late-millennial and Gen-Z crowd realise that they’re probably falling behind in the best ways to work their money, and so they create short, quick and punchy content that leads to their younger audiences taking action on their finances and that it’s actually not super difficult to just start. 

The media should not be treated as a ‘single entity’. There is no singular media anymore. There are only clusters of communities, and our job, as communicators, is to find the keys to unlock each one. 


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Blog
The danger of “siloed” audiences – and how to bridge them

We analyse why audiences consume news in siloes and what are the possible connectors or bridges that could bring them together.

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The media landscape is accelerating. In an era where influence is ephemeral and every angle demands instant comprehension, PR and communications professionals require more than generic technology—they need intelligence engineered for their specific challenges.

Isentia is proud to introduce Lumina, a groundbreaking suite of intelligent AI tools. Lumina has been trained from the ground up on the complex workflows and realities of modern communications and public affairs. It is explicitly designed to shift professionals from passive media monitoring back into the role of strategic leaders and pacesetters. 

“The PR, Comms and Public Affairs sectors have been experimenting with AI, but most tools have not been built with their real challenges in mind.” said Joanna Arnold, CEO of Pulsar Group

“Lumina is different; it is the first intelligence suite designed around how narratives actually form today, combining human credibility signals with machine-level analysis. It helps teams understand how stories evolve, filter out noise and respond with context and confidence to crises and opportunities.”

Setting a new standard for PR intelligence

Lumina is centered on empowering, not replacing, the human element of communications strategy. This suite is purpose-built to help PR, Comms, and Public Affairs professionals significantly improve productivity, enhance message clarity, and facilitate early risk detection.

Lumina enables communicators to:

  • Understand & Interpret: Move beyond basic alerts to strategically map the trajectory and spread of narrative evolution.
  • Focus & Personalise: Achieve the clarity necessary to execute strategic action before critical moments pass.
  • Execute & Monitor: Rapidly deploy strategy firmly rooted in real-time, actionable insight.

Get a demo today: Stories & Perspectives module

We are launching the Lumina suite by making our first module immediately available: Stories & Perspectives.

In the current fragmented, multi-channel media environment, communications professionals need to be able to instantly perceive not just how a story is growing, but also how it is being perceived across different stakeholder groups.

Stories & Perspectives organizes raw media mentions into clustered, cohesive Stories, and the Perspectives that exist within each, reflecting distinct media, audience, and public affairs angles. This unique functionality allows users to:

  • Rise above the noise: Instantly identify which high-level topics are gaining momentum or fading from attention.
  • Get to the detail, fast: Uncover the influential voices, niche communities, and specific channels actively shaping the narrative.
  • Catch the pivot point: Precisely identify the moment a story shifts—from a strategic opportunity to a reputation risk—or when a new key opinion former begins guiding the conversation.

"Media isn’t a stream of mentions," said Kyle Lindsay, Head of Product at Pulsar Group. "But rather a living system of stories shaped by competing perspectives. When you can see those structures clearly, you gain the ability to understand issues as they form, anticipate how they’ll evolve, and act with precision. That’s what we mean when we talk about AI built for communicators, and that's what an off-the-shelf LLM can't give you."

The Lumina Roadmap: AI tools for the future of comms

The launch of Stories & Perspectives is the first release of many. Over the upcoming months, we will systematically roll out the full Lumina roadmap, introducing a comprehensive set of AI tools engineered to handle every phase of the communications lifecycle.

The full Lumina suite will soon incorporate:

  • Curated media summaries: AI-driven daily summaries customized specifically to the priorities of senior leadership, highlighting only the most relevant stories.
  • Reputation analysis: Advanced measurement tracking how critical themes like ethics, innovation, and leadership are statistically shaping corporate perception.
  • Press release & media relations assistant: Tools designed to accelerate content creation and craft hyper-focused, personalized pitches that reach the precise contacts faster.
  • Predictive intelligence layer: Technology engineered to track and anticipate story momentum and strategic change before the window of opportunity closes.
  • Intelligent agents: Background agents continuously scanning all media channels for emerging key spokespeople and previously undetected reputation risks.
  • Enhanced audio, broadcast & crisis detection: Complete, real-time oversight of all channels—including audio and broadcast—enabling rapid context building and optimal crisis response delivery.


Want to harness the power of Lumina AI for your PR, Comms, or Public Affairs team? .

Complete the form below to register your interest.

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Blog
Announcing Lumina: The purpose-built AI suite for PR, Comms, and Public Affairs

An intelligent suite of AI tools trained on the language, workflows, and realities of modern public relations and communications.

Ready to get started?

Get in touch or request a demo.