Crisis PR in Singapore. The first hour decides the next twelve months.
United Press handles crisis communications for companies, boards and executives facing a Singapore story: the holding statement, the journalists, the regulator clock, and the published record that outlives the headline. Named publications agreed in writing. No retainer.
A crisis is not a communications problem until someone outside the building hears about it
Every serious incident has two timelines running at once. The first is operational: find out what happened, stop it happening again, tell the people who must legally be told. The second is narrative: what the market, your staff, your customers and a journalist on deadline believe happened, based on the fragment they have. Most organisations manage the first well and lose control of the second, and it is the second that people remember twelve months later.
United Press works as a crisis PR agency for Singapore situations: the incident that has already reached a reporter, the forum thread climbing towards a news desk, the regulator asking questions, the departure that cannot be explained in a line. We write the words that go out, we deal with the journalists so your executives are not improvising, and we build the permanent, findable account of what you actually did — because in six months a search result will speak for you in rooms you are not in.
We are a crisis communications agency, not a law firm and not an incident response vendor. We work alongside your counsel and your technical team, and we say plainly where our job ends. What an outside crisis communications firm is worth at 11pm is not a press contact — it is someone who can think clearly about the third-order consequence of a sentence when everyone inside the building is exhausted. The three ways to engage us are set out below, with what each includes and what sets the price.
Contain
Stop the story growing while the facts are still forming. A holding statement that is true, human and survives the next disclosure. One spokesperson, one channel, one version.
Correct
Replace rumour with the record. Accurate detail placed where the people who matter are already looking, on your timeline rather than the loudest account’s.
Rebuild
The crisis ends; the search result does not. Substantive coverage of what changed afterwards is what makes the incident historical rather than defining.
Three ways to work with us, priced in writing before you commit
No retainer, no monthly minimum, and no premium for urgency. Tell us which one you are — or tell us what has happened and we will tell you which one you need.
Emergency response
For a situation happening now, or a journalist who has already been in touch.
- Holding statement drafted with you inside the first hour
- Every media enquiry handled on your behalf, on the record
- Spokesperson briefed and prepared, including broadcast
- Staff, customer, partner and investor messaging sequenced
- News, social, forum and search monitoring while it runs
- A daily situation note your board can actually use
Starts within the hour · scoped by hours used
Crisis readiness
For boards, listed issuers and regulated firms who would rather the first rehearsal was not the real thing.
- Scenario audit: the incidents your sector actually gets
- Statements pre-drafted for your three likeliest situations
- Media training for your spokespeople, on camera
- A one-page plan: who decides, who speaks, who is called at 2am
- Notification map built alongside your counsel and compliance
- Annual refresh, and a number that answers out of hours
Typically two to four weeks
Reputation recovery
For when the incident is over but it is still the first thing people find.
- Audit of what ranks, what is said, and what is missing
- Guaranteed placements in publications named in advance
- Editorial pitching where the story genuinely merits it
- A corrective record built for search and for AI assistants
- Ongoing coverage of the business getting on with its work
- Reporting that shows what changed, not a list of links
Priced per named publication, in writing
Most engagements begin with one of the first two and move into the third. You are never asked to commit to the next stage to get the current one, and if we think you do not need a PR agency at all, we will tell you on the first call.
Is it happening right now?
Do not wait until you have all the facts — the facts arrive on their own schedule and the journalist does not. Tell us what you know, what you suspect, and who else already knows. We will have a statement in draft with you inside the hour.
What actually happens in the first hour after you call us
Nobody needs a strategy deck at this point. They need to know what to say, to whom, and what not to put in writing. This is the sequence, and it rarely changes.
Three columns: confirmed, suspected, unknown. Almost every crisis that gets worse in public does so because somebody said something from column two as though it were column one. We also ask who else already knows, because that determines how much time you really have.
A journalist deadline and a regulator deadline are different animals and often run at the same time. We establish which notification obligations your counsel is already working to, so that nothing we publish contradicts, pre-empts or delays a filing.
Short, factual, human, and written so that it stays true when more facts arrive. It acknowledges, it does not speculate, and it says what you are doing next with a time attached. You approve every word before it exists anywhere outside the draft.
Sales replying to a journalist on LinkedIn, a founder posting at midnight, a regional office issuing its own version — these create the second story. We brief the spokesperson, and we give everyone else the exact line to use and permission to say nothing else.
We take the media calls and emails, log every outlet, deadline and question asked, and answer on your behalf. Journalists get a fast, courteous, accurate response from a named contact, which is often the difference between a balanced piece and a piece built entirely from the complainant.
Staff, key customers and partners hear from you, not from a screenshot in a group chat. Internal comms is not an afterthought in a Singapore crisis: your employees are the most credible source a reporter has, and the least controlled one.
If your situation is not yet public, the same hour runs differently: we plan for the disclosure you control rather than the one that happens to you. Almost every crisis we are asked to fix afterwards had a window in which that choice was still available.
That is the first hour. If yours has already started, the fastest thing you can do is tell us what you know and what you only suspect.
Brief us now →In Singapore, the deadline is often statutory — and it is shorter than you think
This is where generic crisis advice fails locally. A holding statement that reads well is worthless if it lands before, after or against a filing your regulator is already expecting. These are real, published obligations that shape what can be said and when.
Under the MAS Notice on Technology Risk Management, a financial institution must notify the Authority no more than one hour after discovering a relevant incident, with a root cause and impact analysis report no more than 14 days after.
Where a breach is likely to cause significant harm, or is of significant scale, the PDPC must be notified as soon as practicable and no later than three calendar days. Significant scale is set at 500 or more affected individuals.
Affected individuals are notified as soon as practicable, at the same time as or after the PDPC. This is the notification the press usually sees first, because someone always forwards it.
Listed issuers must announce information needed to avoid a false market, or likely to materially affect the price or value of their securities. On a listed company, the announcement is the first draft of the story, and every journalist reads it.
Workplace safety, food safety, health products, transport, education, healthcare and licensing each carry their own reporting duties and their own ministry press office. Your counsel will know the deadline; we make sure the public wording fits inside it.
Your own staff. There is no statutory deadline for telling the people who work for you, which is exactly why it slips — and why so many Singapore stories are sourced, accurately, from inside the company.
United Press is a communications agency, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. These are the clocks your counsel and compliance team will already be working to; our role is to make sure what you say in public is consistent with them, lands in the right order, and does not create a second problem.
How a private complaint becomes a national story in about nine hours
Singapore is small, connected and screenshot-literate. Stories here do not build slowly through a news cycle; they jump. Knowing which rung you are on tells you how much time you have and what the right intervention is — and on the first three rungs, a good response often ends it.
A complaint to your service team, a message in a group chat, an internal grievance, a disgruntled ex-employee drafting something. At this rung the whole thing is still a customer service or HR matter, and almost always cheaper to solve than to manage.
The moment your reply exists as an image, context is gone and tone is everything. Screenshots are why we care so much about how ordinary, non-crisis messages are written: the sentence that reads as efficient internally reads as contemptuous when it is cropped.
A Facebook community page, a subreddit, a forum thread, a TikTok or a Xiaohongshu post. The audience is now strangers, the framing belongs to the poster, and the comments become the evidence base for everything that follows.
A digital-native outlet turns the post into an article in under an hour, usually built almost entirely from the original screenshots and the comments underneath, ending with a line saying they have reached out for comment. That line is your only seat at the table, and it expires quickly.
Now it is a story with a shape: a named company, a grievance, a silence. Broadsheet and broadcast desks want documents, a spokesperson and a position. What you said on rung four is quoted back to you here, which is why speculation early is so expensive.
A regulator, a ministry press office, a union or a Member of Parliament is asked about it on the record. At this point the story is no longer about the incident; it is about whether your sector is properly governed, and you are an example in someone else’s argument.
The practical value of a crisis management agency is not eloquence at rung six. It is recognising, at rung two, that this particular thing is going to climb — and acting while acting is still cheap.
Not sure which rung you are on? Establishing that is the single most useful thing you can do today, and it takes one conversation.
Find out where you stand →Where a Singapore story actually breaks, and what each tier needs from you
You cannot respond well to a landscape you do not know. These are the four environments a Singapore corporate story moves through. They run on different clocks, want different things, and punish different mistakes.
National newsrooms
They will call you, they will give you a real deadline, and they will print the fact that you declined. What they need is a named spokesperson, specifics and speed. Treat the deadline as real: a considered statement at 4pm beats a perfect one at 8pm, because the piece is written by then.
Digital-native and aggregation
Fastest movers, largest reach in the first day, and often working entirely from a social post. They publish before you answer and update afterwards, so a short accurate line delivered within the hour changes the article that hundreds of thousands of people actually read. This tier is where most Singapore reputation crises are won or lost.
Community, forums and video
Not press, but it is where the story is born and where it is judged. You cannot issue a statement here without making it worse; what works is correcting facts in the places that carry weight, then letting people who are not you cite that correction. Arguing in comments is how a one-day story becomes a week.
Business, trade and regional
This tier decides what your investors, counterparties and regulators read, and it has the longest memory. Trade titles in particular will still be the top result for your company name in three years. Coverage here is won with substance: filings, numbers, remediation detail and a named executive prepared to be specific.
We do not claim influence over any newsroom, here or anywhere. Editorial decisions belong to editors. What we control is the speed, accuracy and usefulness of what reaches them — and, separately, the guaranteed placements described further down this page, which are agreed in writing before you pay.
Not sure whether this needs an agency at all?
Plenty of situations do not. Describe it to us and we will give you a straight read: whether it is likely to climb, what we would do in the first hour, and what it would cost. If the honest answer is to fix the operational problem and say nothing, we will tell you that instead.
Crisis management and crisis communications are not the same purchase
Companies searching for a crisis management company in Singapore are usually looking for two things at once, and buying the wrong one costs both time and money. Here is the honest split, including the parts that are not ours.
Crisis management
The whole organisational response. Mostly yours, supported by specialists you may already have on retainer.
- Establishing the facts: forensics, audit, investigation, root cause
- Stopping the harm: systems, product, site, supply chain, safety
- Legal exposure, notification duties and regulator correspondence
- Business continuity, insurance and board governance
- Decisions about people: suspensions, dismissals, resignations
- Remediation: what is actually changed so it does not recur
Crisis communications
What is said, to whom, in what order, and what is left findable afterwards. This is the part we do.
- Holding statements, full statements, Q and A packs and lines to take
- Handling every inbound journalist, on your behalf, on the record
- Spokesperson preparation and interview handling, including broadcast
- Internal, customer, partner and investor communications sequencing
- Social and community response, and when silence is the correct answer
- The corrective published record: accurate coverage that outlives the story
Crisis management PR sits across the line. If you already have counsel and a technical team but no one who can write and place the words, that is the engagement most Singapore clients actually need from us — and it can start within the hour, without a retainer.
Corporate crisis communication in Singapore, by the kind of crisis it is
Every crisis feels unprecedented from inside. From a newsroom, almost all of them are one of nine recognisable stories, and each opens with a predictable first question. Knowing which one you are in is most of the work.
The highest-frequency corporate crisis in Singapore and the most procedurally constrained, because the PDPC clock, the technical investigation and the customer notification all run at once and contradict each other easily.
First question: how many people, and when did you know?
Nothing else is discussed until the human facts are addressed. Coverage moves fast to prior warnings, inspection history and whether the same thing has happened before at your sites or your contractor’s.
First question: had anyone raised this before?
The communications goal is not reassurance, it is action people can take today. Vague recalls generate more alarm than specific ones, and a slow one is remembered long after the product is fixed.
First question: who else has it, and what are you doing for them?
For a listed issuer this is a disclosure event before it is a media event, and the announcement sets the frame. Everything said afterwards is read against it, including by regulators.
First question: who signed this off?
The hardest to handle because the truth is usually constrained by employment law and settlement terms. Silence is read as confirmation; over-explaining creates liability. The wording has to be built with counsel, line by line.
First question: did he resign, or was he asked to?
A story that is written by your employees whatever you publish. Sequencing decides the coverage: staff first, always, and never on the same day as a positive announcement.
First question: how many, and did they hear it from you?
Often factually small and reputationally enormous. The public issue is rarely the original incident; it is the tone of the reply and how long it took. Handled at rung two, most of these end in a day.
First question: is this how you treat customers?
Constrained, slow and public at moments you do not choose. The work is preparing for the announcement you know is coming, so your account of remediation is ready the day the finding lands rather than three weeks later.
First question: are you cooperating, and what changes now?
Two audiences with opposite needs: a court that requires restraint and a public that reads restraint as weakness. This is litigation PR, and it only works when communications and counsel are in the same conversation.
First question: what is your response to the allegation?
Recognise yours? Tell us which one it is and we will tell you what the first hour looks like, which publications matter, and what it costs.
Tell us which one →Anatomy of a holding statement that does not age badly
A holding statement exists to buy hours without spending credibility. It has six jobs, and the reason most fail is that they try to do a seventh: sound reassuring. Here is the structure we work from, adapted to the facts you actually have.
We are aware of a technical incident affecting our customer booking system, which our team identified on the morning of 14 March.1 2
On discovering it we took the affected system offline and began a full investigation with an external specialist firm.3
We have notified the relevant authorities and we are contacting everyone whose information may be involved directly.4
We are sorry. People trusted us with their details and we did not keep them as safe as we should have.5
We will publish a further update by 6pm today, whether or not the position has changed. Media enquiries: [named contact, direct line, email].6
- 1Name the thing plainly. Euphemism reads as evasion and invites the reporter to choose a harder word than you would have.
- 2Give the date you found out. In almost every Singapore incident, timing is the story. Volunteering it closes down the what-did-they-know angle before it opens.
- 3One specific action, in the past tense. A verb that has already happened beats any number of adjectives about how seriously you are taking it.
- 4Show the clock is being respected. The journalist will ring the regulator. Better that your statement and the regulator’s position already agree.
- 5Apologise for the harm, in human words. Agreed with counsel, and separate from any admission of liability. The absence of an apology is itself the headline.
- 6Commit to a next update with a time on it. This is the single most effective way to stop a story running on the words: the company did not respond.
Six sentences that have made more crises worse than any journalist ever has
These appear in almost every draft we are handed. They feel safe from inside a boardroom. They read very differently on a phone screen at eleven at night.
No comment.
Read universally as confirmation. If you genuinely cannot say anything yet, say that, say why, and say when you will be able to. That is a comment, and it is a defensible one.
We take this extremely seriously.
The most parodied line in corporate communications, and it carries no information at all. Replace it with the specific thing you did, at the time you did it.
This was an isolated incident.
An invitation to every reporter and former employee to find the second one. Never claim a scope you have not finished investigating, because being wrong here is the second story.
We are aware of allegations circulating online.
The phrase circulating online tells readers you regard them as gossip rather than people with a legitimate question, and it ages badly the moment the allegations are substantiated.
Due to commercial sensitivity we cannot comment.
Sometimes true, always read as hiding. If confidentiality genuinely binds you, name what you can discuss instead and be generous with that, rather than closing the whole subject.
Our systems were not compromised.
Absolute claims made before forensics are complete. Every crisis we are called into late has one of these in its history, and the retraction always does more damage than the original incident.
Issues management: the slow-burning ones that never quite catch fire
Not every reputational problem arrives at once. An issue is a crisis with a longer fuse: visible, unresolved and quietly shaping what people believe about you. Issues management is the discipline of handling these before the fuse runs out, and it is far cheaper than the alternative.
A consultation, a new code, a licensing review. Companies that engage early, publicly and constructively are quoted as the responsible operator; companies that wait are used as the example of why the rule was needed.
Advocacy groups, unions and interest organisations work to a plan and a calendar. Knowing what is coming, and having your own evidence already published, is the difference between responding and reacting.
Anonymous reviews and forum threads are read by candidates, clients and journalists, and they are frequently the first source a reporter checks. Where reviews breach platform rules there is a process for that, which we cover on our page about removing Glassdoor reviews in Singapore.
Rarely on the record, usually effective. The answer is almost never a public fight; it is making sure the factual, verifiable version of your position is already in print where the same journalists will find it.
A supplier, landlord, joint venture partner or former director with a grievance and time. These surface at the worst possible moment, typically alongside a funding round, a tender or a listing, because that is when they have the most leverage.
A single piece from years ago sitting near the top of your search results, still shaping first impressions. That is a search and publishing problem rather than a media-handling one, and it is covered in depth on our reputation management Singapore page.
Litigation PR in Singapore: three columns, and the third one matters most
When proceedings are live or threatened, communications stops being a creative exercise and becomes a constrained one. We have worked alongside enough legal teams to know exactly where the boundaries sit, and to say so before anyone wastes a week.
What communications can do
- Draft statements that are accurate, human and safe for counsel to clear quickly
- Handle the press so executives and litigators are not fielding calls
- Prepare the spokesperson for the questions the filing invites
- Keep staff, clients and investors informed without prejudicing the case
- Publish substantive, factual coverage of the business as it continues to operate
- Prepare the announcement for the day the matter concludes, in advance
What your lawyers decide
- Whether anything can be said at all while the matter is live
- Every word of any statement touching the proceedings
- Whether to write to a publisher, and what that letter says
- Defamation, harassment and confidentiality remedies and their timing
- What is disclosable, privileged, or subject to an order
- The risk of comment being treated as prejudicial by a court
What cannot be done, by anyone
- Invoke POFMA yourself. Directions under it are issued by government ministers on public interest grounds, not obtained by companies against critics or competitors
- Have a true, lawfully published article deleted because it is damaging
- Guarantee a newsroom will drop a story, correct it, or cover your side
- Remove a screenshot from the internet once it has spread
- Stop people discussing the matter in forums and group chats
- Promise a search result will disappear on a date
Agencies that suggest otherwise are selling something they cannot deliver, and in a market this small the attempt itself becomes the story. What can be done is substantial: control the words that are yours, respond faster and more usefully than the opposition, and build a published record accurate enough that fair-minded people, and the systems that read them, reach the right conclusion.
Where we place the account that outlives the story
A crisis ends when there is something accurate, substantial and permanent for people to find. Some of these placements are guaranteed and agreed in writing before you pay. Others are pitched on merit, where the editor decides and we tell you the odds honestly. We label which is which, every time.
Guaranteed placement — named in writing before you pay
ForbesBusiness authority; the result decision-makers check firstGuaranteed
Business InsiderExplains the business context a headline leaves outGuaranteed
Yahoo FinanceMass reach and strong, durable search visibilityGuaranteed
MarketWatchMarket-facing readers, investors and counterpartiesGuaranteed
BenzingaFast financial publication with a permanent URLGuaranteed
EntrepreneurLeadership and the lessons-learned accountGuaranteed
USA TodayA general-audience title for the human side of the storyGuaranteed
MashableTechnology, platforms and online reputation contextGuaranteed
Digital JournalFast, indexable coverage when speed matters mostGuaranteedEditorial — pitched on merit, the editor decides
BloombergMarkets, governance and the institutional readEditorialWe will not offer a national or broadcast newsroom as a guarantee, because no honest agency can. Where a title is labelled editorial, you are buying the work and the judgement, and we tell you before you commit what we think the realistic chance is.
Eight terms, agreed in writing, before an invoice exists
People make bad decisions under pressure, and crisis work is where agencies are most tempted to exploit that. These terms exist so that you are not agreeing to anything vague at the worst moment of your professional life.
The story ends in a week. The search result lasts for years.
Most companies stop the moment the calls stop, which is precisely when the durable damage begins to set. What someone finds about you in six months is decided by what gets published in the three months after the noise dies down.
Stabilise
Response, statements and inbound handling. A daily situation note so the board sees the same picture we do. Monitoring across news, social, forums and search so nobody is surprised twice.
At the end of this phase we write an honest debrief: what worked, what did not, and what would have prevented it. It is usually uncomfortable reading and it is the most valuable document of the engagement.
Correct the record
The incident is no longer news, which is exactly why this is the moment to publish substance: what the investigation found, what has actually changed, who is accountable for it. Guaranteed placements and editorial pitching run together here.
This is also when we fix the practical things the crisis exposed — the unowned social accounts, the missing press page, the statement nobody could find.
Outlast it
Steady, ordinary, accurate coverage of a business getting on with its work. Enough of it, over enough time, that the incident becomes one item in a long record rather than the whole record.
Where the problem is specifically what ranks for your name, that is search and publishing work, covered on our reputation management Singapore page, and it runs alongside this.
Someone is asking an AI assistant whether your company can be trusted
Procurement teams, journalists, candidates and counterparties increasingly begin with a question to an assistant rather than a search box. These systems answer from what has been published by sources they trust, and they cite it. What exists in that published record on the day they ask is what your company is. Google’s own guidance on succeeding in AI search makes the same point in its own terms: useful, original content from sources the systems already trust.
There were reports last year of a data incident. I could not find any information about the outcome or what the company did afterwards.
The assistant is not being unfair. It is reporting what exists. The coverage of the accusation was published and indexed; your resolution went out as a PDF nobody linked to, or was never published at all. The gap becomes the answer, and the answer gets repeated.
The company disclosed the incident, notified the regulator, commissioned an external review and published its findings. Coverage since has focused on the changes made.
The same event, the same facts, a different conclusion — because there is something accurate and citable to reach it from. This is not manipulation of a model. It is the ordinary work of putting a true account on the public record, in places that can be cited.
This is the clearest commercial argument for doing phase three properly. The audience for your corrective record is no longer only the people who read the original story; it is every system that will summarise your company for someone who never reads either.
Three steps, and you will know where you stand today
There is no pitch process, no credentials deck and no waiting for a slot. This is the whole engagement path, whether you are in the middle of something or preparing for it.
One form or one call. If it is live, say so in the first line and we will treat it that way. Bring what is confirmed, what is suspected, the journalist or platform involved if there is one, and who your counsel is.
Within the hour: whether you need us, what we would do first, which publications are realistic, and what it costs. In writing, with guaranteed and editorial placements labelled separately, before any invoice exists.
Statement drafted with you, media handled on your behalf, spokesperson prepared, the record built afterwards. You approve every word that carries your name, at every stage.
There is no obligation from the first conversation, and no charge for it. The worst possible time to be comparing agencies is while a story is running — which is exactly why the terms are published on this page rather than discussed later.
Start the conversation →What you are actually buying, and what we will never sell you
Crisis work attracts vague promises because clients are frightened and in a hurry. Every commitment below is one you can hold us to, and all of them are on this page before you have spoken to anyone.
An independent PR agency that has been placing founders, companies and executives in named publications for more than two decades, through every kind of bad week.
You get a written list of specific titles before you pay. Not tier-one media, not a category — names you can check yourself.
If a guaranteed article does not publish, you have not bought anything. No fee for effort, no invoice for activity.
The price is the price whether you call on a quiet Tuesday or at 2am. We do not charge more because you are frightened.
Nothing carrying your name is submitted anywhere until you have read it, and nothing is ever attributed to you that you did not say.
When the right answer is to fix the problem, pay the customer, brief your lawyers and publish nothing, you will get that advice free rather than a campaign you did not need.
Whatever stage you are at — it broke an hour ago, it is coming, or it happened last year and will not move — the first conversation costs nothing and ends with a straight answer.
Talk to us →Trusted since 2001. Here is what that sounds like.
We publish only testimonials from real clients, in their own words. Results we cannot evidence do not appear on this site, and we do not put words in anyone’s mouth.
Crisis PR in Singapore, answered plainly
Usually asked quickly, often by someone who has not slept. These are the honest answers.
What does a crisis PR agency in Singapore actually do?
It decides and writes what your organisation says publicly during a serious incident, handles the journalists so your executives do not have to improvise, sequences who hears what and in what order, and afterwards builds an accurate published record of what you did about it.
It does not investigate the incident, fix the underlying problem or give legal advice. Those belong to your technical team, your operations and your counsel, and any agency blurring that line is one to avoid.
How quickly can you start?
Within the hour. The first call establishes what is known, what is merely suspected, who else already knows and which clocks are running. A holding statement usually exists in draft within about thirty-five minutes of that call.
Do we need a crisis plan before something happens?
It helps considerably, and the useful version is short: who decides, who speaks, who is called at 11pm, the three statements you already know you might need, and where the contact list lives when the office network is the thing that is down. A hundred-page manual nobody has read is not a plan.
How much does crisis communications cost in Singapore?
There is no retainer and no monthly minimum, and we do not charge a premium because a situation is urgent. Immediate response work is scoped by the hours it takes; publication work is priced per named title, in writing, before you commit.
Do you guarantee coverage?
For the titles labelled guaranteed on this page, yes: the publication is agreed with you in writing before you pay and the article appears at a permanent URL, or you owe nothing. National and broadcast newsrooms are pitched on merit and the editor decides. We never present the second as the first.
Can you get an article taken down?
Not as a general rule, and nobody honestly can. A publisher may correct something factually wrong if it is put to them properly, and unlawful content is a matter for your lawyers. What reliably works is publishing an accurate, substantial account that outranks and outlives the original.
Can we use POFMA against a false claim about us?
No. Directions under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act are issued by government ministers where they consider it in the public interest. It is not a remedy a company can invoke against a critic, a competitor or a publication. Your options are the ordinary legal ones, and a better published record.
Should we respond to everything on social media?
No. Respond where the audience is genuinely undecided and the correction is factual. Do not argue in comment sections, and never respond to a coordinated pile-on in the moment. Silence in the right place is a strategy; silence everywhere is a vacuum.
Our lawyers have told us to say nothing. Is there any point in calling you?
Yes, and this is one of the most common situations we work in. Saying nothing is still a communications decision and it needs to be executed properly: the media still needs a courteous response, your staff and clients still need to hear from you, and the day the matter concludes you need an announcement ready. We work inside whatever your counsel permits.
What is litigation PR?
Communications run alongside live or threatened legal proceedings, where every public word is constrained by what a court may consider and what your counsel will clear. In practice it means preparing carefully, saying less, and making sure that the restraint the law requires does not get read by the public as an admission.
Do you work with listed companies?
Yes. For a listed issuer the disclosure announcement comes first and everything else is built around it, because the announcement sets the frame every journalist and analyst will work from. We coordinate with your company secretary and counsel rather than around them.
Is this only for large companies?
No. A twelve-person business with a viral complaint and a nervous landlord has a real crisis. The work is smaller, the clock is the same, and a single well-handled day usually settles it.
We are a foreign company with a problem in Singapore. Can you help?
Yes, and it is a common brief. The most frequent mistake is running the response from headquarters on headquarters time, with wording that reads perfectly well elsewhere and lands badly here. Local sequencing and local tone are most of the job.
What do you need from us to start?
A twenty-minute call with someone who can approve wording, a clear separation of what is confirmed from what is assumed, the name of the journalist or platform involved if there is one, and confirmation of who your counsel is. That is enough to begin.
Will handling it well actually change the outcome?
It will not undo what happened, and we will never claim otherwise. What it reliably changes is how much of the story is your account rather than someone else’s, how long it runs, and what is left behind afterwards. That last part is worth more than most companies realise until they are hiring, tendering or raising a year later.
Do you work with our existing PR agency?
Often, yes. Many day-to-day consumer or marketing agencies are excellent at what they do and have simply never handled a regulator deadline or a hostile broadsheet. We can run the crisis while they continue everything else, without a turf argument.
Tell us what has happened. We will tell you what it needs.
Whether it broke an hour ago, is about to, or happened last year and is still the first thing people find — describe the situation and we will tell you plainly what we would do, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Trusted since 2001, and straight with you before you spend anything.
United Press — crisis PR and crisis communications for Singapore. Trusted since 2001.