Women to Watch 2023: Jennifer Kok, Media OutReach Newswire

Jennifer Kok

Founder and CEO
Media OutReach Newswire
Hong Kong SAR

The seven years Jennifer Kok spent leading sales for PRNewswire and Cision left her frustrated.

Seeing the shortcomings of these global companies to meet the needs of the PR industry, Kok founded MediaOutReach Newswire as an authentic service that helps PR professionals to achieve four clear goals: Distribute their release to journalists to generate write-ups and build media relations; offer guaranteed online news posting on real media; provide multi-format post-release reports with clear KPI measurements; and provide insights into how many journalists viewed their release by publication and by country.

Kok self-funded the business using her own capital and business acumen to build a proprietary SAAS technology platform.

Starting with zero media assets, she built a database that now includes more than 140,000 journalists covering 65,000 publications across 400-plus trade categories, and established media partnerships with more than 600 online media outlets.

Media OutReach helps newswires from North America, Europe, Africa and Middle East distribute their clients’ releases on the Media OutReach global network. It is now the market leader in Hong Kong, and Kok is eyeing for it to become the leading newswire in each country where they have a local office.

Kok also addressed the lacunae of measuring effectiveness of PR campaigns and recently launched the industry's first ‘Press Release Distribution Campaign Intelligence’, that helps agencies and communications professionals gain insights into the effectiveness of their campaigns on parameters such as performance over chosen time, number of write-ups by journalists by publication and country. It also includes how many journalists opened the release by country (essential for clients who manage multi-country communications). The agency has expanded its footprint in Thailand, the company’s eighth office in Asia.

Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey known only to those who have walked the path, and it is with this spirit that Kok supports and mentors entrepreneurs by advising them on business direction and reviewing strategies for growth. Her passion for philanthropy focuses on education and poverty.

Kok is a supporter of the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh that provides free education to women from underprivileged and war-torn communities. She also personally funds the education of 60 boys and 20 mixed-gender youths in Nepal.