Briefing Vietnamese PR agencies and KOLs

A typical campaign has three layers. The advertiser is you: the tourism board, hotel or attraction. The agency is a Vietnamese company that plans the campaign, buys media, books creators and handles the press; under Article 39 of the Law on Advertising, a foreign advertiser that does not operate in Vietnam must use a Vietnamese advertising service provider for advertising placed there. The creators are the people whose faces and voices carry the message: key opinion leaders (KOLs) with large followings, and key opinion consumers (KOCs) who review products as customers.

The 2025 amendment to the law calls creators who directly advertise, recommend or confirm a product online "conveyors" of advertising, and gives them duties of their own. That changes the relationship: a creator is no longer just a channel you rent; they carry legal responsibility for what they say, and they will expect you to give them what they need to meet it.

1. The objective. Awareness, enquiries to tour operators, direct bookings, or press coverage. One primary objective per campaign.
2. The audience. City, age, travel style, and whether they travel independently or on packages.
3. The trip or product. What a Vietnamese traveller can actually buy, with the Vietnamese tour operators who sell it, and the visa steps.
4. The facts creators may state. Prices with dates, inclusions, opening seasons, visa requirements, flight routes. Supply the source for each, so the creator can meet their documentation duty.
5. What creators must experience first. The visit, stay or activity they will promote. Under the "not used, not understood" rule this is part of compliance.
6. Labelling. The Vietnamese label wording, the platform setting, and where the label appears in a video or livestream.
7. Approvals. Who checks facts, who checks the label, how many rounds, and how long each takes.
8. Measurement. The figures to be reported, from which tools, and by when.

Hosted visits for journalists and creators have always been the most effective way to get a destination described in Vietnamese by someone the audience trusts. Under the 2026 rules they also solve a legal problem: a creator who has stayed at the hotel or taken the tour has used the product they will promote.

• Keep a record of who travelled, when, and what they experienced.
• Separate editorial invitations, where a journalist decides what to write, from paid creator agreements, where content is advertising and must be labelled.
• Brief on visas and flights early; a creator who cannot get a visa in time cannot travel.
• Do not script testimonials. Under the law, the creator answers for what they say, and reviews are now treated as advertising when paid for.

Reach and views are easy to report and hard to interpret, because platform audience figures are advertising estimates rather than counts of people. Ask for outcomes you can check yourself: enquiries to the tour operators named in the brief, visa applications through your consulates, traffic to your Vietnamese page, messages to your Zalo or Facebook account. Compare them with the same months of the previous year.