Public Relations
“Communications is at the heart of any business but shouting loudly doesn’t always mean you’re heard.”
SIMONSAYS communications is a small dedicated team with proven contacts and a wealth of creativity.
We pride ourself in being able to give clients individual and specialised service and has been founded on the belief that a partnership approach to PR is key to successful communication campaigns.
MEDIA
- strategic communications consultancy
- publicity campaigns
- product launches
- trade exchanges / competitions
- awareness days
- personality profiling
- media relationship building
- media perception audits
- crisis management
- advertorial placements
CORPORATE COMMUNICATION
- company profile building
- reputation management
- internal / employee communication
- promotional gifting
- advertising placements
- newsletter / brochure copy writing
- process management for the production of marketing collateral
- events management / launches
- speaker management
SOCIAL MEDIA
- facebook development and maintenance
- twitter development and maintenance
- blog updates
- online interviews and coverage
- event listing
- online video interviews
Soapbox offers the following key services:
- Specialised writing and copy writing services (including speech writing, script writing and content management)
- Media Management
- Strategic communication planning
- Reputation Management and Crisis Communication
- Stakeholder Relationship Management
- Sponsorship and Brand Management
- Promotions and Event Management
- Media monitoring, evaluations and return on investment reports
- Product merchandising
- Organisation of competitions/giveaways
We use a range of media tools and tactics to meet your objectives, including:
Media releases – media releases tell your stories and ensure that our messages are in order. They should always be clever, newsworthy and have a very specific goal – to help position BSG and its goals and initiatives, to change perceptions and to open specific doors.
Interviews – media interviews should only be arranged when the speaker has something noteworthy to say. These are generally arranged for a spokesperson that is quoted in a press release right after the story has been sent to the media, or through planned interviews arranged on specific subjects.
Photo-captions – A picture speaks a thousand words. Sometimes we will be using picture captions to deliver a message or feeling amongst the target audiences. CSI projects are often best represented by a picture rather than a lengthy story.
Media round tables / briefing – these are valuable meetings with media to discuss issues, trends or developments within the organisation and within the environment in which you operate. The media contact enhances editorial credibility.
Media hospitality – The organisations and companies that place value on hosting and treating media to special occasions are the ones that have the closest relationships with journalists.
Media meets – these are valuable one-on-one meetings between the organisation and the press corps. Sometimes these will involve your communications team only, other times it will involve one or two of your spokespersons. The aim of these meets is to ask media what they are working on, to suggest a media agenda and to ensure that the client is part of the conversation.
Speaker opportunities – There are a number of speaking platforms that are reputable and significant in South Africa. Organisational leaders and experts use these opportunities to position their company amongst its peers.
Thought leadership – Thought leadership media initiatives help to quickly establish the organisation as owner of a specific theme being discussed. This is an important element of the communication plan as it allows you to lead the industry by shaping debate and conversation around issues. Thought leadership can be driven through media interviews, round tables or press releases and opinion pieces.
Opinion pieces –Opinion pieces serve as a delivery mechanism to talk about thought leadership and to comment on analysis or current affairs. The communications team crafts the opinion piece based on the spokesperson’s thoughts, and ensures that the media place it.
Media inductions – The induction sessions are aimed at giving media an independent view of the “state of the nation”, its challenges and trends. This is a perfect opportunity to teach young rookie journalists the ropes, to help seasoned journalists understand complex issues in the industry and gives BSG the opportunity to confirm its position amongst the media.
Advertorials, supplements and features – Advertorials are paid for articles. Most publications, whether mainstream newspapers or magazines, carry supplements and features. The main aim for the newspaper or magazine is to elicit advertising but we always contact the journalist to see if we are able to offer an insightful article that helps create credibility for the supplement. Sometimes these will be accepted, other times not.
Spintelligent is your business intelligence partner and event management company for Sub-Saharan Africa. We provide world class trade-exhibitions & conferences, industry publications & multimedia resources, and business training programmes to help you expand your operations and achieve your business ambitions. We operate across key industry sectors including Power & Utilities, Mining & Extractive Industries, Defence & Security, Education and Agriculture. Our aim is to provide your business with qualified commercial opportunities and solutions through multiple touch points within an industry.
CONFERENCES
High level speakers provide in-depth market intelligence and case studies from emerging markets across the world.
EXHIBITIONS
Meet thousands of decision makers to generate leads for your sales team and promote your products and services.
SITE VISITS
Led by industry experts, Site Visits capture practical insights and demonstrate real world case studies.
INDUSTRY AWARDS
The Industry Awards held at the various events welcome Africa’s most distinguished industry professionals to celebrate triumphs and successes.
PRINT & DIGITAL MEDIA
Spintelligent’s Publishing division combines the best editorial content and focus, with a concentrated, well-researched database, to enable distribution that reaches the key sectrol decision makers for metering, power and mining.
TRAINING & WORKSHOPS
Combining market knowledge with the extensive experience of delivering high quality workshops. The training courses aim to provide interactive and sector specific learning with outcomes that are directly transferable to the specific business challenges.
Industry Sectors
POWER & UTILITIES
The Power & Utilities portfolio is the largest and longest running portfolio at Spintelligent, featuring 9 conferences and trade exhibitions including Spintelligent’s flagship event, African Utility Week and Clean Power Africa. The portfolio is supplemented by key industry publications ESI and Metering & Smart Energy International, produced in-house by the Spintelligent’s Publishing & Digital Media department, and by the Spintelligent Training Academy.
MINING & EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES
Spintelligent’s Mining & Extractive Industry portfolio has a track record of more than ten years, offering turnkey events in Africa’s mining hotspots, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. The portfolio’s events include iPAD DRC, Katanga Mining Week and CBM-TEC. The portfolio is supplemented by key industry publication Mining Review Africa, produced by Spintelligent’s in-house Publishing department, and the Spintelligent Training Academy.
EDUCATION
The education portfolio is among the fastest growing in Spintelligent, comprising industry leading events, SABC Education African EduWeek and SABC Education Career Indaba. The Education portfolio has a proven track record of connecting leading industry suppliers to educational institutions and professionals, holding a partnership agreement with national broadcaster SABC, providing unparalleled coverage and marketing for the events in the portfolio.
AGRICULTURE
The Agriculture portfolio of events draws together agricultural professionals – from small farmers to commercial farming enterprises – and connect them with industry experts, leading equipment & machinery suppliers, seed and agrochemical producers, irrigation specialists, financial institutions, insurance providers, as well as key government and union officials. The Agriculture portfolio events include Agritech Expo, Zambia, and Agribusiness East Africa, Tanzania.
DEFENCE AND SECURITY
Spintelligent’s Defence & Security portfolio draws together high-level government officials and senior military personnel as well as leading global equipment and services providers to knowledge share, discuss industry developments, conduct business, develop partnerships and network for future growth. The portfolio comprises three key events: Maritime & Coastal Security Africa (MCSA), Land Forces Africa (LFA) and Land Forces East Africa.
In a day and age where customer loyalty is more fickle than ever before and where communication clutter bombards our everyday lives, a strong brand image and positive brand association has become critical to business success. It makes sense then that over the years, public relations has become ever-more important as a business tool to assist companies in building their brands and furthering their relationships with customers.
Squared Communications is the public relations division of Velvet Square, a small yet dynamic business entity based in Bryanston, Johannesburg. Squared Communications takes pride in providing a professional and dedicated public relations service. We are passionate and meticulous in our approach and we pride ourselves on service excellence and building solid working relationships with our clients.
Squared Communications aims to offer its clients a public relations experience that will exceed their expectations. We formulate and implement public relations and social media strategies with emphasis placed on evaluating public attitudes and interest.
Our work philosophy is to make our client’s reputation a priority and execute a program of actions to earn public interest and engagement.
With a strong focus on creating and growing our client’s media presence and credibility within their industry, we adopt a quality-oriented approach as we strive to build superior working relationships with our clients as well as key media representatives within the scope of our client’s professional realm.
Squared Communications assists its clients in delivering key messages to the right target audiences. This is achieved through specifically tailored PR campaigns that make use of the appropriate communication mediums which are highly measurable and results-driven.
Squared Communications delivers a timeous solution in a deadline-driven industry and continually ensures that our solutions are appropriate and valuable to the growing needs of our clients.
Squared Communications specialises in brand activation and corporate communications, with the purpose of enhancing our client’s public relations image and media presence. Whether on a project basis or long-term contract, each campaign is addressed with the same enthusiasm and professionalism as we diligently work towards achieving the required objectives. Each project includes regular client consultation and clearly defined milestones and deadlines.
Our key services include:
- Formulation and implementation of communications strategy
- Management and implementation of social media plans
- Writing services – press releases, blogs, promotional material, websites, full-length articles and features
- Media relations and publicity – building relationships with key media representatives, distribution of press releases, media monitoring
- Internal communications – newsletters, training material
- Development of corporate responsibility programmes
- Event planning and management
The Famous Idea has successfully managed on-going publicity campaigns for the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown (and their subsidiary projects, including the South African participation at the 55th Venice Biennale); The Standard Bank Jazz Festival, Grahamstown; The Johannesburg International Mozart Festival, The Franschhoek Literary Festival, The Arts and Culture Trust (ACT); the Gordon Institute of Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA), The Spier Summer Arts Season, The Fugard Theatre, The Standard Bank Gallery, and The Standard Bank Young Artist Awards.
We have also managed individual projects for organisations such as the Nedbank (Championships for the Physically Disabled), the Stonehage Charitable Trust, the Paleontological Scientific Trust (PAST), the KwaZulu Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (South African tour), The Gerard Sekoto Foundation, Pina Ya Thari, The Dance Factory, AM Productions, TEATERTeater, The Best Little Company in the Whole Wide World (GT Ferreira), The Theatre Arts Admin Collective and a host of individual artists and pro bono projects.
Director Gilly Hemphill is well-respected by her extensive network. She worked in public relations in various capacities for 24 years, before establishing her own company; and received the ACT Arts and Culture Publicist of the Year award in 2005. Working closely with a dedicated support team, we take pleasure in providing our best service to our clients.
The Fried Tomato Co. is a small agency doing PR, special public events, place marketing and bespoke marketing for select clients.
Website development and design with team
Creating and sourcing lists
E-mail campaigns
SMS Campaigns
New campaign development
Campaign analysis
Content Development
Affiliate Marketing
User experience development
Basic wireframe development with developers
Development of User Stories
Market Segmentation
Campaign Design & Development
Integrated Marketing Communication Strategies
Loyalty Programmes
Promotion development and activation
Measurement of ROI
VIP Customer Management
Sponsorship Management
Sponsorship Sales
Donor Management
Donor Porgrammes
Large Scale Public Events
The Agency is an affiliate of Empower Marketing Asia, an integrated marketing solutions company with offices in Shanghai China, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
The agency is focused on developing innovative experiential marketing campaigns and leveraging on unpaid media to help small businesses and start-ups in Cape Town and South Africa achieve market presence and improve their visibility in the local and global media landscape.
The agency management team comprises of a couple, Lawrence and Rachel Stevenson, who come with decades of agency experience marketing global and start-up brands in South Africa and Singapore, and Dylan James, a seasoned business developer in the local start-up scene and Director and Board Secretary of the South African Small & Medium Enterprise Federation or SASMEF.
“When it comes to the marketing of small businesses and startups I have noticed that they face a common issue – they are not able to break through the clutter. This is where we can help. With a good marketing strategy that addresses the different needs of these small businesses, we can achieve positive market presence and share of voice for them locally and internationally,” said Dylan James, Creative Partner of The Spaza Agency.
The Spaza Agency is an affiliate of Empower Marketing Asia, an integrated marketing solutions company with offices in Shanghai China, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
“South Africa and Asia are both growing economies that are seeing an upsurge of start-ups and small businesses. We see a lot of synergy in these markets and believe we can cross sell across many different platforms to help our clients achieve results and effectively engage their target markets and stakeholders,” said Rachel Stevenson, Creative Partner of the Spaza Agency.
“The addition of The Spaza Agency to our existing network of affiliates is timely and of great strategic importance to Empower because South Africa is a key market for some of our existing multinational clients,” said Kelvin Phang, founder of Empower Marketing Asia. “Having worked with Rachel on successful campaigns across multiple markets in Asia, we have no doubt that Spaza will be a great success and will certainly extend our reach and capabilities beyond Asia Pacific.”
Our business is to first and foremost understand your business, before coming up with a PR, Communications and Activations plan that works for what you need.
And we get our hands dirty while we do it – we don’t only come up with the bright ideas, we’ll help you to see them through all the way to implementation.
Trade Conferences International organises the most up-to date exhibitions, conferences and special events focusing on specific issues within the mobile, finance IT and web industries. Our exhibitions focus on technology issues, while our conferences boast upstream topics and high quality speakers.
During the last thirteen years, TCI has evolved from a pure conference organising company to also include exhibitions and sponsorship packages as part of our offering. With the experience of hosting more than 250 national events since 2002, we are ideally positioned to offer our exhibiting and sponsoring companies maximum marketing exposure to increase business on the African continent.
Established in 2002, TCI is your all industry, but largely financial event organiser of choice. We understand industry trends and developments and have the ability to identify the right issues to bring to delegates through informative events.
TCI has organised more than 250 events in the last 12 years. With the guidance of a highly experienced and guided team, TCI arranges the most up-to date conferences and exhibitions.
In the past two years Trade Conferences International has offered top class financial, information technology and marketing related conferences and would justifiably pride itself in promising delegates top notch conferences with excellent speakers in the years to come. In its repertoire, it has popular annual conferences such as the Mobile Banking Southern Africa Conference, Payments Southern Africa Conference & Exhibition, Loyalty & Rewards Conference, Channel Management Conference and the Online Retailing Conference. In 2002 alone TCI attracted more than 1200 delegates, including expert speakers from across the globe.
UrbanHouse Media is a dedicated PR agency with a passion for finding news worthy angles for our clients and converting this into meaningful content for securing credible exposure in the media.
UrbanHouse Media clients include international nutritional expert Patrick Holford, natural cold and flu remedy range Hot Toddy, online shopping store Mondo and retail group Oxford freshmarket.