It is a fact that less than 20 percent, of companies, survive beyond 20 years in South Africa. And that’s significant and so when a company functioning within a very competitive market sector hits that milestone, and hits it with expansion and new divisions being launched, it is something of a credible achievement.
Business Tech Africa Spoke with Duo Marketings founder and CEO and asked Judith about her success story as a businesswoman, and what the key success factors in that story have been as well as about their recently awarded Best Tech PR and Digital Marketing Agency in Africa :
Reinventing the PR Wheel
“So I think that 20 years ago, the PR industry was very locked into a specific model, which I think wasn’t serving the growing tech community, and I was at a place called the Cape IT Initiative back then, building the first tech incubator that the continent had ever seen” replies Judith.
“I was surrounded by the tech industry, the captains of industry at that time, and all the entrepreneurs were looking for economies of scale and shared resources”. “Sort of building a community in a cluster”. “And what I saw was PR agencies coming into this community and not delivering accountability”.
They were delivering results, but they were not taking full accountability for brand development and growth, and so basically, I stepped out and said, well, why don’t we build a new model, which is not based on swapping time for money, but rather based on values and outputs and results and milestones” and so we built a completely different model to what the industry had been accustomed to”.
Taking a Calculated Risk
“But I was willing to take a risk because I love tech and I love the impact of technology on people’s lives in Africa, because it is the one great thing that helps us leapfrog into first world economies, and so over the period of 20 years, we’ve built and evolved and grown by listening to our customers says Judith.
Middleton also alludes to the strength of her team that she describes as a group of individuals who are tech savvy, who understand return on investment and who are commercially astute and willing to go the extra mile personally.
She remarks that the team “treats our clients as though they’re their own businesses”.
Key Factors in Creating Their Success Story Include the Following:
- Recognition of something quite broken in the industry that needed changing
- Good timing on offering a better solution
- Becoming a specialist, and in this instance a Tech Specialist
- The tech industry they committed to growing exponentially,
- Building a committed “tribe” internally who really, they know that the value of the collective is bigger than the value of their own.
- Approaching everything as a collective to give optimum value to their customers.
Simplicity – Important to Success
I ask Judith what she personally sees at her greatest success?
“I think clients like Vox, who’ve been with us for 18 years, says Judith. “Where we get to build such strong relationships, built on trust, and it becomes the foundation for simplicity”.
In expanding on this success Middleton says that there is no need for silly little intros or discussions, and that they know exactly where they are with Vox.
“We know the CEO, We understand his mission. He talks to us regularly, they depend on us, and we go”.
Judith underscores the real magic in the simplicity of communication when there is great understanding and says “You know, we would take a bullet for that man and that business because we have done their listing, their delisting and hundreds of product launches”.
There is a similar relationship that Duo has with Mukuru, who Duo has had as a client for five years according to Judith. “That company is transforming financial services on the continent, really inclusive, doing some really profound work” she says.
“And there’s heart in these companies, so, you know, there’s commercial requirement, but there’s also heart because they’re good people, and that, I think, is the best privilege, is working with good people and then also not just working for good people, but working with good people in the team also” she concludes.
Growing Internal Skill Base Critical
As an indictment on the PR industry in general Judith comments that the “PR industry is littered with subpar skills, I would say, compared to my experience in the U.K. and the U.S. “People consider themselves expert PR professionals if they’ve got sort of two years under their belt”. “But to understand media and the nuances and how to position clients, that takes a long time, and so we often have to grow our people, those that are hungry and willing” she comments.
Duo Marketing, not only does internal development, but uses an international platform called Plexus, where they belong to a group of 20 other agencies, that facilitates international training across the world with all our agency employees. This provides a bit of a differentiator, alongside their own internally developed a digital handbook for professional PR people to come in and become digitally astute.
Awards Not the Goal
Duo considers awards as simply a by-product of their commitment and professional approach in understanding the Tech sector and understanding their clients businesses deeply.
“So, you know, interestingly, awards have never really been a trump card because I feel like everybody gets an award for something”. “Where we focus our awards really is on international” says Middleton. “So, you know, awards for us would be better if we were getting them from our clients rather than industry bodies” she comments.
“But this award is, I think, the second or third time we’ve received this award as the best tech PR and digital marketing agency on the continent, and I mean, that’s a big one, right?”
Kudos for PR Pioneer
With a client base including the likes of VOX, Ecentric, Mukuru and global software behemoth, redPanda software, it is no surprise that Duo Marketing walked away with the award but the fact that they have built and sustained and scale a business on the African continent is not only commendable but the best achievement to hang on their wall.