From 50 fabulous awards for fascinating work and travels to Accra, Ghana, to boots on the ground in Alexandra, Johannesburg, 2024 has been a fiesta of a year for Flow Communications.
Ask almost any of our more than 60 Flowstars what they love about Flow, and they’ll answer: the people. Our Flowstars are definitely one of our greatest assets, and we’ve also ended 2024 being voted best public relations (PR) company by some of our industry peers. That makes our hearts glow hot pink, sorry, magenta.
Among the 50 awards we took home this year – to several homes, really, considering that we’re a fully remote-working company – was the 2024 PRISM Awards’ Best Large PR Consultancy of the Year! What’s more, Caroline Smith, our head of PR, won gold in the Recognition in PR Leadership category, which she lists as one of her pinnacles for the year.
In a slightly more niche category, Flow also won Best Marketing & Communications Consultancy of the year at the Africa Global Funds (AGF) Service Providers Awards. This was the fifth time that Flow won this award. We’re thrilled – the AGF Service Providers Awards recognise exceptional contributions and achievements by service providers to the African fund industry.
A cool project
One of the coolest projects Flow completed this year was revamping train manufacturer Gibela’s Midrand offices.
Gibela came to us because they needed to improve the visibility of their signage so that it was easily identifiable from a distance, especially for motorists passing by on the N1 highway. They also wanted to tackle the issue of excessive sunlight entering their offices, which caused discomfort and affected the productivity of the people in the building.
We worked with our longstanding exhibitions supplier 1UP to provide Gibela with a combination of branding, functionality and environmental problem-solving that is now turning heads and shading eyes.
This was a big project that involved moving a garden and installing 3D perspex signage with LED lighting on a dark grey sheet-metal background!
A winning AI car washing loyalty programme
Artificial intelligence (AI) has had an impact on many sectors, including ours.
It can be a double-edged sword, but we’ve opted to adopt it wherever it adds value. One example is the AI solution we developed for Johannesburg car wash company Carspa – a project that has earned us 15 awards!
Carspa wanted an innovative way to grow a loyal client base, seeing it as key to building a sustainable business. Flow responded by developing TriggerMessage, an online, mobile-friendly platform that uses advanced AI technology to increase customer loyalty and market share.
Thanks to WhatsApp’s instant messaging power, we were able to deliver real-time communications to customers on the go and boost Carspa’s business and reputation in the process.
Work we love
Flow’s mantra is that we do work we love with people we like. We welcomed a number of new clients to the Flow family this year. One of the most notable projects of 2024 was a massive research programme run in partnership by the National Research Foundation, the Human Sciences Research Council and Swiss philanthropic foundation Fondation Botnar.
The u’GOOD programme funds research that seeks to understand the relational well-being of young people in urban and peri-urban environments. Relational well-being is defined as having enough (material well-being) and feeling good (subjective well-being) and is ultimately about how life is lived as a series of shared interactions, connections and strategies in multiple domains, and at interlinking levels – the personal, societal and environmental.
For Flowstar Allison MacDonald, a highlight was Flow being appointed as a partner to Urban-Econ Development Economists to enhance the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s brand and make the country’s national botanical gardens optimally commercially viable.
Flowstars love to travel for work, and this year we got to go to many different places, from Alexandra, Gauteng, to Accra, Ghana!
“I got to go to Ghana for Africa Skills Week, which was just amazing! It was great to see a new country but also to travel with such a great colleague, and the client was epic!” says Flow head of project management Gail Tanner.
Africa Skills Week was hosted by the Ghanaian government and organised by the African Union. Gail and fellow Flowstar Ayanda Siswana visited Accra to assist the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) delegation to the African Union. Flow has collaborated with the delegation on a number of projects, all project-managed by Gail, who says: “I loved working on the GIZ AU portfolio of work. It’s all meaningful and inspiring work.”
A group of Flowstars also travelled across the Atlantic to Colorado Springs in the US. There, we set up a stand at the Women Presidents Organization (WPO) annual Entrepreneurial Excellence Forum and – for the second year running – ran its social media accounts during the three-day gathering.
Caroline, Flow CEO Tara Turkington and project manager Nicky Whall hosted the stand, introducing Flow’s services to WPO members. For fun, we offered an extra service to those attending the forum – professional photographs to use for their social media profiles.
For Flow writer Thelma Ngoma-Mavhunga, a working road trip was a highlight of her year (except for her holiday to Hong Kong, but we’re talking about work here).
“One of my highlights of 2024 was travelling to Mpumalanga, Benoni, Alexandra and Sasolburg with videographers and photographers to create content for GIZ, focusing on supporting the just energy transition in South Africa,” says Thelma. (Just energy transition refers to a country’s transition away from fossil fuel-based energy towards clean, renewable energy in a way that’s fair for everyone.)
“Meeting young, energetic entrepreneurs who are building our future was incredibly fulfilling, and their stories truly inspired me. I also realised how much I miss being in the field – boots on the ground, exploring the world. One thing I love about my job is that no day is ever the same; there’s always a new challenge. This keeps us learning, growing and creating magic,” she says.
And that – sprinkling our bright, pink magic over every piece of work we do – is what Flow is all about. Plus, it’s what we’ll continue to do in 2025!
See you then!