Flow Communications is over the moon to have won two of the global Indie Awards 2025’s most prestigious accolades: Africa Agency of the Year and the Indie Legend award – the latter jointly awarded to the company’s leaders, sisters Tara Turkington and Tiffany Turkington-Palmer.
The Indie Awards are awarded annually by thenetworkone, a global independent marketing and communications agency network comprising 1 600 independent agencies.
“It’s absolutely amazing to be recognised on this prestigious global platform! It’s a thrill for Tara and me to have won these two gold awards in the year that we celebrate 20 years in business,” says Tiffany, Flow’s managing director.
Founded in 2005 by Tara Turkington, who is the company’s CEO, Flow is a proudly South African company that is increasingly becoming an international player. Over 30% of its more than 100 clients are international, and the agency has completed projects in more than 30 countries. Tiffany joined Flow a year later and the two have led the company ever since
Among its current clients are the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the African Union, the German government, the United States Department of State, the Women Presidents Organization, Saint-Gobain and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women.
Flow’s entry for Africa Agency of the Year 2025 was “very, very impressive across the board”, said Katy Mousinho, chair of the Indie Legend award. She congratulated Flow on its high level of commitment to doing work that it loves and to delivering outstanding service to its clients and employees – visible in the loyalty of both.
Flow’s business strategy is founded upon a deep commitment to purpose-driven communications, and a vision to extend its global reach. The company’s motto is: “Do work you love, with people you like, to make the world a better place.”
In South Africa, broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) is a legal framework to address past inequalities. Flow has a level 1 B-BBEE rating, the highest level of compliance. The agency is also proudly 67% women-owned, its board comprises 67% women and 75% of its employees are women.
In 2023/24, Flow achieved revenue growth of 14%, improving its profit margin by 75% without job cuts – a remarkable financial performance, given that South Africa’s economy grew by less than 1% in the same period. Flow may not be South Africa’s biggest agency, but that’s not its ambition. It strives to be the best.
In addition, Flow is one of the largest remote-working creative agencies in South Africa, and is regarded as an industry leader in building a strong work-from-home culture.
All staff have been working remotely since March 2020, shortly before South Africa went into its first Covid-19 lockdown. Early on, Tara and Tiffany had the prescience to see what was coming and, by the time the lockdown was announced, Flow was already fully operational remotely. At a time when other companies struggled, Flow prospered.
The switch to being a remote work-only company has allowed Flow to employ people across South Africa and better accommodate those with disabilities.
The sisters are self-made entrepreneurs. Flow has built strong reserves, enabling new entrepreneurial initiatives. In 2019, they launched Flow Travel, a successful sister company to Flow Communications that offers boutique travel experiences around the world. This spin-off leveraged their extensive experience in assisting travel clients with their marketing.
In 2021, Flow was registered in the United States, and business from this market has grown steadily since then.
In 2023, after building the award-winning artificial intelligence-powered loyalty, marketing and security app TriggerMessage for a client, Flow acquired a controlling interest in the company that owns it and is currently fostering this start-up.
In 2022, Tara and Tiffany were accepted, along with Flow’s management team, into the prestigious Stanford Seed Transformation Program. The programme selects 60 companies (from thousands of applicants) with high growth potential from Africa and India into a sponsored, rigorous year-long course on business growth. The Flow team completed it with flying colours.
The prestigious Mail & Guardian Book of South African Women, highlighting leaders across all sectors, recognised Tara and Tiffany’s winning partnership in 2017.
In the same year, they were the joint recipients of an International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge award, given annually to 50 top women entrepreneurs. Tara and Tiffany were the first sisters to win the award, presented to them by Princess Noor bint Asem of Jordan.
“These are enormous accolades and we thank our wonderful clients and our dedicated staff for helping us achieve them,” says Tiffany of the two Indie Awards golds, adding to Flow’s 200-plus awards tally.