A year of Recovery

December 14, 2022

For many of us, 2022 has been a year of recovery and a return to some form of normality after months of living cautiously and working remotely. From a workplace perspective, there is no doubt that hybrid working is the future – our people benefit from the flexibility of coming into the office on certain days and working from home on others without compromising client engagement and the quality of delivery. Technology is enabling seamless collaboration among our teams in Johannesburg, Cape Town, London and Botswana and we’re seeing more creative ideas and innovation coming to the fore.

Pleasingly, over recent months the Aprio Group has seen a good inflow of mandates from new and existing clients across all sectors of the economy. The Aprio team’s breadth and depth of expertise and experience has seen us assisting clients with strategic advice, guidance and implementation support across the communications spectrum – from reputation and issue management to digital communication and content generation, to media and investor relations, employee engagement and more.

Aprio Strategic Communications continues to work alongside Business for South Africa (B4SA) as the organisation navigates the complex, but urgent, need for rapid economic recovery in the country. Our close relationship with B4SA enables the Aprio team to obtain invaluable insights into developments within the South African corporate and public sectors at a leadership level which help to inform our communication strategies for clients. Multi-stakeholder engagement plans and campaigns linked to a digital output are in demand as clients look to address the challenges and opportunities of communicating in a digital world.

Aprio Digital has become integral in every communication strategy or plan that we implement and has had a busy year providing advice and guidance on various digital projects across our client base. Our forward-thinking digital team is continuously improving their skills, expertise and knowledge to align with trends in areas such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Aprio Credence, our leading issue management and crisis preparedness division, has seen significant demand for reputation management initiatives such as simulations and media training and we expect to see this demand continuing into 2023. Our comprehensive playbooks are helping management teams across the continent develop appropriate responses to different stakeholders during times of real, or potential, reputational damage. Our work with an existing mining client to prepare them for any possible catastrophic failure at its various tailings dam storage facilities, is one of numerous projects underway.

The current investor environment is not conducive to capital being raised in the country, which has a direct impact on the JSE in terms of corporate actions and fund-raising programmes. The Aprio Investor Relations (IR) team is fortunate to continue working closely with C-suite management, and through these interactions, we see a marked turn in sentiment, where there is a feeling that South Africa will start to tick the boxes as an emerging investment destination globally. If this transpires, it will have a marked impact on the JSE and our skilled and knowledgeable Aprio IR team is well-positioned to help clients benefit from this change.

The team works closely with clients to provide deep insights into the impact of the current economic climate on their industry or sector and what it means for their own businesses, providing guidance and advice on appropriate messaging and responses. This is in addition to deliverables such as investor site visits, preparation for results announcements and investor conferences.

Aprio ARM has had a busy couple of months providing strategic communication guidance to a major beverage client and is working with a financial institution in Zambia. An additional project included interesting work on the state of road infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is a definite opportunity for Aprio ARM to benefit from its presence in Africa and to offer good, sound communication advice to a variety of different stakeholders.

A big THANK YOU to our ‘A’ team for the collaborative effort, hard work and commitment over the past year. Despite the unpredictable pandemic and continuous load shedding, you have continued to deliver exceptionally well.

Our appreciation also goes to our growing client base in South Africa and on the rest of the African continent for placing trust in the Aprio Group to guide and support your critical stakeholder communication efforts.

I wish all of you, and your families a safe and restful holiday season and a happy, healthy and successful 2023.