Year End Message
Aprio employees contributed in their own way to find a solution to the crisis, with the Aprio Group’s contribution largely centred on the provision of our resources, pro-bono, to Business for South Africa’s (B4SA) communication initiatives. We worked closely with the B4SA leadership team and many other individuals from a variety of different South African businesses to provide support to our government in responding to the disastrous consequences of the pandemic.
We contributed our expertise, experience and learnings to ensure that all B4SA constituents were continually informed of developments through an active media campaign, a daily member update, a variety of different webinars and other virtual sessions, the website (which we created with our client, EOH) and a social media campaign.
Remote working became the order of the day and I have been impressed with how quickly our team adapted and were able to continue serving our valued clients. This new normal may well become the way forward for Aprio. We will re-group early next year to discuss the best way of working to ensure that we continue to provide innovative guidance, exemplary advisory services, content generation and creative delivery.
As we continue along the pandemic’s ‘journey’ in an attempt to return to business as usual (albeit far from usual circumstances), we are exceptionally well positioned to continue providing the quality of service and communication products for which we are renowned. We expect 2021 to be demanding, but also exciting in terms of creative and pioneering communication projects, new workflow, and an expanded client base.
Our Aprio team certainly showed up this past year and stayed true to the vision, mission and values that guide us. Words cannot capture the immense pride and gratitude I have for my colleagues. The past year has shown that we are truly an inclusive team, respected and well regarded by clients and other stakeholders.
Enjoy your well-deserved break over this holiday season. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones. I know that we’re going to get through this time together and emerge stronger and more resilient.
Julian
We thank you for your continued support through 2020. We hope the year 2021 brings new hope, fresh perspectives and much success.
Our crisis and issue management ‘arm’ conducted a variety of crisis preparedness and media training sessions focusing on COVID-19 impacts, cyber security, system hacking, racial intolerance, fraud and corruption, amongst other interventions. The Aprio Credence team conducted a virtual crisis preparedness masterclass, and its first virtual crisis simulation while delivering on a cyber-security whitepaper as well as a ‘kidnapping for ransom’ preparedness project.
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Aprio IR has maintained its momentum of guiding, preparing and implementing clients’ financial and transactional announcements to shareholders, and the broader investment market. Our soon-to-be launched IR Tracker, developed in conjunction with one of South Africa’s largest communication agencies, will provide Investor Relations Officers with concrete measures to justify increased engagement or prove that current levels of engagement are adequate. It measures the effectiveness of an investor relations programme with specific focus on engagement. It does this by scoring all the elements that contribute to investor engagement, including buy-side engagement, consensus vs results where relevant, as well as qualitative assessment. Watch this space for more details in early 2021!
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Aprio Digital has had a very active year with digital communications becoming ever more popular, and with an increasing demand for its offerings of social media campaigns, digital magazines, websites, blogs. One of the highlights of the year was creating and implementing the #savemylivelihood campaign for the alcohol industry’s coalition in response to South Africa’s two suspensions of alcohol sales initiated during the lockdown. The project has extended into a longer-term campaign to create awareness and reduce the harmful use of alcohol in South Africa; it has also created a structure where all stakeholders can work together to ensure an ongoing positive contribution to the nation.
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Aprio Strategic Communications sadly parted ways with some long-standing clients due to the economic effects of the pandemic. It is pleasing that many of these clients have returned and continued to use our services. Aprio Strategic Communications provided considerable support to clients at the early stages of the pandemic on different communication campaigns across diverse sectors of our economy. This work was aimed specifically at clients’ stakeholder groups and included heightened employee engagement programmes. This has introduced new avenues for the business which we are pursuing and will accelerate in 2021.
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Visit us at www.aprio.co.za