helps individuals and businesses to understand their multiple, diverse stakeholder groups and deploy relevant communications programs to help clients achieve their long-term objectives.

We specialise in:

• :1 Reputation Management

  The reputation of a business is essential to its survival. Your reputation is your most valuable asset. Reputation focuses on what your stakeholders expect from your business - it looks beyond products and services into such areas as open and honest communication, playing an active role in society, ethical leadership, governance and strong performance.

   

  A strong reputation benefits your business not only financially, but effective communication with key stakeholders helps build reputational support that will strengthen emotional bonds and resultant supportive behavior with stakeholders. It can also help a company weather a crisis. We work with business leaders and organisations to develop genuine, authentic, measurable communica­tion strategies aimed at building, enhancing and restoring reputation capital.

• :2 Internal Communications

  Employees want to feel valued, listened to, and part of the team. Your employees need to understand your strategy and know why they're in the office each day. Demotivated employees with no idea how their jobs align to your business' overall strategy don't perform optimally, don't assist leadership in achieving corporate objectives and their discretionary effort is non-existent - they simply draw a paycheck. By consistently communicating with your employees, ensuring their alignment to corporate strategy and ensuring that their outcomes are aligned to strategy - daily - not only motivates your staff, but improves productivity, loyalty and ultimately, your business' performance.

• :3 Stakeholder Engagement

  Companies that have engendered deep levels of stakeholder engagement are far more successful in shaping the impact of stakeholders to their advantage. The days of one-way communication with stakeholders (internal and external) are over. Stakeholders now expect customised messaging that is relevant, practical and timely and that offers opportunities for dialogue. Organisations that are not taking the time to map their stakeholders to better understand the channel, message-mix and needs of stakeholders at the receiving end of their communication, will not achieve their desired results, see no return in the medium- to long-term on communication delivery as their stakeholders will continue to disengage.

• :4 Public Relations

  Effective Public Relations brings marketing and advertising campaigns to life. This is not the 'spin' or 'stunts' that come to mind when the term Public Relations is heard. We develop measurable Public Relations programs to help clients meet the needs of their stakeholders and to ensure better understanding - on both sides. Effective Public Relations programs bring marketing and advertising campaigns to life - creating understanding, trust and support for products, services and organisations that cannot be communicated in 30 seconds or a beautifully designed ad.

• :5 Crisis Communications

  The failure to communicate effectively during a crisis can inflict more damage on your reputation than whatever provoked me crisis in the first place. When a crisis hits, communication is critical. Crisis readiness is therefore key to effectively managing a crisis that could permanently destroy your/your business' reputation. Communication during a crisis that is timely, transparent, empathetic, visible and inclusive will reduce the operational and reputational costs incurred.

• :6 Creating High-performing Communication Functions

  Unlocking more strategic, value-added conversations and collaborations across your organisation, demands that your Comms team becomes a valued business partner. The majority of communication functions are unable to move beyond simply rolling out tactical plans for no long-term gain. In order to drive communication excellence within an organisation, communication functions need to become proactive and collaborative business partners and sought-after advisors who give input to business decisions and are part of the process and not tactical practitioners called in at the last minute. Skills development, mentorship, training, process and systems development and on-the-job coaching are ways in which we assist communications practitioners and teams to become 'internal agencies' that add true value to their businesses.

Shenanda Janse van Rensburg is an independent communications consultant with over 18 years' international experience specialising in reputation manage­ment, strategic communications and crisis communication. She has a successful track-record of protecting corporate and individual reputations and leading communication strategies for businesses through start-up, turnaround and growth phases as well as challenging economic cycles. Her intimate knowledge of best practice corporate communications and the skills to drive excellence was gained during many years in senior and executive level positions for local, multi-national and listed firms, including the Altron Group, Altech, Cell C and The South African National Lottery.

Shenanda started her career as a public relations account executive in London, where she worked on two of the UK's most significant campaigns at the time, including a public awareness and education campaign driven by the UK Government on Y2K and a Public Relations campaign to increase international ticket sales and visitors to the Millennium Dome in London. Other clients included the Royal Bank of Scotland and The UK National Lottery.

During her career, Shenanda has built personal credibility as a reputation management, public relations, and communications expert because of her intimate understanding of business and her ability to anticipate how stakehold­ers will react to events, messages and channels. She is known for being diplomat­ic and perceptive with the ability to articulate views with clarity and impact. Shenanda holds a BCom (Communications) from the University of Johannes­burg, is a Chartered Public Relations Practitioner (CPRP) accredited by the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA), a multi-year judge for the PRISA PRISM Awards and an accredited conflict mediator.