South Africa hires media relations agency to build its nation brand

South Africa’s official marketing agency is tasked with the job of building the country’s brand reputation.

The agency, Brand South Africa, has appointed the African Press Organisation (APO) to manage its media relations.

Nations are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of managing nation branding. This is especially important for countries that that have received negative international press coverage in recent history.

APO is the sole press release newswire in Africa and it has a strong understanding of the region’s media. Brand South Africa will require APO to provide media relations services both across the African continent and worldwide.

Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, founder and CEO of APO, says, “This contract reinforces the fact that APO is the media relations agency of reference for organisations with expanding footprints on the continent or operating across many regions. APO is well known for its standards of quality of services in a challenging, growing emerging market. We have the longstanding experience in understanding each African country’s requirements in managing media relations projects. The fact that our journalist subscribers continue to increase by double digits every year clearly indicates that African nations need to communicate more.”

APO’s newswire service is called Africa Wire. It reaches over 50,000 media outlets, bloggers and social networks and redistributes content to more than 50 African websites.