Meropa Communications named Africa Consultancy of the Year at 2019 SABRE awards
The Holmes Report has named Johannesburg-based public relations (PR) and communications consultancy Meropa Communications as the Africa Consultancy of the Year at an awards ceremony in London. The award follows from Meropa’s placement in the world’s 250 best PR companies.
Established in 1996 in Gauteng, Meropa Communications is a PR firm that is well renowned for a variety of services, including corporate identity, online reputation management, social media, community management and internal communications, among a wide range of others.
The firm has been growing amid an increasingly competitive reputation management market in South Africa, and has expanded its operations beyond its base in Johannesburg. Meropa’s other offices are situated in the key financial centres in Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.
Resting on this expansive presence, the firm serves clients across 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and has received widespread recognition for its work. For the last eight years, Meropa has been named amongst the top 250 PR firms across the world in The Holmes Report.
Now, at the SABRE Awards in London, The Holmes Report has named Meropa the Africa Consultancy of the Year. The Holmes Report said of the firm, “Meropa has built a reputation for client quality [as well as a] longstanding commitment to clients … powered as much by a vibrant staff culture as by its ability to build long-lasting, profitable relationships."
The SABRE Awards are the most prominent PR awards in the world, and are bestowed on firms that have displayed excellence in markets across the globe, including North America, the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, South Asia, Africa and the EMEA region.
Commenting on the achievement, Meropa’s Chief Executive Patrick Gearing said, “We are naturally delighted. We have been in business for 30 years, so it has been a long wait. We are especially pleased, as a proudly independent South African company, to have beaten all the big international agencies who were the other finalists.”
“We are equally delighted, once again, to be ranked in the Top 250 – even though the weak Rand saw us continue our fall when measured in USD, from 220 last year to 231 this year. We are number one in both South Africa and Africa, with our only competitor just scraping into the list at 248,” he added. The achievement comes at a time when reputation and communication strategies have become crucial differentiating factors in a digitalised environment.
