CG Consulting to help Reuters expand its audience in Africa

Reuters is looking to expand its presence across Africa, to which end its South Africa and UK divisions have enlisted the services of Cape-Town-based CG Consulting. The primary strategy for boosting the customer base so far has been the initiation of a lead generation exercise.

Reuters is the news distribution arm of global media agency Thomson Reuters, and is one of the largest such organisations in the world today, currently operating in over 100 countries across the globe and disseminating information in nearly every major language, including English, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese among a number of others.

If the firm has one complaint, however, it would be the lack of an audience for its work in Africa – an issue that the agency is now looking to solve in collaboration with CG Consulting. A pan-African consulting firm in terms of operations, CG is based in South Africa, and will work with Reuters’ existing operations in the country.

CG Consulting specialises in leveraging data generation and analysis to create new revenue streams, primarily in the IT, telecoms and mining sectors across the continent. Services offered by CG include the direction of marketing drives, brand awareness, market research, and profiling.

The firm also conducts outsourced lead generation campaigns, which is the specific area of expertise that Reuters is looking to take advantage of in the new collaborative arrangement. Recognising the nuanced approach required when entering culturally variant markets, Reuters also strongly appreciated CG’s familiarity with markets across Africa when selecting its partner of choice.

On the selection, MD of CG Consulting Louise Robinson commented, “Reaching the right decision makers in Africa is close to impossible without the right contacts. Our extensive databases of CEOs, CIOs and CFO’s across the continent make it that much easier to reach the right people, and we were easily able to meet Reuters’ specific requirements. In addition, they appreciated that Africa has a completely different business environment than anywhere else in the world, and used our expertise to accommodate the unique operating conditions in each of the countries they were targeting.”

“It therefore didn’t come a surprise to us that this international organisation respected the fact that a unique approach was needed for different countries and types of businesses. Our business is built on being able to generate qualified leads, and to do that in Africa, you need to have access to skilled people who speak the different languages and understand each environment. This capability is one of the reasons the Reuters African lead generation campaign was so successful,” she added.

Robinson expressed her appreciation of the decision. “We are proud to have added Reuters to our list of premium international clients, and are looking forward to help them build their African footprint,” she concluded. Reuters sidestepped a number of up-and-coming media consultancies in South Africa by selecting CG Consulting.