[Behind the Selfie] with... Andre Fourie

“The apple of my eye and source of all my future grey hair,” according to Fourie...

1. Where do you live, work and play?

Fourie: Live: In Tokai in Cape Town.

Work: In the centre of Cape Town.

Play: At the huge park across the road from our house. My two-year-old daughter and one-year-old puppy have so much energy I tend to spend a lot of time at the park, letting them run around and enjoy the beautiful surrounds.

2. What's your claim to fame?

Fourie: I once shook the president's hand.

3. Describe your career so far.

Fourie: Varied. I've worked in consumer PR, business-to-business, tech, social media, advertising - it hasn't been boring!

4. Tell us a few of your favourite things.

Fourie: My wife and daughter top that list! Spending Saturday mornings playing Lego with my daughter is one of the most fun things I do. I also love quiet evenings spent reading, and I am a passionate cook. My most recent creation was a 15-hour slow-roasted pork belly that reminded me of my immense love of good food.

5. What do you love about your industry?

Fourie: That it is changing. I spent the first ten years of my career working in as many fields as possible, thinking that it would set me up for the rest of my career. But our industry is in the midst of so much change that I don't think I'll ever be able to just settle into one way of doing things. And that's quite exciting.

6. What are a few pain points your industry can improve on?

Fourie: I hate the jargon we use. We're communicators and should lead, not repeat the silly phrases we hear elsewhere. I also think that we're in this weird place where half the industry is stuck following the old way of doing things with a big focus on traditional media and publicity; and the other half focusing exclusively on new media and digital tools. True PR success, I believe, lies somewhere in the middle, and slightly in favour of digital.

7. Describe your average workday, if such a thing exists.

Fourie: I get up at 5, am at my desk by 6:30 and start my work day with some writing. I like using the quiet time in the morning to do the harder tasks that require the most concentration. Then it's off to meetings and back to the office to wrap up the day by 3pm, when I head home. A walk in the park, then it's bath time, story time, dinner and some more work before bed at 11.

8. What are the tools of your trade?

Fourie: Common sense is the most important tool for PR. I can also run my entire working day from my smartphone. But my favourite tool is still a notebook and pen - I'm a bit old school and really prefer pen-and-paper to tablets.

9. Who is getting it right in your industry?

Fourie: Many agencies are doing beautiful work with integrating traditional and new/social media. Atmosphere has been in the news a lot, and rightly so. I'm also excited to see the world's biggest PR agency, Edelman, starting to shake up some of the more established agencies. Competition is good for us and essential if we want to compete globally.

10. What are you working on right now?

Fourie: Quite a few campaign plans, some writing, recruiting new talent and some thoughts around new services and tools for our agency. You can't ever just rely on yesterday's tools to solve today's problems, so I try to keep up with leaders in the fields of marketing, PR, advertising, business and strategy in the hope of learning something useful and usable.

11. Tell us some of the buzzwords floating around in your industry at the moment, and some of the catchphrases you utter yourself.

Fourie: Integration is still our favourite buzzword. I'm also hearing a lot about 'mobile-first', which is natural considering that most South Africans now consume news on their mobile phones. I was recently caught out using the phrase "commercial objectives" four times in one story - it's important to link PR activities to our clients' business goals, but we probably don't need to beat everyone else over the head with it! And then, coming from a strong tech PR background, the word "disruption" is used so much it's lost all its impact.

12. Where and when do you have your best ideas?

Fourie: In the car, on the open road. I live on the edge of the Southern Peninsula, so I often drive through Simon's Town around Cape Point and through Scarborough and Kommetjie. By the time I round the bend and hit the beautiful view at Misty Cliffs, a flash of inspiration often hits.

13. What's your secret talent/party trick?

Fourie: I used to be able to roll a cigarette in under 10 seconds. I don't smoke anymore so haven't tried in a long time, but I'm sure I still have it!

14. Are you a technophobe or a technophile?

Fourie: Technophile (although I do sometimes feel like an analogue guy trapped in a digital world!)

15. What would we find if we scrolled through your phone?

Fourie: Hundreds of photos of our family and the places we visit. We like exploring Cape Town so we tend to get some beautiful pics of the city and its sights. I'm also passionate about music, so you'll find a lot of very different and often obscure songs on my phone.

16. What advice would you give to newbies hoping to crack into the industry?

Fourie: Learn as much as you can from senior people in the industry, and then go out and be bold by trying as many new things as possible. Don't underestimate the value of traditional publicity, but always seek to use social media and other digital tools to make campaigns more effective. And every PR person needs to read Robert Greene's 33 Strategies of War.

17. Plug your contact details, punt yourself - list all the places people can find you/your work online.

Fourie:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Skype: andre.4e

You can read more about marcusbrewster by clicking here, and here for more on Fourie.

*Interviewed by Leigh Andrews.