#BehindtheSelfie with... Marisa Louw

Louw’s mottos: Smile and the world will smile back, and laughter is the best medicine.

1. Where do you live, work and play?

I live in the peaceful countryside town of Parys, work in Johannesburg and play in Tamriel.

2. What’s your claim to fame?

I’m the wife of an internationally acclaimed opera singer.

3. Describe your career so far.

It’s been 26 years of continuously learning new skills, making mistakes and evolving to keep up with technology. I started off my career thinking I’m going to work with animals out in nature, instead I found myself stuck inside a science lab for most of my first year’s studies and realised I made the wrong choice. Then I spun the roulette wheel of careers and it landed on business administration, so I worked my way through various corporate marketing departments as a secretary. Throughout my job-hopping I have taken on the task of making sure my opera-singer husband receives as much public exposure as I can secure, and I helped him build a recognisable brand in the world of classical music. In 2011 I decided to start my own PR agency and do what I’m good at, and love most: helping people and brands become famous.

4. Tell us a few of your favourite things.

Tattoos, piercings, popcorn, coffee and vanilla-flavoured rollie (rolling papers).

5. What do you love about your industry?

Its ability to help people and brands get noticed through story telling. Public relations and publicity has long been the ugly duckling of the communications industry, but that is changing... and fast.

6. Describe your average work day, if such a thing exists.

I am one of those people who wake up with a cup of coffee and go to sleep with a cup of coffee. Between 4am and 6am I read – the latest industry news and topics relevant to my clients’ industries. Social media is very important to me so I usually spend between 6am and 8am networking on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. From 8am to 5pm I’m mostly in meetings or on the phone with clients, journalists and prospective clients. When not in meetings I execute client projects: researching content, writing content, drafting strategies, analysing results, compiling reports, planning campaigns, looking for story angles, developing story angles, pitching to the media… I always allocate at least an hour-and-a-half to spend with my husband on week evenings before I either go directly to bed or work on deadline-sensitive projects. Because my husband is a stay-at-home-man when not traveling for opera productions, I don’t have to worry about anything in the household. Come 5pm, dinner is ready and I can relax for a while.

7. What are the tools of your trade?

Personality!

8. Who is getting it right in your industry?

Farah C Fortune of African Star Communications, in my opinion, is getting it right. She continues to build a strong and recognisable brand for herself and her agency, and does the same for her clients.

9. List a few pain points the industry can improve on.

It is my opinion that the biggest threat facing the PR industry now is the poor quality of PR students graduating from tertiary institutions. There are not enough internship programmes to accommodate all the graduates, and with the government’s big focus on entrepreneurship, many of them start their own consultancies without enough knowledge of the industry. This results in many small PR consultancies doing a lot of mediocre work, which is damaging to the industry’s reputation.

Because of the poor quality of PR graduates, I get the feeling that agencies are diminishing internship programmes; it is simply too time-consuming in our fast-paced industry to teach an intern something that should have been taught at a tertiary institution. Emlo Communications launched an internship programme last year and of the 300-plus CVs received, the average academic result was 55%. I know academic results are not the be-all and end-all, but what scared me is that of the 30 candidates that went through a practical assessment as part of the application process, none knew what ‘media list development’ is, neither did they know what it means to pitch a story to a journalist, and less than five of them could write a decent press release. What I found disturbing was that most candidates came from two institutions in Gauteng, and my attempts to discuss my findings with these institutions remain unanswered to this day. What can we, as an industry, do to improve this? I have some thoughts, but that is an article on its own!

10. What are you working on right now?

That is classified; if I tell you, I’d have to kill you. All jokes aside, my focus right now is on growing my agency. It’s a tall order being responsible for new business development, and client strategies and execution. But I’m loving it!

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

The term ‘public relations’ in itself is a buzzword. It is an important-sounding word that has very little meaning to Jane and John Doe. Some brand and marketing managers do not even fully understand the power of public relations. My favourite catchphrase is ‘tomorrow is another day’. (I think I know every word by Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind from memory!)

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

I find it quite disturbing that my best ideas are revealed in dreams. Luckily for me, I always remember my dreams in the finest of detail.

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

Well, I guess after this it will no longer be a secret: I am a classically trained singer. The Abba song Thank you for the music explains my talent in one sentence: “Mother said I was a dancer before I could walk; she said I began to sing long before I could talk.” In the late 80s and 90s I focused my singing career on Afrikaans music, and even performed on radio and television. In 1994 I returned to my roots and joined the State Theatre Opera Chorus, where I met my husband in 1996. For 10 years I worked a 9-to-5 job, followed by being on stage almost every night of the week until midnight, earning a well-deserved extra income. When the State Theatre closed its doors a few years later I took a break from singing professionally until, in 2014, my husband cast me in one of his operas. I’ve been back on stage in my free time since, both as a singer and actress.

14. Are you a technophobe or technophile?

I am one of the best archers in all of Tamriel. I slay dragons for a hobby. I am Dovahkiin!

15. What would be found if we scrolled through your phone?

Photos of Pekingese, more Pekingese and even more Pekingese; I have a pack of nine! Oh, and photos of my pet pig, Willem. And my African Grey parrot, George.

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

• Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; we learn through mistakes.
• Learn one new skill every month; don’t rely on others to teach you, do it yourself.
• Admin is part of the job; get used to it.
• Working at home on week nights and over weekends is part of the job; tell your friends and family to get used to it.
• Show your personality, build your own brand, and have fun!

Simple as that. Visit the Emlo Communications press office and be sure to follow Louw on the following social media channels for more: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

*Interviewed by Leigh Andrews.