Farah Fortune, founder & director of African Star Communications (ASC) is a well-known businesswoman behind much successful celebrity & corporate brands.
She is better known to her clients & industry peers as “The Pitbull in Heels”. Earlier on in her career, she worked as a Publicist for Ster-Kinekor and as an editor at Alchemy Publishing. Her PR career took off by working on big projects such as the Oscar-winning movie “Tsotsi” and later decided to pursue her own PR dreams. Farah singlehandedly started ASC in 2008 with R1000 in her pocket, a laptop and cell phone on her bedroom floor, believing one day she would be operating a fully functional agency.
Her first project at African Star Communications was with AIG and Manchester United for the Vodacom challenge just 3 weeks after opening the company.
She has gone on to grow her company and become one of biggest household names for celebrity and corporate PR in South Africa and opened up an office in Lagos, Nigeria in 2011.
African Star Communications functions through 3 divisions comprising of Celebrity/ Corporate Public Relations & Event Management. The company only takes five celebrity clients a year to ensure everyone gets the personal attention required.
Extract from an insightful virtual mentorship session with Farah
Topic: Infiltrating a Restricted Market
Question: Hi Farah Starting your business with only a Thousand Rand, how can one who doesn't have any form of finance but a good product establish themselves in a market?
Farah's Answer: Social media is your best free marketing and advertising tool these days. Build an audience and convince them to buy. Make sure you're demonstrating exactly what your product or service does and ensure you build a target audience, this helps with sales
Question: Hi Farah,
1. How important should trends be when introducing new products/services to the market?
2. What strategies can a young entrepreneur deploy to compete with a bigger company in the same industry?
Farah's Answer: Ok question 1. Trends are important as consumers tend to follow them which makes it easier to sell a product or service. However never be afraid of starting trends or going against them, consumers want what is attractive.
Question 2. No1 should be worried about competing as an entrepreneur. You'll get lost in your failures trying to focus on a company far bigger and more money than you. That will be you one day but you won't get there looking at what someone else is doing. Ever wondered why racehorses wear blinkers?
Question: Hello, Farah is seen you only take on 5 celebrity clients a year so how do you grow the business without hampering the quality of service to your clients.
Farah's Answer: There are 3 divisions to African Star Communications. We grow those divisions more. Reason being is that our celeb division requires detailed attention, so it's not about growth but rather quality
Question: Hi Farah, in this age of false social media hype and distractions, how does an entrepreneur build a credible brand on and offline and also how important is it for an entrepreneur to have a solid social media presence in this age ?
Farah's Answer: We are moving into the 4th industrial revolution, a revolution which will require us to have social media in order to function. Having a credible online presence is essential.