Hard work, passion, innovation, a service ethic, integrity… these are a few qualities found in the MOST Awards 2013 ‘rising stars’. Jacques du Preez of Provantage won the award for the fourth consecutive year in the media owner category, while The MediaShop’s Chris Botha was honoured on the media agency side of the business.
Media Owner Rising Star
In the five years since the MOST Awards were launched, Provantage’s Jacques du Preez has won the honour of being voted Media Owner Rising Star for four consecutive years.
“I don’t know how this happened. The industry has been generous to me,” Du Preez says. But, he’s quick to add, a legend has a strong team behind them and this in by no means a small part of his success.
His colleagues in the industry and the media agencies that work with him talk of his “innovation” but what does that actually mean to Du Preez?
“I think it’s about reinventing our services all the time. It’s about looking at infrastructure development and seeing the opportunities in those developments (Provantage’s Airport.tv is an example). There’a whole bucket of factors that go into being innovative,” he says. “It’s a constant process. I’m always looking out for the next big thing.”
And when he finds it, Du Preez certainly doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet. He grabs the opportunities and runs with them.
Peta Krost Maunder, editor of The Media magazine, interviewed Du Preez for the September issue. “I think the industry often confuses what our team has achieved by focusing on me. We are passionate, hard working and honest. We have an innovative flair and are courageous in tackling perceived impossible tasks,” he told her.
His aim, he says, is to build Provantage into a global business.
Media Agency Rising Star
Chris Botha, The MediaShop’s group managing director, says his success and that of The MediaShop (which won overall media agency of the year) is due to the strong relationships forged with what he calls the company’s “partners”.
“Whether it’s clients, media owners or creative agencies, we build partnerships. To us, there’s no such thing as a ‘supplier’; they’re all partners,” he says.
Botha believes in building business by listening and reacting appropriately. “I believe two heads are better than one, three heads are better than two,” he says. “I believe in being open and willing to listen.”
He says building those good relationships, having a symbiotic partnership with the owners, agencies and clients can be “beautiful if its good”. “We choose to have beautiful relationships, and that’s good for business.”
Former The MediaShop managing director, Harry Herber, writing in The Media magazine, says what he likes about Botha is his “human touch, his approachability, his feet firmly on the ground, but with stars in the eyes. We now have someone at the helm of The MediaShop who sweats the small stuff. And the big stuff. Good is seriously dismissed as okay, and okay is just never going to be in the vocab! So standards are set as high as one can reach, and when achieved, the desire is to just raise the bar some more.”
