Firecracker Marketing & Events and HWB Communications announce strategic partnership to strengthen market position.
27 March 2023, Cape Town, South Africa
Cape Town founded Firecracker Marketing & Events and HWB Communications has entered into a strategic agreement to strengthen their market position in the African events, marketing, and public relations industries.
Firecracker, founded by Scottish national Claire Alexander and South African Nicola Probyn, was launched as an integrated event management, marketing, and graphic design solution in 2012. The female-led agency packs a punch for its size and enjoys a powerful 11-year track record in producing over 100 events for governments, corporates, SMMEs, and NPOs as well as designing marketing campaigns for local and international clients executing into South African (and increasingly other African) markets.
The business partnership has steered the agency’s start-up success story through many hard lessons learned, including a pandemic, which they survived due to their agility to respond to change quickly and adapt to clients’ direct needs.
Being an integrated solution meant that the team could rely on digital-based services offered in-house (marketing, brand, and graphic design), to maintain a strong local and foreign client base. Firecracker manages events, marketing, and design solutions for companies as far as New Zealand, England, Israel, Scotland, and Australia.
“The move to join forces with HWB Communications was strategic and ambitious”, says Nicola Probyn, head of marketing at Firecracker.
More and more of Firecracker’s clients are looking for expert media and public relations services to accompany their events and marketing campaigns.
“It’s about being utterly transparent with clients about what we do best and what Firecracker excels in and where our expertise stops. We used to rely on a group of individual specialists, but that model was no longer working for our scaling company. We knew we had to form a strong partnership that would deliver to standards as high as our own,” says Probyn
“When companies choose to work with smaller, quality-centric agencies like Firecracker, they want the personal and attentive customer service, they demand quality work and they want attention to detail,” says Claire Alexander, event director at Firecracker.
“Often, we go above and beyond, especially for international clients, who rely on Firecracker so much more to look after their business and brand in South Africa,” she says.
When Firecracker entered into talk with HWB Communications, it became apparent very quickly that the two companies shared the same standards and values.
“We need to partner with someone who holds the same values and standards that we do and this is why I was so excited about partnering with the Firecracker team,” says HWB’s CEO Bradly Howland.
The discussion grew and expanded, starting from just being preferred service providers to where it is now a fully-fledged partnership agreement.
“HWB has received several requests from clients to fulfil their event management requirements which is why it made sense for us to partner with Claire and Nicola’s team.
“By joining forces, Firecracker Marketing and HWB are merging a unique set of talents and expertise. We’re excited to collaborate to offer our clients an even more comprehensive array of services, and elevate their brands to new heights,” says Howland.
The timing was right, and the deal was sealed last week in Cape Town.
Bringing two proven companies in the creative and communication industries together will spark even more ideas and competencies for clients, bolstering the originality of concepts, speed of delivery, and enhancing quality.
On a business level, the directors of both teams are clear in their commercial objectives, too.
The aim is to produce a comprehensive service for both sets of clients that assist the independently owned agencies in their efforts to scale. Both companies are on a growth trajectory and are forming the partnership to boost client loyalty, create more jobs, and increase growth.
Firecracker Marketing & Events is an award winning, integrated event management, marketing, brand and graphic design company based in Cape Town, serving local and international clients since 2012.
HWB Communications is an award winning public relations company based in Cape Town, serving clients all over Africa.