“The Nomad” is a fortnightly published series where I talk to expat PR and Comms professionals, then delve into the insights which inform and help other people to live or to do business in an intercultural world.
“Wimbart has definitely been a journey. As I say, I didn’t ever consider myself a naturally entrepreneurial person. But when I was Global Head of Communications for Iroko, which was started by my friend, Jason Njoku, I was all of a sudden surrounded by entrepreneurial people, so I picked up a lot of tricks and tips along the way. I was the comms lead doing consumer comms for Nollywood and Afrobeats as well as corporate and B2B, PR and stakeholder communications with the tech side of things. Almost by osmosis, I was learning all these new skills. I would say the journey has taken its toll as it’s been a long decade, but it’s also been amazing. I would much rather be running my own business than working for someone else because I have really, really enjoyed it. It’s a lot of hours and hard work, and some aspects are pretty challenging as well. I can’t believe it’s been almost a decade.”
Nearly ten years since she set up Wimbart the agency back in 2014, Jessica Hope has grown the agency into one of the most exciting tech agencies in the UK. It’s not easy to find one with such depth and knowledge of the most emerging continent. Jessica is the founder and managing director of Wimbart, a London-based boutique PR agency. Wimbart specialises in the African tech startup sector, with clients predominantly based in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana – as well as international companies looking to gain a foothold on the continent.
Prior to launching Wimbart, Jessica was the global head of communications for IROKO, the burgeoning media and entertainment technology company.
She worked in journalism as a consumer lifestyle and pop culture writer after graduating from the University of Manchester in 2005 with a Master’s in Religion & Political Life. That was where she met and worked for Jason Njoku in Manchester. He ran a student magazine and she was the editor.
“Jason was my mentor. We’ve known each other for almost 20 years; we’d had a magazine together in Manchester after uni; we had the same group of friends. We were friends but he was also my boss. He’s also entrepreneurial enough for both of us and is a very savvy business owner. If I wasn’t good at my job, the friendship wouldn’t have mattered, he’d have gotten rid of me. He didn’t accept poor-quality work. So having him push me into doing the business and setting up the business was an amazing support. He was my first client.”
What were the challenges at the time when you first set up Wimbart?
The challenge was it wasn’t supposed to be a PR agency – my plan was that I was going to be a freelancer. When Wimbart launched, I was eight months pregnant so I did start it from my kitchen table; I had just bought a house and moved as well. So the challenge was trying to manage work and having a very small baby (I went back to work after three months). One of the main challenges in the early days was figuring out if I wanted to scale. Originally, I was probably able to look after two or three clients by myself, but then it became difficult to do everything myself. Then I caught up with Maria Adediran, who used to work for me at Iroko – she’d gone to work somewhere else but we still remained friends. I suggested that she come and work with me and we went from there. She’s now a senior account director at Wimbart. She’s been with the company almost since day one. She’s employee number one and has been a massive part of our growth. We then hired Ernestina Berry five years ago who is now an account director. I was lucky that I’ve had amazing talent to help Wimbart grow and scale; they’ve grown with the company as well. So the early days’ challenges were, funnily enough, not getting new business. Since then, we’ve had to endure things such as COVID and the death of my co-founder, my dad, so that was quite difficult to manage. But again, I have an amazing team that continued to help me to grow the company. Generally, I think a lot of parents – I won’t just say mums – are striking that balance between working hard, travelling (especially when lots of our clients are international) and building family life. That’s definitely a challenge.
How do you grow your skillsets and connections in such a market?
I was lucky to have a pretty solid network. When I worked at Iroko, I travelled a lot – I spent time working in New York, Cape Town, Lagos and Nairobi as well, so I was very present. In the early days of my career, I was in the room meeting people, making connections and trying to get to as many events as possible (people are quite flippant and dismissive these days of being present). But those early connections and networks – and of course when people saw the work that I was doing – have helped. Most of our work is on the continent, but interestingly, over the last couple of years, we’ve attracted some international brands that want to branch out into Africa, which is great for us. I think being present, keeping up with people and maintaining a sense of community, whether it’s with tech leaders, product managers or media houses, help a lot. We’ve always been head down and done the work; the work speaks for itself.
Wimbart specialises in the African tech startup sector, with clients predominantly based in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana. What should people (PR professionals) be mindful of when operating in those markets?
There are a few things. One thing I’ve noticed when I speak to other PRs in the UK is that they think Africa is a homogenous place. It’s not. The Nigerian, Kenyan, South African and North African markets are all different. Wimbart started the vast majority of our work in Nigeria. We grew and scaled with some of our clients; we were then able to grow and understand the media and tech space which allowed us to start doing media work and media relations in Kenya. Then we secured Kenyan clients, but Kenyan clients and Kenyan businesses are different from Nigeria and Nigerian businesses. We didn’t try to own that space too quickly, we watched and learnt. In the past two years, we’ve started doing more work with North African companies that are totally different from Sub-Saharan African companies. We’ve built up our media list and contacts slowly. We’ve built our understanding of startups that are completely different from Sub-Saharan African ones. We’ve been adaptable and we haven’t just made too many assumptions. When I speak to some PRs, they see Africa as one big chunk and have made several assumptions about the African media space. Unless you’re Facebook, Google or a big global conglomerate, why would an African or Nigerian, Kenyan or South African media outlet cover your company? There’s a peculiar assumption from Western companies that African media is desperate to cover Western companies, which is not the case. The African tech space is popping and it’s exciting; they’ve got lots of things to write about already. The African media isn’t just covering random stories. When doing business, you have to see African tech entrepreneurs like any other entrepreneurs in the world. It’s not charity so don’t see everything from the Oxfam lens of poverty or aid. They make an impact and they’re also there for profit, building, scaling and doing innovative work.
Wimbart team
What are the similarities and differences between the African and UK media landscape?
Building relationships is important, which is universal. How you engage with journalists is quite different. WhatsApp is way more powerful than email to build those relationships within the African media landscape. I don’t think that UK journalists would be as happy if you start messaging them [on Whatsapp] too often.
What we realise is if that’s what Kenyan / Nigerian/ Rwandan / Ghanaian journalists are happy with, we have to tailor our approach for those markets.
How do you see the future of African Tech?
Technology is here to stay; it makes our lives generally a lot easier. In Africa specifically, mobile is king, queen or Empress; most people have at least two mobiles. Nigeria, I believe, is one of the most mobilised countries in the world. Technology is powering everything. Cash is still king in a lot of places – most transactions are cash – even though moving money around the continent can be quite tricky. There’s a great deal of emphasis on FinTech; technology is growing and scaling in Africa across all different markets and at different paces. It’s got an upward trajectory, even though the tech market in the past 12 months has really taken a battering in terms of job losses or funding cuts which however happens in any market. There’s always going to be fluctuations but broadly, the trajectory is going up. Last year, the African tech space raised $5.7 billion, which is a lot. Wimbart announced $970 million worth of it, so almost a billion out of 6 billion. I knew that we were busy last year because we did a lot of fundraising announcements, but I didn’t quite realise how much we had announced.
What’s your advice for PR professionals when it comes to upskilling, particularly in the tech sector?
At Wimbart, we read tech blogs and understand that there’s a mixture of thought leadership and conversational work. There are also some more technical blogs. One thing that we did this year, which we should have done a long time ago, was to develop a glossary of tech and Venture Capital. We did the glossary to help upskill especially more junior members of the team who might not be so familiar with those areas that we work in. The people who have longevity at Wimbart are those who are genuinely interested in those technical things in both micro and macro contexts. With PR it’s practice, it’s learning as you go along, particularly in the African tech space because a lot of it is still quite uncharted territory. Last year, we worked on two or three quite big pieces of crisis communications work and it will be a growing area for us. Another thing that we do is obviously to invest in training the team in crisis communications basics. However, that will only get you so far, so we have to learn from the work that we’ve already done, to retain that knowledge within the company.
What do you think about DE&I in the industry?
Wimbart is a peculiar company, in that 100% of our team is BME. We were intentional about making sure we were representative and diverse in that respect. One of my bugbears is hearing agency leads talk about diversity and then not actually do it. I don’t know how they find it difficult. I have had some amazing talent come through Wimbart and I’ve not even used a recruiter to date.
It’s because people don’t look hard enough. The talents are out there.
In terms of diversity angle, talent is a tricky one. We are so niche so there are not lots of people that we can just pick who can start straight away. It’s not like working in UK or European B2B Tech where there must be hundreds of people that you can poach from other agencies. There are not that many people who have a depth of knowledge and understanding of the spaces that Wimbart works in. We have people who move from the continent who might understand the tech space, but they maybe don’t have the PR skills; people in the UK who have solid PR skills but don’t understand the African tech space. It takes a little bit longer for us to onboard people to have that crossover of being amazing PR and being deeply knowledgeable about African tech.
We come to the end of our conversation. I ask Jessica what her top 5 Beyonce songs are because if she weren’t working in PR, she’d be Beyonce Spotify Playlist curator. As tricky as it sounds, she gives me her top 5: Sorry, Flawless, Single Ladies, Run the World (Girls), Love On Top and Formation. 10 10 10 across the board and I’d add in Sweet Dreams. I couldn’t think of a higher note to end the piece with – maybe the high note Beyonce hits in Listen. The PR industry and the African tech space won’t be alone at a crossroads because Jessica and Wimbart are there.
