By Darren Gilbert

And so, a PR degree at Cape Tech beckoned, followed by a variety of positions across a number of industries. This included tech, consumer and even an ad agency before he found himself back in tech PR again. However, he didn’t want to settle.

Instead, ten years on from that initial decision to study PR and Fourie finds himself at the start of the next chapter in his PR career: strategic communications director at marcusbrewster. “It happened by chance really,” explains Fourie. “After my last job, I decided to go freelance. I spent a lot of money developing a corporate identity, a website and a suite of services. And Marcus [Brewster] was one of the first people I told.” In other words, if marcusbrewster needed Fourie, here he was.

However, instead of simply taking on board the news and filing it away for future reference, Brewster took it one step further. “A couple of days later, Marcus asked me to come see him,” says Fourie. “And he said ‘I actually want you to come sit in my office. I want you to do all those things you said you would as a freelancer now, but for me.’” Fourie’s response was obvious. After all, an opportunity to work for someone of Brewster’s ilk doesn’t come around too often.

It’s been a little over two weeks and Fourie has hit the ground running. He also has big plans for marcusbrewster going forward. “While there is a page with a list of requirements to fulfil, there is a big piece of the page that is completely blank. I can say, ‘Let’s go do this’ and it’s very exciting. Of course, that doesn’t mean Fourie is going to change how marcusbrewster does business. After all, why would you want to change a business when it’s been working well for some 25 years?

However, this doesn’t mean that marcusbrewster can’t evolve and get better at servicing its clients. Brewster, himself, knows this. It’s how you survive in the PR business. In fact, it’s how you survive in any business. And this is where Fourie aims to provide his expertise. “I would never go to Marcus and say ‘I think we can get better publicity if we do the following’,” says Fourie. “But if we did that and we include a digital element, then we make it go a lot further.”

In essence, it’s about streamlining the process, making things work faster and better. “And also looking at something exciting and new that we can do,” points out Fourie. What that something new is, only time will tell. However, in talking to Fourie, it’s not hard to figure out that he doesn’t plan to keep it to himself or marcusbrewster.

“Most of what I am trying to achieve at the moment is internal-focused. So I am looking at what we do internally,” explains Fourie. “But I’d also like to look at stuff that not only benefits [marcusbrewster] but benefits the rest of the industry as well,” says Fourie. “I have always had this huge problem around measurement. How can we measure what we do in PR?”

It’s ongoing debate which involves many questions. How many of your messages were mentioned? Do you know how much of your audience was touched by your campaign? But it’s all still vague, believes Fourie. “If you are a financial director and you’re looking at a standard PR report, you’ll have questions.”

Fourie knows he can’t answer them all overnight. But he is certainly going to try. “If we, as an agency and as an industry can find ways to make our value unquestionable, then we can focus on building stuff instead of defending what we already have.” To get there, it’s about starting at the right place. For Fourie, that place is marcusbrewster.