Mushambi Mutuma joined the business as managing director in August 2020 with the core responsibility of giving strategic guidance and direction to the team in order to meet financial goals, as well as overseeing the vision and long-term goals as a business.

Mutuma joins with 12 years' worth of experience in building brands and businesses across the African continent, as well as the United States. He has served as a strategic advisor to accelerators and incubators such as AlphaCode, Standard Bank and The Innovators Hub and is a published author of Tech Adjacent and speaker on tech issues and trends.

"I have been brought in to optimise and fine-tune a solid business with many opportunities in order to prepare us for further scale as a growing agency. It is important to further entrench ourselves with our clients, further establish our brand and grow our capabilities and resources as a team," Mutuma says.

"We are proud to be a growing 100% black-owned and predominantly female-led business, and I am looking forward to continuing to deliver amazing work for our clients and increasing our industry footprint in the years to come,” Mutuma adds.

In early 2020, Lerato Tshabalala joined as executive creative director. Tshabalala comes with previous experience as a creative director at both Ogilvy and Wunderman, having started her career in media as an editor and writer.

"My immediate priority is on developing on data-driven creativity as we forge ahead in getting even more digital than we are right now — producing award winning content (although this is not the primary focus) and making sure we have fun while doing the best work and solving business problems for our clients," Tshabalala  says.

"Less than two weeks into my start date, we went into Level Five lockdown. It was challenging and exhausting but it helped us bond as a team," adds Tshabalala. 

Black Powder says that it has been in fortunate position to not have been impacted badly by the COVID-19 lockdown.

"One of the things we're very thankful for as a team is that during lockdown we've actually grown as a business. This is due to key relationships with our clients and the team being committed to growth, as well as hard work even when we weren't physically together," says Mutuma.

The agency has recently completed key work for Tiger Brands with a large scale data and POPIA campaign, ongoing digital and webinar related work for global satellite company SES, as well as ongoing comprehensive digital campaigns and brand strategy work for Dis-Chem.

The business further cemented a multi-year relationship with the award of the Sta-Sof-Fro account.

"I've come into a team already committed to excellence which made it really easy for me to join. Now, my challenge is managing our next level of growth with this as a solid foundation," concludes Mutuma.

Black Powder has indicated that its has also recently made further appointments to head of client service and head of digital roles and is currently expanding its senior roles in both the strategy and creative divisions.

For more information, visit www.blackpowder.agency. You can also follow Black Powder on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.