The power of relationships: The story of a publisher, an actress and a ski resort

Nothing is inconceivable when you have good relationships. Take the recent appointment of Chantal Camps (pictured above on the left) as publisher at Cape Town-based Cosa Media (which publishes Risk Africa and Land Rover Africa magazines, among other things).

“CN&CO has long and strong relationships with the folk at Cosa Media, going back many years,” says Carel. “So when we heard there was someone new taking over from Andy Mark, we knew we had to do something special to welcome her.”

Since a boring gift basket with a machine-generated card just wouldn’t do, we drew on our relationships to ensure Chantal knew exactly how excited we were to welcome her to the Cosa team.

CN&CO’s Rikus Kok hopped onto the blower.

Blake Dyason with Charne Swanepoel and the team beers for Friday drinks

“We didn’t know Chantal very well at the time, and we didn’t have any CN&CO colleagues in Cape Town on the day, so I called Blake Dyason at Cosa Media, who told me that she’s mad about her dogs,” he says. “Using this info, we organised for an amazing gift to be delivered that included something for her and something for her pooches. We also bought some beers for the team for their first Friday drinks session with Chantal.”

Of course, we couldn’t just have the gift delivered any-old-how – because that’s not what we’re about. So Rikus hopped onto the blower again.

“I called up my actress friend Charne Swanepoel to help us out and lend an air of glamour to the proceedings,” he says. “She went through to Century City for us and delivered all the goodies into Chantal and Blake’s hands.”

“We really are serious about leveraging relationships to do great things,” says Carel. “Two other Cosa Media examples spring to mind immediately. Firstly, I was lucky enough to visit Cosa chairman Andy Mark and his wife Nicky at their new home in Switzerland recently – while I was on an educational trip in France with our client Club Med. While there, the three of us discussed some interesting global insurance marketing concepts … watch this space.”

Andy and Nicky themselves have an amazing relationship, by the way, both as husband and wife and as partners in their business.

“The other example is an event we’re working on at the moment that’s scheduled to take place in September,” adds Carel.“It involves Land Rover Africa magazine, Jan Braai and our client Purple Group, SA’s number one stockbroking company.”

The more unlikely the combination of people and companies, the more likely it is to be amazing.

“At CN&CO we’re all about linking people together to create magic,” concludes Carel. “See what’s already happened with an actress, a publisher, a group of petrol heads, a global tour operator, a braaimaster and SA’s number one stockbroking company? And that’s only a few of the people in our network! Imagine what could be next!”

The magic can only get better and better.