by Thinus Ferreira
The South African public broadcaster has once again issued a tender looking for a service provider who will have to put in "considerable effort" to fix the "chronic failures in corporate governance which caused severe reputational damage to the SABC brand".
The SABC is technically insolvent and owes over a billion rand to the parastatal signal distributor Sentech and millions more to other service providers.
The SABC now wants a PR company to repair the public broadcaster's image and who has expertise in corporate image rehabilitation and reputation management. The SABC has an in-house corporate communications team and staff.
The public broadcaster has in previous years also advertised and paid companies millions of rand to try and improve its corporate image who would appear, work but not really engage the media meaningfully, make empty promises and then just disappear again.
Besides not really knowing how to do the work properly, these previous PR firms also found it hard if not impossible to put a shine on a SABC that persistently failed to sort out the various issues that led to its ongoing brand damage and poor reputation in the first place.
In 2020 the SABC as part of its last massive retrenchment process, decided to get rid of the various TV channel publicity teams that communicated with the press about SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3.
Instead of groups of three, the public broadcaster for the past five years made do with just one publicist for all three TV channels and their programming, that has had little impact as other broadcasters and video streaming services scaled up their communication efforts with appointments and using external PR companies.
"Going forward, one of the key priorities that the SABC aims to put considerable effort on is the restoration of its public image and trust among its audiences, industry counterparts, advertises and the plethora of stakeholders with whom the broadcaster enjoys affinity," the SABC notes.
"One of the ways in which the broadcaster can reclaim its reputation and display its dominance and credibility as an industry leader is to solicit the services of experts in the field of corporate image and reputation management."
Media engagements that the SABC wants the PR company to do are among other things research surveys, celebrity endorsements, influencers and "competitions", as well as online PR with dedicated blogs and "online editorial".
The successful bidder should develop strategic PR plans "to enhance the SABC's corporate reputation and address any identified reputational risks, and come up with recommendations for "proactive reputation management strategies and tactics".
Applications for the PR tender closes 18 February 2025.
