Benjamin Mampuya is CEO of Compagnie Générale de Communication (CGC), a corporate communications and engagement strategy consulting agency specializing in supporting economic players and opinion leaders active in Africa and Europe. With 15 years of experience in communications on the continent, he is launching CLIPSE in early April 2021, a new platform for conducting PR campaigns in Africa.
You head up Compagnie Générale de Communication (CGC). What is your positioning and your ambition?
My desire to work with Africa dates back several years, when I was working for Rumeur Publique. During that time, I felt the need to support companies that were struggling to communicate in Africa. It was clear that most French companies operating on the continent were implementing communication campaigns that were often disconnected from the realities on the ground.
Through communication, these players were able to "ride the wave" of the Africa trend without necessarily engaging in co-production or collaboration. That's why I decided to launch Compagnie Générale de Communication with the positioning of being the link between economic and institutional players with interests in Europe and Africa. Our core businesses are engagement strategy, content production, and media relations.
I noticed that many organizations lacked local roots in their communications in Africa. The primary objective was often to focus on close relationships with the political sphere without necessarily thinking about reaching out to the public sphere as such. In terms of press relations, the focus was also solely on statements in the major pan-African media, to the detriment of the local press.
Today, we target European companies with interests in Africa and African companies that want to expand into Europe. Our ambition is focused on engaging brands to participate in building the Africa of tomorrow. This must be done through storytelling and positive creations that promote Africa and African talent and incorporate their perceptions of the continent. Africa as seen by Africans, with their realities and aspirations.
You have just launched the Clipse platform. What motivated its launch?
We launched CLIPSE to facilitate this. Clipse is a platform for distributing press releases. The idea is to make it easier to send press releases and distribute them to African targets. Many players on the continent face challenges in terms of communication processes. We therefore wanted to put in place tools to facilitate these processes and enable players to reach more local media.
How did you build your database?
We make our database available, which is the result of several years of work. This also makes it easier for African and pan-African media outlets to obtain content and disseminate quality information. Our services are available on a subscription basis. Today, we have nearly 5,000 African and pan-African media outlets in our database.
What other services do you offer? Do you include media monitoring and press coverage analysis?
Let's not forget that today, the value of a press release lies in its content. That's why the rates for distributing press releases on our platform are not high. In terms of content, we also provide advice via CLIPSE and, in particular, we help our clients adapt their content to their target countries, as we cannot communicate in the same way for all African countries. Our services also include online media monitoring, which is now less expensive than traditional print monitoring. The press sector is undergoing restructuring in many countries, and few media outlets are moving towards the digitization of information.
Beyond traditional media, do you also include influencers who are active in the digital sphere?
When it comes to digital and influencers, we do not include contacts directly, but we identify influencers who could be interesting targets for our clients' communications. We also guide our clients towards the most relevant media by compiling a list of the top 10 most influential media outlets in each country. Ultimately, we will develop this platform further, particularly by working more on the institutional and public relations side. We also want to gradually integrate key players and opinion leaders from all ecosystems in each country.