A love of music events got this girl rocking ’n’ rolling
Manuela Dias de Deus is the director and founding member of entertainment marketing and communications agency One-Eyed Jack
Tell me about the work you do.
We work with events promoters to market their festivals and brands, all in the entertainment marketing space.
What drew you into your industry, and what keeps you working in it?
I’ve always loved outdoor music events — the sun on my shoulders and happy people relaxing and enjoying great tunes.
When I finished studying public relations, I realised the corporate world wasn’t for me, so I went into event marketing instead. It’s the people that keep me in the game. They all feel real, solid, hardworking and good-humoured.
What would readers find surprising about your job?
Celebrities are people too!
What do you love most about your work?
Cracking a solid campaign idea. When you hit gold, everything else just seems to fall into place. Watching the excitement on your team’s face when the ideas start flowing is just priceless.
What makes your job stressful?
Keeping your game-face on when it feels like you’re on your 100th event that month. We create big brand launches too, so we can’t afford to miss one small detail.
What qualities do you need to do the work you do?
We have a team of seven, all with completely different skill sets. None of them are precious — we all get our hands dirty when we need to, so that’s a good quality to have.
What was your first paying job, and the most important lesson you learnt?
I sold hair scrunchies to my classmates when I was seven and learnt that when one person buys, lots of people do. So I made sure that I always had an audience when I opened my scrunchie shoebox at school. When I was 14 I got a weekend job at the flea market. I learnt to be more direct and tougher.
What do you find most meaningful about the work you do?
When we create events for brands, we try to get a balance of female acts, which we don’t think enough events do. There is so much hot female talent, we want to help elevate it. We also put our skills to use in another more meaningful way. While our business is generally focused on entertainment mar- keting, we’ve also recently started doing pro bono work for an NGO called Ikhayalami that upgrades informal settlements to prevent shack fires. Using our PR skills, we’ve helped them get six radio interviews this week and have helped them raise R500,000.
What part of your job would you like to change or not do at all?
Sometimes projects we enjoy aren’t the ones that make money. It’s difficult to be disciplined to change how we work on passion projects so they still make business sense.