Woman On Top – Rorisang Setlogelo

RORISANG SETLOGELO, MD of Roth Media, is fired up by her vision to make African communications relevant to global brands. The Bloemfontein-raised entrepreneur shares how she plans to carry out this mission

When Rorisang Setlogelo started her content marketing agency at 28, one of her favourite bosses asked — his voice laced with a tinge of scepticism and concern — if she wasn’t too young to be taking this giant leap. Fully armed with the confidence acquired while working at Coca Cola, South African Breweries (SAB) and Mortimer Harvey during her formative years in marketing and advertising, Setlogelo wasn’t deterred by this question. “After my stint in advertising, I knew the timing was perfect because I was young, brave and had the energy to invest in a business,” recalls the 36-year-old managing director of Roth Media. Seeing the fire in her eyes, her boss spurred her on.

THE BUSINESS FRONT

Setlogelo epitomises the New Age adage, “Stay low and keep firing!” She hardly fronts herself as the face of her company, despite it being in existence for eight years. And now that she’s come this far in her entrepreneurial journey, she believes reaching the ten-year mark is definitely attainable. And it’s for this reason — scary as she admits it to be — that she’s scaling into new markets. She won’t be drawn into disclosing which countries she’ll be setting up shop in, except to share that it’ll be three countries on the continent, as well as one office each in Europe and Cape Town. Roth Media currently employs a team of 20, services 10 retainer clients, plus an additional 10 client projects they are working on.

She unpacks their service offerings. “The most important thing we do at Roth Media is amplify content — we do PR, create social media dialogues around the same content and we create productions and activations linked to the content,” she says. Setlogelo describes her leadership style as team-based, and because she relies on her team a lot, she’s made it a point to make them understand that: “If you go alone, you go fast. But, if you take people along with you, you go even further and faster. I

invest a lot in my team. We share information. We love learning together, and I always make resources available for them to advance their studies. I don’t allow anyone to give up on my watch,” she explains.

DOING THINGS MY WAY

Often the assumption is that, for a business to have a fighting chance, it must be built on the back of the owner’s hard-earned corporate experience. Yet, after just seven years and three gigs in marketing and advertising, Setlogelo’s at the helm of a progressive content agency. “When your first job in marketing is with a brand you love – at the time, it was Coca Cola – you ferociously want to learn and expand your knowledge base. I was fearless when I joined SAB at 23, and based on the success of previous campaigns I’d worked on, it motivated me to take on more complex categories within marketing, like alcohol and beauty. I started out as a brand developer at SAB, first working on Peroni, Miller, Sarita, then Pilsner Urquell and later Grolsch, and went into brand marketing, which I loved, because I could influence campaigns from a broader perspective. I could help come up with strategy, and position key activities I thought would be game-changing for the brand.”

Next, she joined the ownerrun agency, Mortimer Harvey, where she was part of the business development pitching team. That experience, she says, helped her learn how to find work and sell ideas. Post that gig, Roth Media was born. Setlogelo shares how, even though she didn’t have enough start-up capital to throw behind her brand, it was relational capital, her professional reputation and the networks that she’d built that stood her in good stead. A self-confessed bookworm, she partly attributes some of her marketing knowledge to the books she’s read over the years. “I don’t think I became a better marketer because of what I learnt at university, but because of the books I read at the time.”

MENTORSHIP AND COACHING

Setlogelo injects her voice with some energy when talking about the role mentorship and coaching have played in her entrepreneurial journey. She adds that seeking counsel from more experienced individuals has saved her from learning the hard way.

“In coaching, I look for people with insights that I haven’t acquired yet. In mentorship, I look for inspiration and people who teach me that business is about your relationship with yourself, others and making the world better.” She continues: “If you’re all about the bottom line, then your model becomes limited. I’m driven by my bigger picture, which is to make African communication relevant to global brands.”

Setlogelo also attributes her independence and entrepreneurial drive to her boarding school and Wits University experiences. “Varsity was my first real taste of pitching. I was allowed to establish clubs on campus and felt my ideas were being invested in,” she explains. At 21, she quit her studies to take on the baton of paying for her studies from her widowed mother, so she wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore. And she made this decision, despite knowing her mother was willing to see her through her university journey.

“Many people are terrified of not having a degree to defend their credentials or verify what they know. At 21, I was very aware of the fact that there was a lot of exploration that needed to happen in my career,” she says.