Creative communications agency DUMA COLLECTIVE has bought into M&N Brands – an ad agency network that houses advertising, communications, and media businesses including the Avatar Agency Group – in a monumental share exchange deal.
The share exchange deal will see DUMA COLLECTIVE founder and Managing Director Sibu Mabena (30) own a stake in Avatar JHB, Avatar Cape Town, Avatar PR and AMA, a newly formed venture with Park Advertising while M&N Brands acquires a minority stake in DUMA COLLECTIVE, keeping DUMA COLLECTIVE a 100% black-owned and majority women-owned entity. The deal will result in the entire M&N network employing over 180 people.
Sibu Mabena will remain the Managing Director of DUMA COLLECTIVE and becomes a partner at M&N Brands. While DUMA COLLECTIVE, Avatar and the associated agencies remain operationally independent, the share exchange deal is an opportunity to collaborate on a more meaningful scale.
“Avatar’s track record and its established clientele both on a local and global scale, through this collaboration, add to the gravitas of the industry-leading agency that is DUMA COLLECTIVE. As DUMA COLLECTIVE, we add strong event production, activations, social media, strategy, and influencer management capabilities into the mix,” says Mabena.
“We are also the brand custodians of some of Africa’s biggest stars including Somizi Mhlongo, Jessica Nkosi, Mihlali Ndamase, Kwesta, Bonko Khoza, Motshidisi Mohono and DJ Ph,” she adds.
The partnership between the two entities started when DUMA COLLECTIVE became a supplier to Avatar Cape Town. DUMA COLLECTIVE would then go on to find itself in agency ecosystems of various brands that both agencies independently worked with.
M&N Brands Executive Chairperson, Zibusiso Mkhwanazi, has also been a business mentor to Mabena for the past year; this collaboration is a natural progression of the relationship that has existed over the years.
“This deal is in line with M&N Brands’ strategy to create a group of best-of-breed agencies run by entrepreneurs that collaborate to provide our clients with the benefit of specialist agencies without the headache of having to manage them. We start this joint new chapter in the year of the 10th anniversary of Avatar, which is fitting. I will be working very closely with Sibu Mabena as she is the future of M&N and Avatar,” comments Mkhwanazi.
Relationship Specialists
Finessing a unique way of delivering stellar results for clients over the years, DUMA COLLECTIVE offers a full suite of creative services, boasting a full circle events production and management portfolio built from years of work on the international and local awards circuit and some of Africa and America’s biggest live event properties.
DUMA COLLECTIVE also lists multi-media production, brand and creative strategy, POS retail campaigns, PR and social media as some of its key services.
“We’ve helped a global brand re-imagine its consumer engagement platform to adapt it to a local market, and then adapted that platform for other markets on the continent. That’s what we did for Chivas Venture, which was piloted in SA and then syndicated to other countries on the continent. From strategy to through-the-line creative execution, we handled it all,” says Mabena.
DUMA COLLECTIVE has worked with brands and brand houses such as Drip Footwear, Viacom CBS, Global Citizen, Chivas, Red Bull, Heineken SA, AB InBev and Samsung to name a few.
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DUMA COLLECTIVE also engineered events such as the Cassper Nyovest’s Fill Up Series, Black Coffee’s Music Is King, the Metro FM Music Awards, Home Coming Africa and more. In 2021, it signed MultiChoice Group as a client, providing creative communications services across the group. It also acquired several top-performing brands as retainer clients.
As influencer marketing continues to grow in South Africa, Mabena posits that brands are seeing the value of engaging influencers as part of their marketing mix. Mabena credits influencer marketing and social media management as the main catalyst behind the accelerated growth of DUMA COLLECTIVE, which in 2019 had nine full-time employees but today boasts a team of 44 permanent employees.
