A leading lady in public relations, Sibu Mabena is all about creating an oasis for African creativity to flourish.
The 31-year-old businesswoman and creative is the founder of Duma Collective, a company that aims to redefine creative communications.
With clients like MultiChoice, NBA Africa, Sasol, DStv and more, Sibu’s agency has grown in leaps and bounds since she first registered her company, Mbuduma Communications, in 2014.
Sibu rebranded Mbuduma Communications into Duma Collective in 2017 and has since grown from employing just seven people to run the business to just under 50.
After a lavish kickstart to 2024 that saw celebrities and creatives like actors Zola Nombona, Rami Chuene, Thapelo Mokoena, Luthando ‘BU’ Mthembu and more come together to break bread, congratulate one another on a successful 2023 and well wishes for the new year, it’s clear that there’s much more to witness from Sibu and her creation.
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Speaking with TRUELOVE, she shares her journey to building her creative agency to where it is now.
“So, it’s been a really fun time and I use the word ‘fun’ deliberately because all we have set up to do is do cool things and get paid for it, so it’s been that kind of deliberate, intentional, taking one step at a time to build this business. I didn’t even have a business plan, if I’m being honest. It was just like, get an opportunity to do something I love, bring other people along the way and create value for our clients, get paid, repeat.
“So, that’s what we’ve just been doing over the years, and it started out as a one-person operation, being me, and then I got a second person and then there was three people and then there was five people for a while. Then we had our first our first little office where we were sharing with Plum Factory who were my employers and they helped me to kind of run my operation out of Plum, and then we grew out of there.”
Moving from the Plum Factory agency to building Duma Collective at the offices in Dunkeld, Johannesburg, the company grew from seven to 15 staff. It grew even more after organising the Lockdown House Party during the Covid-19 pandemic pushed Sibu and her team to buy their own building in Randburg, solidifying them as a force in the creative agency industry.
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Sibu’s vision for Duma Collective is about bringing in people who can create impactful work to drive brands forward and emphasising African creativity in the work that they do. With high-profile companies and events on its roster, the agency’s growth is undeniable.
Sibu’s impressive CV as the brand manager for MTV and MTV Base Africa as well as being the chief operating officer for Plum Factory turning over R10 million for the business in her one year in the role – all while building Duma Collective from the ground up – has solidified her as a revered professional.
The Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans 2018 recipient counts the growth of Duma Collective to where it is now and the creatives behind it as her biggest achievement.
“I think it’s that you start this out as a passion, you start this out as an individual that’s just trying to get by and the fact that I’ve now got so many individuals doing it with me is actually my biggest achievement. To say I’ve worked with such amazing people who believe in the vision, who are subscribing to it … that is the biggest achievement for me.”
Entrepreneurship doesn’t come without its challenges, though. Finding just the right people to not only carry out her vision but to also bring fresh, new and creative ideas has been her greatest challenge.
“The people part of entrepreneurship is very hard because, as a creative myself, I’m just building a business around all the things that I love to do. So, it’s finding other people who are as passionate about what I do as I am to help me drive the vision forward because it’s not the Sibu Collective, it’s the Duma Collective, right.
“It’s not one person that’s able to do things and say they’ve achieved it. Really it takes the collective to make it happen. So, ja, the greatest challenge of entrepreneurship has been finding the right people, managing them and then keeping them.”
Duma Collective kickstarted their year with a wholesome event inviting some of the industry’s most talented players for a fun and laid-back day of connecting with one another and visualising exactly what goes into creating and implementing their successful campaigns.
Telling us more about it, Sibu says, “So, the kickstart is really our response to what we felt was in need in our ecosystem and our ecosystem consists of clients, it consists of suppliers, you know, people that we work with on the daily and then our team.
“It’s for us to connect, pour into each other’s cups and really just wish each other well for the year ahead because I don’t think we get the opportunity to see each other outside of our environment. So, for one day, can we put our phones away, can we just look each other in the eye and ask, ‘how are you doing’.
“The feeling of seeing so many great people in one space and great in their own right, like super successful doing what they’re doing, is really cool because it just is the intention behind it was well received … It was really great to look at the space and look around and be like, oh wow, that;s Lorcia Cooper, she was my dance teacher 10 years ago. Or oh my gosh, that’s Rami Chuene, one of the nicest people to me in the industry. Oh wow, that’s a big dog at Standard Bank.”
