Anyiko Owoko: It starts with you
[bctt tweet=”Anyiko Owoko is a writer and PR maven who has worked with many Kenyan & African stars” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] A celebrity publicist, a Public Relations maven, journalist, blogger and all round music and entertainment aficionado -Anyiko Owoko is the perfect definition of more than a triple threat. The young connoisseur is the publicist to award winning East African music group; Sauti Sol. Starting out as their friend and assistant, Anyiko has risen to media success thanks to her work with the boy band. Anyiko also works with many other talented artists on the continent and beyond who have seen her prowess as an influential communicator and brand strategist. Now she intends to expand her growing PR company –Anyiko PR and let SLA contributor, Diana Odero in on her journey to where she is now and why she is fuelled by creative people. You have the incredible role of being Sauti Sol’s publicist. How did this come about? I have always been their friend to begin with. I was initially friends with Chimano in particular, who I met in 2006 at Alliance Francaise where I was studying French. Funny thing is, we weren’t even in the same class so I don’t really recall how we became friends. Chimano would always tell me about his friends and him singing in high school and now that they were done, they were thinking of starting a music group. He wanted my opinion on that. So I sort of became their advisor from back in the day and I encouraged them to take on the music group idea. Chimano and I joined the choir at Alliance and we really liked it but Chimano felt that he needed his friend (from high school) to join in as well. We both convinced the choirmaster to allow his friend -Bien Baraza to join, even though non-students weren’t allowed in the choir. Later on Savara and Polycarp, Chimano’s other friends were brought in and they were a full singing group in a choir. After we completed the French program, we enrolled into University and surprisingly Chimano and I ended up in the same school, in the same course and in the same class. That’s really how it all started and as for me, I’ve always loved writing and communicating. As a friend, that was a great quality I had that was able to help them get their group off the ground. I have been their road manager, an assistant, I got them onto social media and after several years, they realized that I was the main person doing their publicity. I knew they would become big stars from way back in the day and so I did all I could to secure their brand and maintain their presence in the music industry. They of course now have a bigger team; I even have my own assistant as well, so at least we have a lot more help than we did when it was just the boys and I. Did you always want to get into the public relations field? No, I never saw myself doing this kind of work. PR kind of just found me because of the work I was doing with Sauti Sol. My plan had always been to get into writing and become a journalist. PR is part of communications so it still lies in my preferred field but I guess you can say I ended up specializing in it. [bctt tweet=”Anyiko Owoko: PR kind of found me because of the work I was doing with Sauti Sol” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] I wanted to do broadcast journalism, which I have been doing actually; I’ve been working in TV for the past seven years. I still write though, I write for DStv, for the Daily Nation, I run my own blog and I also write for the Coke Studio website. So I’m still doing what I always wanted to do and I’m grateful to have found something else that I can do that contributes to the industry. How did you know that it was time to leave the employee life and become your own boss? I recently stopped working in TV this past September because I wanted something new and more challenging and needed a break from my broadcast career. About three years ago, I started feeling this way, I always wanted to leave but it was a bitter-sweet decision to make as that was my first official paying job. I was still in college when I got that job and for a journalism student, landing a job hosting an entertainment show in a national network was and still is quite a big deal. It was a really great show with great content that you don’t get much of nowadays in Kenya. I knew I wanted to leave when I realized I wasn’t learning anything new. People would come on the show and I would train them on hosting, reporting, scriptwriting etc. and no one was teaching me anything new. The producer of the show who discovered me had already left the network and I was now answering to his juniors even though I had more creative experience than they did. In addition, things were really changing fast in the world of media, including social media . The show was stagnant and I started interviewing the same artists all over again due to lack of content so it was getting too monotonous for me. [bctt tweet=”I knew I wanted to leave my job when I realized I wasn’t learning anything new – Anyiko Owoko” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] Now I have my own column in Yummy Magazine where I interview all kinds of celebrities discussing food and lifestyle, which is something I never thought I would do. I started my own company and all this has been the breathe of fresh air that I really needed. As a celebrity publicist now, can you tell us which artist has been the most pleasant to work with and which interview has been the