NOW ONE ON ONE
Q&A WITH
MELANIE MILLIN-MOORE

Melanie Millin-Moore is adding a new arm to her business from August 2016.
Called ONE ON ONE with Melanie Millin-Moore, she’s launching her very own brain bank to add to the public relations scene and its practitioners in South Africa. Essentially, she’ll be the doyenne of PR Q&A sessions involving anything and everything from brand integration to launching entire brands on the stock exchange, (like One&Only). Now you too can pick her brain in specially tailored sessions.

“I have all this buzzing around in my head,” says Melanie Millin-Moore, “and I really want to share it with people in the same industry as me who want to take on hectic international experience. I’m not bragging – but there’s very little I haven’t done in New York or London or anywhere that won’t help small agencies or in house agencies or stand alone PR practitioners. Try me.”

Effectively the Q&A session, is a chance to obtain insights from one of the most astute practitioners in the business. For an hour-and-a-half session Melanie will provide strategic feedback you won’t find in a textbook or a lecture room. This is about on-the-ground experience and insights.

Melanie has done it all. She’s opened over 100 boutique hotels, casino hotels, business hotels and resort hotels around the world. She’s worked on crisis management and brand management. She oversaw PR training in many of Sol Kerzner’s hotels and resorts, and ran his communications initiatives, several of which have become case studies because of their impact and success. There are also high-end apartment launches, restaurant openings and safari camps. There are sporting events and celebrity PR and gala opening events for hotels and celebrities.

It all goes back to when Melanie had started her own Public Relations Company at the age of 22. For the eight years in which her company handled the launch of a range of pots for Hendler & Hendler, children’s theatre, movies such as The Wild Geese, Philo and Andre Pieterse’s chain of Film Trust Cinemas which are today the Nu Metro cinema chain. She also handled the Grey Advertising agency for advertising hotshot Darryl Phillips (to name a fraction of her accounts).

In the sixth year of running her own business, Melanie Millin-Moore added Sol Kerzner to her client list for the opening of Sun City. It was to be a life changing – and onerous – account. After two years Kerzner persuaded her to join Southern Sun on a permanent basis. She worked with him for more than 36 years, from Southern Sun South Africa to Sun International South Africa, and Kerzner International.

The public relations hub she headed with ruthless efficiency and attention to detail included launching Paradise Island in Atlantis, the Bahamas, coping with superstars who each demanded their share of media attention (and thanks to her unparalleled network, got it!). The project was supposed to last three months. It turned into 10 years.
And then came the most exclusive of them all, the One&Only brand and the launch of the One&Only Resorts. She was a key part of the One& Only team in the United Kingdom.

“With the Sunday Times we had more front pages than anyone else other than probably President Zuma today. But going back to the Sun era, people just loved Sol Kerzner. There was something about his ‘rules can easily be broken’ attitude, his love of the big show time and his almost gleeful delight in being on the front pages of newspapers and magazines that just attracted the crowds. I’m very good at getting front pages. It’s knowing the right angle. I also worked for three months in the newsroom on the original Rand Daily Mail in the early part of my career and there’s nothing like watching a big story going down to get a nose for what the media goes for.”
Her success has a great deal to do with her creativity, spotting an opening, taking a chance and being in the right place at the right time. But it also doffs a hat to Melanie’s attention to detail, her organisational abilities and her famous tenaciousness. She laughs. There are still journalists today who blanch when her name appears on their phones.

One well known journalist says: “She always got her own way and you would put the phone down in bewilderment and ask yourself ‘How did that happen?’ ”
Perfectionism is not necessarily an easy bedfellow. Hers is legendary, her career multi-varied. There were so many high powered parties to organize she could do them in her sleep. Until, that is, you saw her check sheet. Paged and pages of relentless detail. She worked on John Travolta’s 50th birthday party. There was Sol’s 70th birthday party in Monaco.

She opened Sun City and was part of every phase of the resort for over 15 years. She’s organised gala events and launches involving Oprah Winfrey, John Travolta, Frank Sinatra, Tom Cruise, Barbra Streisand, Julia Roberts, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Diana Krall among others. She’s spent extensive periods of time with PR agencies in France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and Atlantic City in the USA, Mexico, Dubai, Maldives, and, of course, Mauritius.
“In the Kerzner 36 years there’s nothing I didn’t do. Financial results - I have the medal and picture from the stock exchange when we did the listing. And I did the One&Only brand with the professional team in the UK.” But, she says, it’s what goes on in the background that dictates what the world sees in the foreground.
Mauritius, she says, was when the Kerzner legend began to blossom outside South Africa with some of his most famous resorts, most of them on the eastern side of the island. Saint Géran was the flagship. Everyone stayed there. They still do, she says. Legends linger. And the Kerzner empire kept growing and growing as he flexed his muscles far from the African continent, taking her with him.

Approximately 14 PR agencies (their numbers fluctuated) were reporting to Melanie Millin-Moore in New York on a daily basis. It was said she could launch a hotel in the time it took to have her fiery hair cut. She was also Sol Kerzner’s most loyal, trusted and discreet employee. Interested? See how years of high-powered experience could benefit you and your PR company:

The private session with #MelanieMillinMoore lasts one and a half hours. She will provide unparalleled insights culled from decades of international experience. She will also provide guidance and respond to questions about your own initiatives.
We are delighted to be associated on this project with PRISA (Public Relations Institute of South Africa).

Bookings:
Bookings will be taken immediately through our executive PA & PR Cecilia Rigney at Cecilia.rigney@telkomsa.net who will organise your session and give you further details and relevant information to secure your time.
Tel: 079 405 0059