There is a difference between working with a brand and building something with a brand. I I have been thinking about this a lot lately. As women building businesses, platforms and personal brands, we are often encouraged to measure our influence by the number of partnerships we secure. The campaigns. The invitations. The names attached to our feeds. But as I have grown in my own work, I have become increasingly interested in something beyond the partnership itself, alignment.
The right partnership should not feel like a transaction. It should feel like two worlds meeting with intention.
Nolo Nawaya
This has become particularly clear to me through the work I have been doing across Elėvė and my personal platform, Nolo Nawaya.
Recently, Elėvė celebrated Women’s Month with an intimate evening with Rémy Martin, bringing together 16 women from different industries under the theme Women Shaping What’s Next. It was not simply an event with a brand attached to it. It was a room intentionally created around conversation, ambition, culture, connection and legacy. Rémy Martin became part of the experience, adding its craftsmanship and sense of occasion to a gathering that was ultimately about the women around the table. (elevesouthafrica.co.za)
And that distinction matters to me. I don’t want Elėvė to simply feature brands. I want us to create cultural moments with them. A brand can buy visibility, but the most memorable partnerships create meaning. They allow a brand to enter a conversation authentically, to become part of an experience and, hopefully to leave people feeling something long after the campaign has ended.
This is also how I have begun to approach my personal partnerships. Working with ghd, for example, made sense within the reality of my life as a woman constantly moving between radio, media, entrepreneurship, motherhood and the many versions of myself that exist within one day. It was not simply about showcasing a styling tool. It was about bringing a brand into the rhythm of my real life.
My partnership with La Roche-Posay felt equally personal. My postpartum journey changed the way I thought about my skin, my confidence and the woman I was becoming. Being able to share that experience through a brand whose conversation around skin health resonated with where I was personally made the partnership feel honest.
And perhaps that is what I have come to value most when the product fits naturally into the story you are already telling. I don’t believe women should have to become advertisements for the brands they work with. We are storytellers. We are consumers, yes, but we are also founders, mothers, creatives, executives, wives, daughters, leaders and women figuring life out in real time. The most beautiful partnerships recognise the woman behind the audience.
This is especially important for Elėvė. From the beginning, I wanted this platform to be more than a digital magazine. I wanted it to be a space where women, brands, ideas and culture could meet meaningfully. Our work has always been rooted in amplifying women and the stories shaping the world around us.
So when we partner with a brand, I want to ask a different set of questions. Does this make sense for our woman? Does it add something to the conversation? Can we create something beautiful without losing substance? Can the partnership live beyond the post, the event or the campaign? And most importantly: does it feel like us?
Because influence without intention can become noise.
I am learning that the most valuable partnerships are not necessarily the ones with the biggest names. They are the ones where there is mutual respect, creative freedom and a shared understanding of what we are trying to build.
This is also why I believe collaboration and community belong in the same conversation. I have always believed that women do not thrive in isolation; we rise in community. The right partnership creates an ecosystem where everyone brings something to the table and everyone leaves with something of value.
For brands, it means looking beyond reach and asking what kind of relationship you want to build with the women you serve. For creators and media platforms, it means knowing your worth well enough to say no when something is simply not aligned. And for women building personal brands, perhaps it means remembering that not every opportunity needs to be accepted simply because it is an opportunity.
When the alignment is right, something beautiful happens. The brand feels human. The creator feels authentic. The audience feels respected. And the work becomes bigger than the campaign.
Nolo Nawaya
