The founder of Elvee Consultancy has spent her career building international and local brands in South Africa. This Women’s Month, she reflects on the business she has built in her own name, the women and communities at the heart of her work, and why the next chapter is less about doing more and more about doing what matters.
Lorinda Voges has spent more than fifteen years making other people, brands and ideas impossible to ignore. As a publicist and brand strategist across the beauty, fashion, wellness and lifestyle industries, she has built campaigns and cultural moments for some of the largest brands operating in South Africa: Revlon, Elizabeth Arden, Creme of Nature, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Kiko Vitals, NeoStrata and Heliocare among them; alongside locally founded brands, entrepreneurs and South African talent.
Then she put her own initials on the door and built Elvee Consultancy, the boutique PR, influencer and experiential agency she continues to lead personally today.
“I knew how to build brands. I had been doing it for years. What took me longer was understanding what I wanted my own business to feel like. I didn’t want to build something successful on paper only to be left depleted behind the scenes. I wanted Elvee to reflect the way I believe business should be done: personally, with integrity, with strong relationships and with work that actually means something,” says Lorinda Voges.
For Voges, that conversation feels particularly relevant during Women’s Month, when strength and success are often celebrated without acknowledging what it can cost women to continually be everything to everyone. “Women are very good at carrying things. We carry businesses, teams, clients, families, expectations and everyone else’s emergencies. For a long time, I thought being able to carry more was a sign of strength. I see it differently now. Strength can also be knowing when to put something down, when to say no and when to protect your own energy.”
Elvee Consultancy works predominantly across beauty, fashion, wellness and lifestyle; categories in which women are not simply consumers, but powerful drivers of culture, conversation and purchasing behaviour. Voges believes this proximity to women has shaped not only the work Elvee produces, but the way she thinks about the role brands can play in people’s lives.
“Beauty has never only been about a product to me. Hair is identity. Fragrance is memory. Makeup can be confidence and self-expression. Fashion tells the world something about who we are. When you understand those emotional connections, you stop talking at women and start thinking about how a brand can genuinely become part of their world.”
That philosophy has become increasingly visible in some of Elvee’s most recent work. Elvee’s work spans media relations, influencer strategy, brand partnerships, experiential campaigns and curated brand experiences, delivered for global portfolios, locally founded brands and talent alike.
Voges is equally candid about what running a boutique, founder-led consultancy looks like behind the polished campaigns.“Founder-led means I am close to everything. I can be developing strategy in the morning, negotiating with a supplier at lunchtime, dealing with budgets in the afternoon and speaking to media or talent later that evening. There is nowhere to hide when your name is attached to the work.”
She believes that proximity is also one of Elvee’s greatest strengths.
“The person who pitches the thinking is the person who remains involved when it is being executed. Clients are not handed over once the business is won. I know their brands, their pressures, and the people we are trying to reach. I have kept Elvee intentionally boutique because I never want to lose that.” The same experience that taught Voges how to build visibility has also changed the way she thinks about ambition.
“I used to measure a busy week by how much I managed to survive. I don’t anymore. There will always be launches, deadlines and moments when this industry is intense, but permanently operating in urgency is not something I want to glorify.”
“Boundaries do not mean I care less about the work. They mean I want to be able to keep doing good work for a very long time. I am learning to ask whether something is aligned, whether it adds value and whether it belongs in the business I want Elvee to become, rather than automatically saying yes because I know I can make it happen.”
What she is building instead is rooted in the same principle increasingly evident in Elvee’s campaigns: relationships over transactions, community over numbers for the sake of numbers, and impact that continues after an event or campaign has ended.
“This industry has given me relationships that have lasted for years. Media, clients, creators, suppliers, collaborators; those relationships are the real asset. You build them by showing up, being consistent, respecting people and caring about what happens beyond the deliverable.”
“Maybe that is what success looks like to me now. Not necessarily being the biggest agency, but building work I am proud of, with people I respect, creating campaigns that leave something meaningful behind, while still having enough of myself left to enjoy the life I have worked so hard to build.”