Brand Platform Provides Foundation For Stories Of Progress, Resilience And Community

August 5, 2026

After more than 120 years in South Africa, Shell is reinforcing a message that has defined its relationship with generations of South Africans: You Can Always Count on Shell. When Shell South Africa challenged VML to strengthen emotional connection with a brand that has been part of South African life for over a century, the agency quickly realised the task was not one of awareness. It was one of relevance.

Consumers knew Shell. The challenge was helping them reconnect with the role the brand continues to play in everyday South African lives. The result is You Can Always Count on Shell, a long-term brand platform rooted in a simple truth: trust is not built through what brands say, but through how consistently they show up for people over time.

At a time when brands are facing increasing pressure to demonstrate relevance beyond products, the platform aims to strengthen emotional connection by focusing on the role Shell plays in enabling progress, supporting communities and powering everyday journeys.

According to the latest Havas Meaningful Brands™ research, 78% of brands could disappear tomorrow without consumers caring, highlighting the growing importance of building trust and creating meaningful relationships with audiences. For Shell, the opportunity was not about increasing recognition. It was about deepening relevance and reminding South Africans of the role the brand has played, and continues to play, in enabling everyday journeys and contributing to progress.

‘Awareness has never been Shell’s challenge. The opportunity was to deepen relevance and connection in a way that is meaningful to South Africans today,’ said Monica Sithole, Marketing Manager at Shell South Africa. ‘We wanted to move beyond product-led communication and focus instead on the role Shell plays in enabling progress, both in everyday journeys and through the broader contribution we make to communities. You Can Always Count on Shell provides a platform that allows us to do that consistently and authentically over time.’

From Business Challenge To Brand Platform

The original brief was not focused on celebrating Shell’s 120-year heritage or driving immediate fuel sales. Instead, the challenge was to strengthen emotional closeness between the brand and South Africans by ensuring Shell remained relevant in people’s everyday lives.

‘The original brief wasn’t about driving fuel sales; it was about rebuilding emotional closeness,’ said Nyiko Mahange, Creative Director at VML. ‘While Shell has been part of South Africa for more than 120 years, the challenge wasn’t one of awareness or perception. It was about relevance in people’s everyday lives.’

VML’s strategic thinking centred on a simple human insight: you cannot rebuild closeness from a distance. ‘Instead of talking about products or performance, we focused on Shell’s role in the lives of South Africans and the progress it has helped power for generations,’ Mahange explained. ‘That shifted the conversation from what Shell sells to what Shell stands for.’ This thinking led to the development of You Can Always Count on Shell; a platform that positions Shell as a trusted neighbour: a brand that is local, visible, dependable and committed to South Africa’s future.

Finding The Creative Breakthrough

With the strategic direction established, the creative team was given the freedom to explore how the platform could come to life. ‘The brief intentionally gave the creative and production teams room to explore,’ said Mahange. ‘There was no storyboard or prescribed execution. That freedom allowed us to move beyond traditional product communication and search for a more meaningful emotional truth.’

The breakthrough came during the development of the campaign manifesto, which became the creative compass for the work. ‘It captured Shell’s enduring relationship with South Africa and expressed its role as a brand that has consistently shown up through generations,’ said Mahange. ‘That was the moment we knew we had uncovered an idea with both emotional power and strategic clarity.’

The team then reframed the storytelling approach: rather than creating a film about Shell’s past, they created a story about Shell’s future and the role the brand continues to play in South African lives. ‘We realised we weren’t making a film about Shell’s heritage; we were making a film about Shell’s future. Beyond the forecourt, the storytelling was always that you can always count on Shell. That stopped just being a line and became the emotional spine of the whole piece.’

Bringing The Story To Life

Working with Dean Blomberg and production house Massif, the campaign was translated into a cinematic story that honours Shell’s heritage while looking confidently towards the future.

‘Early on, the deeper we went into the brand with VML, the more we learned about Shell,’ said Campaign Director. ‘When a brand can still teach you things, you know you’re in good hands. From there, we built a tapestry of human moments and brand-centric interactions; never overt, never overly sentimental.’ Authenticity was central to the production approach, particularly through casting and visual treatment.

‘As a director, I put performance first. In a film with no dialogue, the faces carry it all. I was adamant we cast real South African faces, texture, warmth and specificity; never the polished model type.’ The visual language was developed around Amber Beacon, a bespoke treatment inspired by Shell’s heritage of warmth and light. ‘The through-line across 120 years is light itself; from a single flame to the glow of a forecourt canopy on a dark night,’ said the director. ‘We took real life and romanticised it cinematically, but never let it look artificial.’

The production team prioritised authenticity by building and filming as much as possible in-camera, using technology only where necessary to support the storytelling. You Can Always Count on Shell is designed as more than a campaign. It is a long-term brand platform that provides a foundation for stories of progress, resilience and community; allowing Shell to move beyond transactional relationships and continue playing a role in South Africa’s broader journey.

More than a celebration of 120 years, the platform reinforces Shell’s commitment to supporting South Africans’ journeys, ambitions and progress for generations to come.

HAVAS
za.havas.com

Rogerwilco And Partners Release 2026 Fast Food and QSR Report

Modern Marketing

August 5, 2026

Rogerwilco And Partners Release 2026 Fast Food and QSR Report

A gap between conversation, search and consumption lies at the heart of Rogerwilco’s 2026 Fast Food and quick-service restaurant (QSR) Report, now in its second year, developed in partnership with YOUKNOW Technologies and Eighty20.

For example Chicken Licken has overtaken KFC as South Africa’s most-talked-about fast-food brand online. Yet KFC remains the country’s most-searched-for brand and reaches roughly twice as many consumers when it comes to actual purchases.

‘Consumers may talk about one brand on social media and online, search for a different one and then buy another brand completely,’ said Mongezi Mtati, Senior Brand Strategist at Rogerwilco, during an online webinar to unveil the findings. ‘As affordability pressures persist and choice expands, South Africans are assessing flavour alongside portion size and value rather than price or brand loyalty alone.’

Online mentions of the fast-food sector rose 16% between May 2025 and April 2026, driven largely by chicken brands, now the primary QSR choice for nearly 22 million South Africans, thanks to a combination of familiarity, affordability, convenience and shareability few other categories can match.

Chicken Licken’s rise was echoed by Hungry Lion, whose online mentions grew 54% year-on-year to break into the top five most-discussed fast-food brands. Search and purchase data, however, tell a different story. KFC captured a combined 14% of organic search visibility across its ordering and location domains, against Chicken Licken’s 2%, with McDonald’s a further 12%. That gap carries through to actual purchasing: approximately 21% of South Africans bought from KFC in the past four weeks, compared with roughly 10% from Chicken Licken.

‘It’s an interesting disconnect; it perfectly illustrates the difference between what people are talking about and what gets them actually buying,’ noted Shaun Pearson, Product Owner of Social Tech at YOUKNOW Technologies. ‘Chicken Licken absolutely dominates the online timeline, but a significant portion of that conversation is people discussing the product itself, things like salt content. That kind of conversation keeps a brand top of mind, but it also puts it under the microscope. Attention isn’t always applause, sometimes it’s active scrutiny.’

Not all conversations carry that same scrutiny. Pedros recorded a 68% increase in online mentions, the strongest growth of any fast-food brand analysed, by tapping into the humour and cultural relevance that made Nando’s a household name, while still delivering on value. Its self-reported customer base more than doubled, from 1.1 million in 2023 to 2.5 million in 2025. The findings suggest that scale and heritage remain important but no longer guarantee momentum, with consumers increasingly willing to explore alternatives when another brand offers stronger value, convenience or relevance.

Consumers are also searching with more precision than ever: for family meals, specials and individual menu items rather than brand names alone, a sign that value has become a decision filter, not simply a pricing strategy. South Africans are not necessarily hunting for the cheapest meal, but for the one that feels most worthwhile.

Another key finding is that discovery is fragmenting. Uber Eats and Mr D together currently account for approximately 14% of category search visibility, while social media, review platforms and AI-generated recommendations increasingly shape decisions before consumers reach a brand-owned channel.

These shifts are playing out against continued pressure on household budgets. Beef mince prices rose 23.8% year-on-year by April 2026, due mainly to foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks, nearly six times general consumer inflation. At the same time, the number of South Africans reporting no fast-food purchase in the previous four weeks rose from 3 million in 2023 to 5.5 million in 2025. Even so, consumers have not abandoned the category altogether. Many are simply becoming more selective about when they spend and more willing to switch brands, or even protein categories, in pursuit of better value.

‘A brand is beyond one tweet, and it’s beyond one data point too. What the data is certainly showing is that frequency is down. What isn’t down is ticket price, and while that might be inflation-driven, particularly with beef, it does show people are being more considered about how often they go to a fast-food outlet,’ said Andrew Fulton, Director at Eighty20.

The report identifies three priorities for fast-food and QSR marketers: combining search, social and consumer data to distinguish attention from purchase intent, making value and availability easy to identify across every discovery platform and tailoring strategies to consumer occasions, household realities and regional differences.

‘The brands that will lead this market are not necessarily those generating the most noise,’ said Mtati. ‘They are the ones that consistently earn trust and stay genuinely relevant to the lives of the people they serve. As discovery fragments across delivery apps, social platforms and AI-generated recommendations, the brands that show up credibly wherever decisions are made will be the ones that turn attention into growth.’

The full 2026 Fast Food and QSR Report is available for download here.

ROGERWILCO
https://www.rogerwilco.co.za/

New South African Experience Direction Studio Launches

Modern Marketing

August 5, 2026

New South African Experience Direction Studio Launches — Robby Robinson, Dream Theater.

Founded by South African experience leader Robby Robinson, Dream Theater helps organisations shape live experiences where leadership, reputation, expertise and human connection need to land properly. The studio works across leadership gatherings, conferences, thought-leadership platforms, brand and innovation launches, stakeholder engagements and internal alignment experiences.

The new South African experience direction studio has officially launched with a clear proposition: important business events should be shaped around purpose and audience impact, not simply assembled from venues, suppliers and production elements.

Rather than beginning with venue options, audiovisual requirements, décor or entertainment, Dream Theater starts by establishing why the moment matters, who needs to be reached and what the audience should understand, feel or do differently. It then aligns the story, content, environment, technology, hospitality, guest journey and production around that purpose.

‘Too many important events begin as a list of logistical requirements,’ Robinson said. ‘That may produce an efficiently managed event, but it does not automatically produce a meaningful experience. We begin by asking why the room exists, what needs to land and what the organisation is asking its audience to believe.’

Robinson has worked in the live-experience and events industry since 1994, holding senior creative, production and event-leadership roles across South Africa, the Middle East and the United Kingdom. At Dream Theater, he remains directly accountable for strategy, creative direction and key production decisions, supported by specialist partners assembled according to each brief.

The studio can lead the complete experience direction and production process, or work alongside a client’s internal teams, appointed agencies, venues and production partners. Its four core service areas are experience strategy and narrative; creative and spatial direction; content, show and guest journey; and technical and production leadership.

‘A live experience is a moment of judgement,’ Robinson said. ‘People form opinions about the organisation, its leadership, its expertise and its attention to detail. Every decision in the room should support the reason the moment exists.’

Dream Theater’s approach is particularly relevant to organisations operating in high-trust and knowledge-led sectors, where live moments can influence confidence, alignment, reputation and future relationships.

‘Dream Theater was not created to add more things to a room,’ Robinson said. ‘It was created to align everything in the room to the reason it exists. Our ambition is to produce work that is purposeful, human, emotionally controlled and meticulously delivered.’

Based in Gauteng, Dream Theater is available to support projects across South Africa and internationally.

DREAM THEATER
https://dreamtheater.co.za

Technology Offers Valuable Predictive Tools

Modern Marketing

August 5, 2026

Technology Offers Valuable Predictive Tools — Musa Kalenga, Brave.

Musa Kalenga, CEO of Brave, writes that companies whose marketing and finance chiefs genuinely trust one another grow revenue nearly twice as fast as those where the CMO and CFO are at odds. That finding, from a new survey of almost 1,400 senior executives by Bain & Company and Google, recasts adversarial relationships between CMOs and CFOs as one of the most underrated growth levers a company has.

Yes, the divide between marketing and finance is real. But it was never a clash of values, or about creativity versus rigour. It is, and always has been, about proof of performance.

The same survey reveals that the two functions are far more aligned than the antagonistic stereotype allows. More than half of both marketers and finance leaders named demonstrating direct revenue impact as the single most important thing marketing can do to strengthen its standing with finance. Both groups pointed to return on marketing investment and revenue impact as the ones that matter most.

About 70 per cent of both groups, the research found, expect performance investments to pay back within months or quarters. Roughly 40 per cent of each accept that brand investment needs a year or more to work.

Financial Folk Are Rational Sceptics, They Want Proof

Finance is not uniquely hostile to the long term. The Bain and Google researchers write that finance leaders scrutinise marketing the way they scrutinise every line in the business. They do this because they are trained to challenge assumptions and pressure-test the evidence. That is the job.

So if we agree on the goal, the metrics and even the time horizons, why does the relationship so often feel like a standoff?

Because the friction was never about priorities; instead, it lies in data quality and in how results are communicated and validated. Marketing’s problem, bluntly put, is that finance does not always believe the numbers we bring to the table. This is not a fresh wound.

Marketing Needs To Earn Trust From The C-Suite

As long ago as 2011, the Fournaise Marketing Group reported that 80 per cent of chief executives said they did not really trust, or were unimpressed by, the work of their marketers. The same research revealed that 90 per cent said they trusted the judgement of their finance and technology chiefs.

Over a decade on, the credibility gap has proved stubborn. The CMO Survey, run twice a year by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, has logged the same quiet frustration for years. A large share of senior marketers concede they cannot demonstrate the impact of their spending in hard, quantitative terms.

The Bain and Google work sharpens the point. Only 41 per cent of marketers, it found, feel they have the right data, tools and measurement capability to tie their performance to business outcomes.

When you cannot prove it, you are left to assert it. And assertion, in a room full of people paid to be sceptical, is the quickest way to lose an argument, and a budget with it.

Integration Is Rewarded By Financial Benefit, Which Starts With Alignment

Now let’s return to the good news. The massive benefit when CMOs and CFOs work together. Alongside the near-doubling of revenue growth, companies with a strong relationship between their marketing and finance chiefs are almost 1.5 times more likely to lead their sectors, Bain and Google found.

The researchers defined leaders as those growing market share by at least 7 per cent in the previous year, or growing share by at least 4 per cent alongside revenue growth of 11 per cent or more. Trust between these two functions is a growth driver in its own right.

The mechanism is intuitive. When finance believes marketing’s numbers, capital flows to marketing faster and stays there longer. When it does not, every campaign is disputed, every horizon is shortened, and the organisation retreats to the safest, most measurable, most short-term spending it can find. Spending that, perversely, is often the least effective.

Peter Field, whose effectiveness studies for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising have shaped the field, warned in 2019 of a ‘crisis in creative effectiveness’ as brands chased quarterly proof points and starved the long-term brand building that actually compounds. A finance team that distrusts marketing does not merely withhold money; it quietly tilts the whole enterprise towards short-termism.

Transparency, Alignment And Unity Create Competitive Advantage

Three habits, each borne out by the Bain and Google research, separate the partnerships that work from those that do not.

1. The first is radical transparency with the data. The strongest marketing–finance relationships, the study found, are 2.5 times more likely to rest on credible data. This credibility comes from showing the numbers plainly, refusing to cherry-pick, and reporting the failures alongside the wins. This is counter-intuitive for an industry trained to sell. Yet nothing buys standing with a finance chief faster than volunteering that a campaign underperformed, and explaining exactly why. Be candid, too, about what cannot yet be measured cleanly. Finance can live with honest uncertainty; it will not forgive a number dressed up as more certain than it is.

2. The second is to lock the metrics before the campaign launches, not after. The leaders in the study agree on a shared measurement framework that is owned jointly by marketing and finance well before budgets are committed.

3. The third is to agree realistic payback horizons, and then defend them together. This is where marketing must teach finance something, and where the evidence is firmly on our side. The landmark studies by Les Binet and Peter Field for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising established the now-famous benchmark that a roughly 60/40 split between long-term brand building and short-term activation delivers the strongest results over time. And as the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s research, popularised by LinkedIn’s B2B Institute as the ’95-5 rule’, has shown, at any given moment only about 5 per cent of buyers in a category are actually in the market to buy. Brand investment is not a leap of faith; it is the rational way to stay remembered by the 95 per cent who will buy later. Bring your finance chief inside that logic before you ask them to fund it, and a brand campaign stops looking like self-indulgence and starts looking like a bet with a known, if longer, payback curve.

None of this works if the effort travels in one direction only. The most productive partnerships I have seen involve finance chiefs who have deliberately built a marketing mindset of their own.

Technology Offers Valuable Predictive Tools

The good news? Artificial intelligence is beginning to close the data gap that has dogged this relationship for a generation, sharpening real-time information and forecasting. The marketers furthest ahead are using it precisely to raise the quality of what they can prove to finance. Transparency, as it happens, is becoming easier to deliver just as it becomes more valuable.

The reward for getting this right is not merely a quieter budget meeting. It is freedom. When marketers consistently hit the targets they have set jointly with finance, they earn the licence to make longer-horizon bets without having to justify the timeline afresh every quarter.

That is the reframe the best organisations have already made. They have stopped treating marketing and finance as a transaction to be endured and started running it as a growth alliance.

The proof is in the profit. CMOs and CFOs that make this work do better. Two and a half times better than anyone else.

BRAVE GROUP
www.bravegroup.co.za

Human Signal Is The New Distinctiveness

Modern Marketing

August 5, 2026

Lauren Pybus, Euphoria Telecom.

In a B2B landscape flooded with AI-generated content and feature-heavy spec sheets, competing on product alone is a losing strategy. Lauren Pybus, Marketing Manager & Creative Director, Euphoria Telecom said one can ask any enterprise buyer to name three vendors in their category, and will get the same shortlist every time.

Not because those companies have unbeatable features, but because they’re the ones who have earned a place in the buyer’s mind. That holds true whether you sell telecoms, CRM, cybersecurity, logistics, cloud communications or HR software. Features get you in the room. They don’t win it.

For decades, B2B marketing operated on the assumption that business buyers are colder and more rational than the average consumer: they are all spec sheets and no sentiment.

The data doesn’t support that. Research behind 2024’s The JOLT Effect found that 40–60% of B2B deals are lost not to a competitor, but to ‘no decision’. Buyers get frozen by the fear of getting it wrong. It’s not just individual fear either.

The 2025 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report took it a step further and found that more than 40% of B2B deals stall due to disagreement within the buying group itself.

And here’s the brutal truth: both are rational. The personal stakes of a bad enterprise purchase are far higher than any consumer product regret. Brand Finance’s research on B2B buying groups found that 81% of purchases went to a brand every stakeholder already recognised before the process began. Only 4% went to a brand known solely by whoever recommended it.

This boils down to a great product will convince one champion, but a strong brand gives the whole buying committee the shared confidence to say yes.

Most Of Your Market Is Not Buying, Yet

Right now, only about 5% of your target market is actively shopping for a solution in your category. The other 95%? They won’t switch for months, maybe even years. LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, working with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, calls this the 95-5 rule.

If you chase only today’s in-market buyers, you’ll miss something crucial. You won’t build the familiarity that gets you shortlisted when the other 95% eventually enter the market.

This is why brand spend shouldn’t be the first line cut when budgets tighten. Recognition is what makes tomorrow’s demand generation faster and cheaper. By the time the buying process starts, the buyer already knows your name.

Different Beats Better

Compete on features alone, and you’re stuck in a race nobody wins for long. Compete on being unmistakably you, in tone, in visual identity, in the story you tell, and you become far harder to forget.

Take Notion’s Faces campaign, which went viral on LinkedIn in early 2025: it didn’t pitch a single feature. The productivity app turned its custom employee portraits, an internal quirk, into a community moment. Real people shared their own portraits and their own stories about why they use the product.

Its team said it plainly: personal stories and emotional connection were what set them apart from every other productivity app running feature ads. That’s a brand position, not a spec sheet. And it worked without a single screenshot.

It’s the same with distinctive brand assets: a mascot, a colour, or a way of talking. STFO’s 2026 audit of 100 B2B SaaS companies found these assets do more to earn attention than paid ads ever will. A brand’s job is not to persuade; it is to be instantly, unmistakably recognised.

A Strong Brand Is Not Just Remembered, It Is Paid For

A landmark Google, CEB and Motista study looked at 3 000 B2B buyers across 36 brands, and found that when buyers feel personal value in a supplier relationship, be it pride, confidence in the supplier, or lower risk to their own reputation, they’re far more likely to pay a premium over a functionally identical competitor.

Eight times more likely. That one figure alone should reframe how finance teams view the marketing budget. Forget ‘brand’ being a cost centre, it actually sets your price.

In A Flood Of AI-Generated Sameness, Human Signal Is The New Distinctiveness

Generative AI has made competent product content nearly free to produce. Landing pages, comparison pages, feature explainers: every competitor now has access to the same tools.

The result is what one Forbes analysis calls the ‘algorithmic middle’: every brand drawing on the same models, converging on the same safe, templated answer.

So What Cuts Through?

An opinion nobody else in the category is willing to state. A stance that risks disagreement instead of chasing consensus. That kind of clarity can’t be prompted into existence, because it requires deciding something, not generating something.

None of this means the product stops mattering, it earns you the right to a second conversation.

But across B2B, from software to services to telecoms, the best product on paper doesn’t always win the deal.

That’s won earlier, by the brand the buyer already trusts, already remembers and already believes in.

EUPHORIA TELECOM
https://euphoria.co.za/

Consider The Environment Into Which AI Has Arrived

Modern Marketing

August 5, 2026

Consider The Environment Into Which AI Has Arrived. — Daniel Munslow, Absa Group.

Daniel Munslow, Managing Executive: Group Communications, Absa Group, describes how the AI boom is creating a trust premium in communications. It was around the turn of the century that students in the fields of public relations and communications would have started encountering new curricula centred on what was then referred to as ‘new media’: an examination of the mainstreaming of the internet and the information platforms it enabled, and what all of this might mean for the more traditional practices the industry had become so attached to in the decades preceding.

Many would argue that the landscape has since undergone a profound and persistent rate of change, spurred forward largely by digital technologies and social media, which fundamentally altered who controls information and how it moves.

Yet with the growing ubiquity of Artificial Intelligence, perhaps the most consequential development since those early debates around new media, attention is being drawn back to a much older question: trust. To fully appreciate the correlation, it is worth considering the environment into which AI has arrived.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report for 2026 points to the emergence of a contested multipolar landscape in which confrontation is increasingly displacing collaboration, and trust is steadily losing value. The latest Edelman Trust Barometer paints a similar picture at a societal level, finding that seven in ten people globally exhibit what it describes as an insular mindset, characterised by an unwillingness or hesitation to trust those with different values, views, approaches to solving problems, or cultural backgrounds.

The role AI will ultimately play within this environment remains to be seen, but from a communications risk perspective, its implications are already becoming apparent in two areas: credibility and visibility.

For the first time, the cost and effort associated with producing content, whether written, visual, or audio, is falling dramatically, raising the prospect of a communications environment in which that content becomes almost limitless. That may be good news for productivity. It may even prove beneficial for creativity. But it also presents a challenge, because as content becomes easier to produce, communication may have to work harder to prove that it is worth believing.

The credibility question becomes particularly relevant when viewed against the growth of organised disinformation across the continent, with the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies reporting that the 189 documented disinformation campaigns active in Africa today represent almost four times the number recorded in 2022, a figure it still regards as an undercount. The Centre notes that these campaigns have helped drive violence, validate military coups, silence civil society voices and obscure corruption, developments that many analysts have linked, at least in part, to the proliferation of AI, which has become a boon for content farms and misinformation networks.

This means that as audiences become more discerning and the volume of synthetic content continues to grow, organisations may find themselves having to work harder to establish the authenticity of their messages and the reliability of the information upon which they are based. It also means there is far more competition for attention, a reality that places emphasis on visibility, believability and an organisation’s ability to cut through.

Precisely how much content now being generated by AI is difficult to determine, although some early studies estimate that anywhere between 30% and 75% of the text appearing on active web pages may originate from AI-generated sources. Whether the true figure sits at the lower or upper end of that range is almost beside the point, what matters is that the proliferation of AI-generated content is already well underway and shows little sign of slowing.

Audiences may not always be able to determine whether a piece of content was produced by a person or a machine, but they are often remarkably adept at recognising authenticity, expertise, lived experience, and genuine accountability when they encounter it. These qualities may become some of the most important differentiators available to organisations in the years ahead. In a world where content is abundant, trust in the institution behind the content may matter more than ever.

There is a certain irony in all of this. Many of the tools contributing to the proliferation of content are also proving useful in helping organisations navigate it.

Communications and public relations teams are using AI to adapt campaigns across different markets and cultural contexts with greater speed and precision; during live events like product launches and major announcements, audience sentiment can be analysed in real time, allowing messaging to evolve as conversations unfold; some organisations are using AI to run thousands of simulated crisis scenarios based on their operating environment, helping identify potential vulnerabilities and prepare response strategies before issues materialise; others are applying it to media engagement, analysing journalists’ reporting histories and areas of interest to develop more relevant and personalised outreach.

The same technologies are also beginning to redefine how organisations communicate directly with customers. At Absa, for example, the Abby virtual assistant helps clients access information, navigate products and services, and complete a range of banking activities through a chatbot platform. It is a demonstration of how AI is increasingly being deployed across the full spectrum of stakeholder engagement.

Those that benefit most from AI may not be those that automate everything, but those that understand which parts of communication should remain human. There is, however, a catch. Governance.

Surveys show that 59% of public relations practitioners expect AI and automation to grow in importance over the next five years, but at the same time, Africa has been found to have the lowest rate of governance-backed AI adoption at 24.8%, while only 20.5% of organisations report having responsible AI guidelines or policies in place.

There is an urgent need to invest in AI literacy and responsible AI training, ensuring employees engage with these tools critically and understand both their capabilities and limitations. Equally important is the development of clear governance mechanisms that guide how AI is used in practice, promoting greater accountability and transparency as these technologies become more deeply embedded in everyday communications activities.

At Absa, for example, the introduction of a Responsible Use of AI Policy has sought to establish clearer principles around transparency, human oversight and accountability, while complementary standards governing machine learning and AI models help guide how these technologies are developed and applied across the organisation.

The objective is not to constrain innovation, but to ensure that its adoption takes place within a framework that recognises both the opportunities and responsibilities that accompany it.

In many respects, that brings the profession full circle. For all the technological change communications has experienced over the past two decades, trust is the constant. The responsibility now is to ensure that it remains so.

ABSA
www.absa.co.za

Moving From Media Efficiency To Media Effectiveness

Modern Marketing

August 5, 2026

Moving Fromm Media Efficiency To Media Effectiveness — Natascha Torres, iqbusiness.

According to Natascha Torres, Head of Digital Media Strategy at iqbusiness, campaign dashboards often look fantastic with high reach, excellent click-through rates (CTRs) and efficient costs per thousand impressions (CPM). But the question that many marketers and agencies are not asking is whether these metrics reflect real impact for the brand.

Programmatic advertising remains one of the most powerful ways for brands to reach audiences at scale, but campaign success can sometimes appear easier to prove than it really is. What matters among those metrics is how many people really paid attention.

An impression does not necessarily mean a real person saw and took notice of your ad. A click does not prove that a user landed on your site, it could be a frustrated finger accidentally clicking through rather than closing the ad. And without the right monitoring and placement controls in place, some ads may be served below the fold, skipped in seconds or exposed to low-quality traffic rather than attentive audiences.

This is why advertisers need to look beyond campaigns that look good on paper and ask whether they deliver measurable brand impact or business outcomes. Forward-thinking advertisers and agencies are moving away from volume-based metrics towards measurements that consider whether users are paying attention.

In a fragmented media landscape where users are constantly scrolling, skipping, swiping and multitasking, attention is scarce. But it is one of the most valuable commodities on the internet. Research shows that attention correlates more strongly with outcomes like brand recall, consideration and conversion than traditional metrics like impressions or clicks.

Measuring attention is not as easy as measuring CTRs or CPMs, but it paints a more accurate picture of business impact. When you are looking at attention, you are not just measuring whether users were exposed to an ad, but also whether they engaged with it. This is not just about whether the ad was served, but whether it was noticed, processed, and remembered.

To measure attention, you need to use a combination of platform tools, third-party solutions and behavioural signals:

Platform-based brand lift studies: Programmatic platforms like Meta and YouTube offer brand lift studies that measure shifts in awareness, recall and intent after exposure to ads. These studies help connect media activity to real changes in perception.

Third-party verification and attention tools: Solutions like DoubleVerify, IAS, and Adelaide provide deeper insights into viewability, time-in-view, screen share and predictive attention scores. These tools filter out invalid traffic and assess whether ads had the opportunity to be seen. They are also easy to integrate into Meta, Google and programmatic demand-side platforms (DSPs) like DV360.

Engagement-based metrics: On social platforms, engagement signals such as video completion rates, watch time, saves and shares are ways to measure attention. A ‘like’ is easy, whereas a full video view or share indicates deeper engagement.

On-site behavioural signals: Beyond-the-click metrics like session duration, pages per session, scroll depth and bounce rate show whether users are genuinely engaging with your content after arriving on your site.

Moving From Media Efficiency To Media Effectiveness

Moving from volume-based metrics towards measuring attention is about optimising for quality of outcomes rather than scale. Attention encourages a mindset shift from buying the cheapest media to buying the most effective media. This means using the controls available within programmatic and other digital channels to prioritise placements that are viewable and uncluttered. Spending should be targeted at quality placements and environments where users are more engaged and more likely to pay attention.

Perhaps even more importantly, brands need to invest in high-quality creative that captures and holds attention. Even the best placement will not perform if the ad itself does not resonate. Creative is often the single biggest driver of attention. Given that brands need to compete for attention and not just CTRs and CPMs, we need to start looking at ad performance as a creative problem and not just as a media challenge.

Strong Attention-Driven Creative:

– Hooks the viewer within the first 2–3 seconds.
– Is tailored to platform behaviour (e.g., vertical video for mobile).
– Uses storytelling or emotion to sustain interest.
– Communicates value quickly and clearly.

Brands that test and iterate creative based on attention signals tend to see significantly better performance over time.

A More Holistic Measurement Framework

Embracing attention signals is not about throwing the volume-related metrics out the window. It means moving towards a more layered approach that connects delivery (impressions and reach), attention (viewability, time-in-view, engagement), and outcomes (brand lift, conversions, revenue). This enables marketers to understand not just what happened, but why, and to optimise creative and placement to get better business outcomes.

IQBUSINESS
www.iqbusiness.net

Change 1 Woman Joburg Networking Events Featuring SA’s Entrepreneur Of The Year And More

Meggan McCarthy, Modern Marketing

August 4, 2026

Change 1 Woman Joburg Networking Events Featuring SAs Entrepreneur Of The Year And More

The 2026 Change 1 Woman (C1W) networking events promise to be even bigger and more valuable. Not only will the events feature speakers who will give you impactful advice on resilience and business success, this is also an opportunity to make meaningful connections with women in branding, print and signage.

The C1W events are taking place from 8-10 September at Gallagher Convention Centre on the balcony in Hall 3. Thank you to our sponsors: NUtec Digital Ink, Midcomp, Avery Dennison, Kolok Graphic Supplies, KYOCERA Document Solutions South Africa, and Graphix Supply World.

The event is being held alongside the Modern Marketing, Sign Africa, FESPA Africa, Africa Print and Graphics, Print and Sign expos. So C1W attendees will not only have opportunities to network, but they can also see the latest technologies and business solutions all at one venue.

Our inspiring C1W speakers include:

Talitha Oosthuizen, 1st Princess Mrs South Africa

Topic: Conquering Mount Everest: Living Life To Your Full Potential And Making Your Dreams A Reality

Oosthuizen is a South African entrepreneur, philanthropist, adventurer, speaker, and Mrs South Africa 1st Princess. Guided by faith, resilience, and purpose, she is passionate about using her journey and platforms to create meaningful impact and inspire hope. Her adventurous spirit has taken her to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and to Everest Base Camp, journeys that reflect her belief in courage, discipline, faith, and perseverance. Warm, grounded, and purpose-driven, Oosthuizen believes that influence carries responsibility. Whether through business, philanthropy, pageantry, adventure, or public speaking, her mission remains to use her voice to uplift others, create awareness, and leave a lasting impact.

Date and time: Tuesday, 8 September at 11:30am. Book your free slot here.

Liezle Barrie, National Sales Manager, Consumables, at Intamarket Graphics

Topic: Growth Through Reinvention

Growth rarely happens inside our comfort zone. In this presentation, Barrie shares her personal journey of reinvention, exploring how challenges, setbacks, and change can become powerful catalysts for growth. Using stories from both her personal life and leadership career, she encourages attendees to embrace curiosity, step beyond self-imposed limitations, and recognise that becoming the best version of yourself is not about perfection, it is about choosing progress every day. Delegates will leave inspired to unlock their own potential and lead with greater confidence, purpose, and authenticity.

Date and time: Wednesday, 9 September 2026 at 14:00pm. Book your free slot here.

Taryn Hunter Sharman, SA’s Entrepreneur of the Year

Topic: Navigating The Entrepreneurship Journey And Tips For Business Success

Sharman is the CEO and co-founder of Faith & Fear, an award-winning, women-owned creative consultancy redefining the traditional agency model through insight-led, impact-driven work. She is also co-founder of The Brave Collective, a women’s empowerment platform focused on leadership, financial literacy, and personal growth. With over 20 years’ experience across leading brands and agencies, Sharman is known for her fearless strategy, commercial results, and commitment to building businesses that drive both profit and purpose.

Date and time: Thursday, 10 September at 10:00am. Book your free slot here.

Change 1 Woman
https://www.c1w.co.za/

Brands Should Recognise Gaming As A Complete Marketing And Entertainment Ecosystem

Meggan McCarthy, Modern Marketing

August 4, 2026

Brands Should Recognise Gaming As A Complete Marketing And Entertainment Ecosystem — Barry Louzada, Mettlestate.

Barry Louzada, founder and MD of Mettlestate, says gaming is one of the largest attention ecosystems, yet many marketers are still only scratching the surface of what is possible. He discusses how gaming can support awareness, participation, community building, content creation, data capture and long-term loyalty. Mettlestate is a brand sponsor of this year’s WesBank New Generation Awards. Modern Marketing is a proud media partner of the awards.

Why did Mettlestate sign on as a brand sponsor for this year’s WesBank New Generation Awards?

Mettlestate has always been focused on creating opportunities for the next generation. Whether they are players, creators, students or professionals entering the industry, we have always believed in backing emerging talent and helping people reach their potential.

The future of marketing is no different. It is being built by a new generation of marketers, creators and innovators who are challenging established thinking and finding better ways to connect with audiences.

That is exactly what the WesBank New Generation Awards celebrate. They recognise the people shaping the future of South African marketing, and we are proud to support an initiative that champions innovation, rewards exceptional work and invests in the next generation of industry talent.

For us, it is more than a sponsorship. It is an opportunity to recognise the people shaping what is next.

What value will Mettlestate bring to the awards?

Gaming has become one of the largest entertainment industries in the world, but more importantly, it is one of the largest attention ecosystems. Yet many marketers are still only scratching the surface of what is possible.

Over the past decade, Mettlestate has worked with brands to turn gaming audiences into measurable business outcomes through creators, live events, digital platforms, tournaments and community-led experiences. That has given us a unique perspective on how participation, authenticity and community can create stronger commercial results than traditional awareness campaigns alone.

I hope to bring that perspective to the awards. Not just recognising great creative work, but also recognising ideas that genuinely understand audiences, solve business challenges and push our industry forward.

As an official judge for the WesBank New Generation Awards, what do you think makes an award-winning campaign?

The best campaigns solve a business challenge while creating genuine, authentic value for the audience.

Creative execution is important, but creativity should always serve a strategic objective. The strongest campaigns understand the people they are trying to reach and give them a reason to engage beyond simply seeing an ad.

I will be looking for work that combines strategic thinking, creative excellence and measurable results, but also demonstrates how brands have empowered, enabled or improved the experience of the audience they are trying to serve.

Ultimately, the campaigns that stand out are the ones that create value for both the business and the consumer.

Most marketing strategies are missing the participation layer. How do gaming campaigns fill that gap, and what are the benefits for brands?

Most marketing is designed around exposure. Gaming is designed around participation. That distinction changes the relationship between a brand and its audience. Rather than asking people to consume content, gaming gives them opportunities to participate directly with the brand, engage, compete, collaborate, unlock rewards and become part of the experience.

For brands, that participation often leads to longer engagement, stronger recall, more meaningful first-party data and communities that continue engaging long after the campaign has ended.

How can brands authentically connect with gaming communities?

The first step is recognising that gaming is not a channel. It is a culture.

The brands that earn credibility are the ones that improve the gaming experience rather than interrupt it. That could be through creators, tournaments, community initiatives, rewards or experiences that genuinely matter to players.

Authenticity is not something you communicate. It is something the community decides after you have consistently added value.

What are the top three trends in the South African gaming and esports space that brands can capitalise on?

The first is that gaming has become mainstream. The audience now spans almost every demographic, making gaming one of the broadest entertainment audiences available.

The second is participation. Audiences increasingly want to engage with brands through engaging campaigns, competitions, live experiences, creator communities and interactive campaigns rather than traditional advertising.

The third is the continued growth of creator and audience-led communities. Trust has become one of marketing’s most valuable assets, and both the gaming audience and gaming creators exist and thrive in engaged communities where recommendations carry genuine influence.

Together, these trends create significant opportunities for brands prepared to think beyond traditional media.

Are South African brands embracing the marketing opportunities in games, or is there still room for growth? What do you think the barriers are?

We have seen significant progress over the past few years, but I still believe we are at the beginning.

The biggest barrier is not the audience. South Africa has millions of gamers. The challenge is that many organisations still view gaming through the lens of esports or sponsorship rather than recognising it as a complete marketing and entertainment ecosystem.

Gaming can support awareness, participation, community building, content creation, data capture and long-term loyalty. As brands become more familiar with that broader opportunity, I think we will see gaming become a standard part of mainstream marketing rather than a specialist discipline.

Anything else you would like to add?

Marketing has always followed audience attention. Today, a significant portion of that attention exists within gaming.

The opportunity for brands is not simply to advertise to gamers. It is to become part of experiences that audiences actively choose to engage with.

That’s why we are excited to support the New Generation Awards. They recognise the people pushing our industry forward, and I believe gaming will continue playing an increasingly important role in how brands build relationships with consumers over the next decade.

WesBank New Generation Awards

The WesBank New Generation Social & Digital Media Awards are South Africa’s premier independent and performance-based digital accolades, and have become the definitive benchmark for digital excellence in the South African corporate and agency sectors. Mark your calendars for September 23rd, the night Johannesburg witnesses the pinnacle of South African digital achievement.

WESBANK NEW GENERATION AWARDS
www.newgenawards.co.za

Supercharge Your Marketing At The Modern Marketing Power Hour

Meggan McCarthy, Modern Marketing

August 4, 2026

Supercharge Your Marketing At The Modern Marketing Power Hour

Industry leaders will share their expertise and insights in the ever-evolving field of marketing at the free-to-attend Modern Marketing Power Hour, taking place at the Modern Marketing Expo. The sessions will be held on the Balcony in Hall 3 at Gallagher Convention Centre.

Get the latest insights from these industry leaders:

Anisa Fielding, Head of Marketing, IMM Graduate School

Topic: The African Consumer Decoded
Tuesday, 8 September 2026, 12:30-13:30

There is no single ‘African consumer’, and treating more than a billion people as one market is one of the fastest ways for a brand to get Africa wrong. The African Consumer Decoded uses compelling data, surprising marketing facts and real brand examples to unpack the cultural, economic, digital and generational forces shaping consumer behaviour across the continent.

From mobile-first commerce and informal retail to language, identity and community influence, the session reveals why consumers may use the same products very differently across markets. Entertaining, practical and evidence-based, the talk will examine campaigns that connected, campaigns that missed the mark and the lessons marketers can use to build more relevant, credible and effective African marketing strategies. Book your free slot here.

Camagu Sam, Senior Sales Manager, Mall Ads

Topic: Rethinking Retail Spaces and Retail Marketing
Wednesday, 9 September 2026, 12:30-13:30

As foot traffic patterns shift and e-commerce continues to place pressure on physical retail, malls are having to reinvent their value proposition. This talk explores how treating physical retail space as a structured media network, rather than simply a leasing asset, is reshaping the economics of shopping centres, with implications for retail marketing, and shopper engagement. Book your free slot here.

Tendai Rukwava, Founder and CEO, Coral Communications

Topic: Responsible AI in Marketing: The Governance Framework Every Brand and Agency Needs
Thursday, 10 September 2026, 12:30-13:30

While AI is a powerful tool, PR and marketing should still be human-led. Building a human-led, AI-supported business requires an AI usage policy to set up clear rules and terms of engagement up front. Learn about the frameworks your company should have in place to protect client data, prevent plagiarism, ensure responsible use, and more. Book your free slot here.

Please register online for free attendance to the Modern Marketing Expo, taking place 8-10 September, 9am-5pm at Gallagher Convention Centre. The event is co-located with: Sign Africa, FESPA Africa, Africa Print and Graphics, Print and Sign expos.

MODERN MARKETING EXPO
+27 11 568 1894
https://modernmarketingexpo.co.za

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