Effie Awards South Africa Announces 2026 Jury

By

-

July 9, 2026

Effie Awards South Africa Announces 2026 Jury

The Effie Awards remain the globally recognised benchmark for marketing effectiveness, rewarding ideas that work, campaigns that are grounded in insight, fuelled by creativity and proven to deliver measurable business results. Effie Awards South Africa, hosted by the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA), has announced its 2026 jury.

This year’s panel is significantly expanded across Round 1 and Round 2 judging in response to another record year for entries. In 2026, the scale and diversity of the jury reflects the continued growth of the programme and the increasing importance of rigorous, multi-disciplinary evaluation in identifying South Africa’s most effective campaigns.

‘Effie is built on the credibility of its jury, and that credibility comes from the mix of expertise, experience and perspective brought into the judging room,’ said Gillian Rightford, ACA Executive Director for Effie South Africa. ‘As entries continue to grow, so too does the responsibility to ensure that the work is assessed through a broad and balanced lens. This year’s jury brings together senior talent from across marketing, agency, media, research, digital, technology, PR and communications, ensuring that the campaigns recognised by Effie are assessed through the programme’s core effectiveness pillars, from challenge, context, insight and strategy to execution and results.’

Rightford added that significantly more applications were received than could be accommodated, making selection to the 2026 jury a meaningful acknowledgement of each judge’s expertise and standing in the industry. Effie South Africa congratulates all judges selected for 2026 and thanks them for committing their time and expertise to the rigorous evaluation of South Africa’s most effective work.

Returning to lead the adjudication process are Jury Co-Chairs Refilwe Maluleke, Executive Head of Marketing at Discovery Health, and Ahmed Tilly, Creative Advisor and Director at Number 10, A Creative Consultancy.

The 2026 Effie South Africa jury comprises leaders drawn from across the marketing and communications ecosystem, including client-side marketers, agency leaders, strategists, creatives, media specialists, research and analytics experts, digital and technology specialists, and public relations and communications professionals. Judges are selected for their track record, experience and understanding of effectiveness, ensuring that cases are evaluated with both specialist insight and commercial rigour.

Round 1 judging will take place on Thursday, 16 July 2026, followed by Round 2 judging on Thursday, 13 August 2026. Grand Effie adjudication will take place on Thursday, 10 September 2026. The 2026 Effie Awards South Africa Gala will be held on Thursday, 22 October 2026, where this year’s winners will be announced.

The full 2026 Effie South Africa jury can be viewed here.

Effie Awards South Africa is hosted by the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA) and sponsored by Nedbank, South African Breweries (AB InBev), Heineken Beverages, Emeris, IAS, Eat Big Fish, Investec, Boundless and Motion Ads.

EFFIE AWARDS
www.effieawards.co.za

The Importance Of Understanding Reach In Media Monitoring

By

Modern Marketing

-

July 9, 2026

Joe Hamman, Novus Group.

According to Joe Hamman, Director, Novus Group, a reach figure indicates how many people could have been exposed to a piece of coverage. It does not tell you who saw it, whether they cared, trusted the publication, or whether the message changed anything.

Reach is one of the first numbers people look for in a media report. It is big, easy to understand, and gives the impression of broad visibility. That is also why it can be misleading.

A story with a potential reach of one million is not automatically more valuable than a feature reaching 50,000 highly relevant decision-makers.The first may create broad awareness. The second may reach the people who can buy, invest, recommend, regulate, or influence the outcome the organisation actually needs.

Reach still has a place in media monitoring. It helps show the scale of potential visibility. It can be useful for benchmarking campaigns over time, comparing publications, and understanding the level of exposure different channels may have created. But reach should be treated as a starting point, not a conclusion.

Understanding The New Landscape

The media environment has become too fragmented for one number to explain whether coverage worked. Audiences move between online news, print, radio, podcasts, social platforms, search, and AI-assisted discovery. Algorithms influence what people see. Trust varies from platform to platform. A large reach number may look impressive in a report, but without context it can create a false sense of success.

This is why global measurement frameworks have moved away from vanity metrics. AMEC’s Barcelona Principles 4.0, widely used as a best-practice framework for communication measurement, emphasise measurable objectives, stakeholder audiences, relevant channels, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and the need to evaluate outcomes and impact, not only outputs.

This is where media monitoring becomes more useful. Finding the coverage is the easy part. The value lies in understanding what it means: publication relevance, sentiment, message pull-through, brand prominence, competitor presence, and audience trust. Without that context, visibility can easily be mistaken for impact.

Making Sense Of Data

Muck Rack’s State of PR Measurement 2024 report shows why this is so important. Reach and impressions were the second most tracked PR metric after stories placed, used by more than three-quarters of PR professionals. Yet reach and impressions also ranked among the least trusted metrics, with nearly a quarter of respondents saying they did not trust reach or impressions. Many teams still rely on the metric because it is familiar and easy to report, even when it does not explain impact on its own.

Many organisations still get stuck here. A campaign can appear successful because the reach is large, but the more important question is whether the coverage supported the objective. For PR professionals, relevance matters more than raw scale.

A smaller article in a credible industry publication may do more for reputation, lead generation, policy influence, or stakeholder confidence than a larger story in a publication with limited relevance. Reach still matters. It just needs context before anyone treats it as evidence of impact.

What Makes Good Measurement?

Good measurement should give a communications team a clearer view of what worked and what needs to change. A large reach number may be useful, but it is only one part of that view. On its own, it cannot explain whether the coverage strengthened credibility, reached the audience that matters, or helped move the organisation closer to its objective.

That is the point we need to get back to. Media monitoring should not make weak results look impressive. It should help organisations understand the difference between being seen and being understood.

NOVUS GROUP
https://novusgroup.co.za/

What Does Success Look Like After The Click?

By

Modern Marketing

-

July 7, 2026

What Does Success Look Like After The Click?

Henri Bam, Chief Product Officer at revX, says there is a moment in almost every campaign debrief where the numbers look good and the room still feels flat. Impressions were up. Clicks were strong. Cost per lead came in under target. And yet, somewhere between the dashboard and the sales floor, the optimism quietly evaporates. This is the full journey problem and it is one of the most expensive blind spots in digital marketing today.

Where Most Campaigns End

The architecture of most performance marketing campaigns is built around a single moment: the click. An ad is served, a person responds, a form is filled. The lead enters a CRM, a notification fires, and from the agency’s perspective, the job is done. The report gets written, the results get shared, and the cycle begins again.

This model made sense when digital advertising was simpler and measurement was harder. But the tools available today make it entirely possible to track what happens after the click and for most campaigns, what happens after the click tells a very different story than the dashboard does.

The gap between leads generated and revenue produced is rarely a mystery. It is usually a combination of lead quality issues, friction in the conversion process, poor follow-up timing, and a fundamental misalignment between what the campaign was optimised for and what the business actually needed. The problem is not that these issues are hard to solve. It is that most agencies aren’t structured to solve them, because their accountability ends at the click.

The Intent Problem

Not all leads are created equal, and the difference between a high-intent lead and a low-intent one is not always visible in the data that agencies typically track. Click-through rate does not tell you whether the person who clicked was genuinely interested or accidentally engaged. Cost per lead does not tell you whether the person who submitted a form had any real intention of buying. These are intent signals, and they live downstream of where most campaigns are measured.

When a campaign is optimised purely for volume, more leads and lower CPL, the system rewards behaviour that produces those numbers, regardless of what those leads are actually worth. Audiences get broadened to hit targets. Creative gets softened to maximise reach. CTAs get simplified to reduce friction. All of these decisions can improve the numbers on a report while quietly degrading the quality of what is actually being delivered to the business.

The result is a pipeline full of leads that look healthy in aggregate and perform poorly in reality. Sales teams spend time chasing people who were never going to convert. Close rates fall. The campaign gets blamed. And the cycle repeats.

What The Full Journey Actually Looks Like

Solving the full journey problem requires rethinking where a campaign’s responsibility begins and ends. It means asking not just how many people can be reached and moved to act, but what happens to those people once they have acted, and whether the system around them is set up to turn that action into revenue.
In practice, this involves several layers that most campaigns do not address.

Creative needs to be built around intent, not just response. An ad that attracts genuinely interested people looks and feels different from one built purely to generate volume. The audience targeting needs to reflect who is actually likely to convert, not just who is likely to click. The landing experience needs to continue the conversation the ad started, rather than presenting a generic page that breaks the connection between the promise and the delivery.

Beyond the front end, the lead management process matters enormously. How quickly a lead is followed up with changes conversion rates significantly. Whether a lead is validated before reaching a sales team determines how much time gets wasted on low-quality contacts. Whether the person who submitted a form receives any immediate acknowledgement affects how warm they remain by the time someone calls. These are not marketing details, they are conversion levers, and they sit in the gap between the click and the close.

The Measurement Shift

Fixing the full journey problem also requires fixing how campaigns are measured. When the primary KPIs are impressions, clicks, and cost per lead, the campaign optimises for those things. When the primary KPIs include conversion rate, cost per acquisition, and revenue generated, the entire system changes. Creative decisions get made differently. Audience choices get made differently. Budget allocation gets made differently. And the relationship between the agency and the client shifts from a reporting relationship to a results relationship.

This is not a small change. It requires agencies to take on accountability that most have historically avoided, and it requires clients to provide data, sales outcomes, close rates, revenue per customer, that most have historically kept separate from their marketing conversations. But it is the shift that closes the gap between what a campaign reports and what a business actually experiences.

The Cost Of Stopping At The Click

The most important thing to understand about the full journey problem is that it is not a niche concern for large enterprise clients with complex sales processes. It affects any business that runs paid digital advertising and measures success by lead volume rather than revenue outcome. It is common in insurance, automotive, financial services, and telecommunications, categories where the path from lead to customer involves multiple steps and significant drop-off, but it shows up everywhere that click-based metrics are used as a proxy for business results.

The cost is not just wasted budget, though that is significant. It is also the compounding effect of making decisions based on inaccurate data. If a campaign appears to be working because the leads are coming in, more budget flows toward it. The creative that generates volume gets scaled, even if that volume is not converting. The audiences that produce cheap leads get expanded, even if those leads do not close. Over time, the entire marketing strategy gets built on a foundation that does not reflect reality.

The fix starts with a simple question that most campaign briefs don’t ask: what does success look like after the click? The businesses that answer that question and build their campaigns around the answer are the ones that find the gap between marketing spend and revenue finally starts to close.

RevX
https://www.revx.ai/

Loyalty Programmes That Earn Lasting Engagement Focus On Emotion

By

Modern Marketing

-

July 7, 2026

Andrew Solomon, Marketing Director, Achievement Awards Group, says most engagement, incentive and loyalty programmes are designed around mechanics: how points are earned, how targets are measured, how rewards are structured. That work is necessary and it matters as a programme has to be logistically sound and commercially sensible before it can be anything else.

But mechanics are only the starting point. If the design stops there, the programme will never stand out, because there is rarely anything exciting about structure. And programmes are seldom judged only on how they work. They are judged on how they feel.

The Difference Between In And All In

Every organisation wants people to think, ‘I’ll take part in your programme’. Far fewer get them to feel, ‘I’m loyal to you.’ The first is transactional. The second is emotional.

The success of a programme is not just how many people join, but how deeply they engage. And transactional engagement can only run so deep. A discount can drive a purchase. A reward can prompt participation. But a relationship built on that alone is fragile, because someone can always offer more. A bigger discount. A larger reward.

What is far harder to displace is emotional attachment. No diagram or framework changes that. If participants’ experiences, and the way those experiences make them feel, are not at the heart of the design, the programme has a ceiling built into it.

Think about the birthday message from a service provider. You can picture the company deciding it would be a nice touch. But when it lands, you know the same words went to thousands of other customers at the same moment. The system meant to make you feel special instead made you feel processed. People do not want to feel like a number, unless that number is one. They want to feel recognised and understood.

The Difference Between Transactional And Emotional

The mechanics can look almost identical while the emotional outcome lands worlds apart.

An employee gets a message marking five years with the company. It arrives automatically at 2am: generic wording, a stock image that could have gone to anyone, a small standard cash reward. The recognition technically happened. Emotionally, almost nothing did.

Compare that with an employee at another company. Her manager references a specific contribution she made during a hard project earlier in the year, and through the day her team adds comments and memories underneath. There may be no cash attached at all, yet it feels personal and genuine, and she feels connected to the people she works with. Same mechanic. Opposite result.

The pattern holds in sales. Give a team early access to a product, proper training, a clear incentive and an app that shows their progress and makes rewards easy to claim, and they will sell with real confidence. Give a competing team the product only once it hits the shelf, a press release for information, richer incentives but unclear targets and slow redemption, and the friction stops being practical. It becomes emotional. That team will not put its heart into the sale.

Loyalty works the same way. One customer saves for months towards a reward, then meets delays, restrictions and a fiddly redemption process, and months of goodwill dissolve in a single frustrating moment. Another builds the same anticipation and redeems in seconds through an app that remembers her preferences and confirms delivery on the spot. The difference is not operational. It is emotional.

Small moments shape large emotions, and those emotions drive behaviour where it counts.

The Difference Between Box Ticking And Heart Warming

So how do you design for emotion? In my experience, rarely through bigger rewards or harder mechanics. More often through experiences that feel easier, more relevant and more human. Ease matters because effort carries emotional weight. The harder someone has to work to engage, the more resistance builds around the programme.

Relevance matters because generic experiences rarely create attachment. People respond when communication and rewards feel aligned to their own circumstances. Recognition matters because people want to feel visible, not processed. Memorability matters because experiences that leave an emotional trace keep influencing behaviour long after the moment has passed.

Get these right and the signals change. A recognition moment that feels considered communicates care rather than distance. A loyalty programme that feels easy communicates respect for the customer’s time rather than an assumption of it.

Every experience says something, and participants read those signals constantly, even without realising it. They are working out whether they are seen and valued, or simply processed.

Across employee engagement, channel incentives and customer loyalty, the thread is the same. Mechanics matter, and they always will. But the programmes that earn lasting engagement understand something their spreadsheets cannot show them: what matters most is not how a programme works. It is how it feels.

Achievement Awards Group
https://www.awards.co.za/

Burson And VML Win Top Honour In Crisis Communications And Issues Management At Cannes

By

Modern Marketing

-

July 3, 2026

Burson And VML Win Top Honour In Crisis Communications And Issues Management At Cannes

Burson and VML won the PR Lions Grand Prix in Crisis Communications and Issues Management, as well as four additional Gold Lions and three Silver Lions, at the 2026 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. The winning campaign, The KitKat Heist, delivered a real-time crisis response that transformed a supply chain disaster into a global cultural moment.

The KitKat Heist, created by VML and brought to life in partnership with Burson, earned four Gold Lions across PR: Social Engagement, PR: Real-Time Response, Social and Creator: Real-Time Response and Media: Consumer Goods. It also won three Silver Lions in Social and Creator: Innovative Engagement of Community, Media: Use of Social Platforms and Direct: Real-Time Response.

‘Crisis communications has long been the discipline of caution, protecting reputation, minimising damage, staying safe,’ said Dana Tahir, PR Lions Jury President, Cannes Lions 2026, and CEO, HAVAS Red Middle East and Egypt. ‘But this year’s work rewrote those rules entirely. KitKat didn’t just manage a crisis, they transformed it into a cultural moment, proving that creative bravery and crisis counsel can coexist.’

When a 12-tonne theft threatened KitKat’s Easter, the agencies turned a crisis into a brand-building opportunity. Bypassing defensive corporate messaging, they injected KitKat’s playful spirit into initial communications. The news release and statements were crafted to be meme-able and shareable: immediate conversation starters that fuelled global discussion but also shaped it. It gave the media permission to have fun with the story while reporting facts.

‘Crisis communications has always been one of PR’s most demanding disciplines. It’s tested in real time, under pressure and usually with the temptation to prioritise caution over creativity,’ said Taj Reid, Global Chief Creative Officer, Burson. ‘We couldn’t be more honoured to have partnered with our colleagues at VML to help rewrite that playbook, turning a crisis into a break-out moment for a client who knows exactly what creative bravery can deliver. This work proved that when creative, social and PR are truly in lockstep, the result isn’t just a campaign, it’s a cultural moment.’

‘The KitKat Heist has been an incredibly special project that brought together creative ideation, social and PR orchestration all in real time,’ said Ryan McManus, Chief Executive Officer at VML UK. ‘We reacted to a brief that came from the real world and enlisted what seems like the whole of the internet to help track down stolen KitKats and help solve the ongoing investigation. We are so proud of our teams at VML UK and our partners at Burson who helped bring it to life. And of course our longstanding clients KitKat for their creativity and trust in us.’

Watch the case film here.

BURSON
www.bursonglobal.com

VML
www.vml.com

Nedbank IMC Agenda Features Global Keynotes, African CMOs And Creative Leaders

By

Modern Marketing

-

July 3, 2026

Nedbank IMC Agenda Features Global Keynotes, African CMOs And Creative Leaders

The Nedbank IMC 2026 agenda is live. Under the 2026 theme Shift Happens™, the programme brings a clear point of view to a day of marketing, creativity, culture, technology and leadership: the shifts shaping business are happening at once, and marketers need practical ways to respond. Modern Marketing is a proud media partner.

The day will be hosted by Donovan Goliath, with Dale Hefer opening the conference. The event is taking place on Thursday, 17 September 2026 at Mosaïek Teatro, Johannesburg OR Online.

Rather than a simple roll-call of speakers, the agenda is built around the issues currently moving marketing and business. Creative bravery is explored through Conn Bertish, Fran Luckin and Roanna Williams, with sessions on resilience, purpose and why brave work wins.

Youth and culture come through Gugu Mthembu’s panel, which brings a youth lens on Gen Z, Gen Alpha and the next wave of consumers, while voices such as Dr Gcina Mhlophe and Kabelo Mabalane connect story, culture, influence and personal performance.

AI and technology feature strongly, with Ifeoma Jibunoh speaking on AI at African scale, Jarred Cinman on whether 2026 is the year AI changed everything in advertising, and Tahaab Rais on the psychological shift behind technological change. Suhayl Limbada, Chief Marketing Officer, KFC India and Partner Markets, and Marc de Swaan Arons add international perspectives on growth, marketing impact and business transformation.

African growth and brand leadership take centre stage in the Brand Africa CMO Panel, facilitated by Thebe Ikalafeng, with Khensani Nobanda and Opeyemi Lawal joining him for a conversation on African brand leadership, growth and relevance. Dawn Rowlands, Tarryn Knight, Vincent Magwenya, Sheldon Tatchell and Rea Leopeng add further perspectives on Africa, mobility, crisis communication, entrepreneurship, wellbeing and performance under pressure.

‘This agenda has a point of view,’ said Dale Hefer, CEO of the Nedbank IMC. ‘It brings together the people who can help marketers understand what is shifting creatively, culturally, technologically and commercially – and what to do next.’

The in-person experience will include networking and refreshments fuelled by Wild Bean Café, with post-event drinks courtesy of SAB. Online delegates will be able to take part through the Plug’d Challenge, networking opportunities and virtual exhibitions.

The Nedbank IMC 2026 will again feature a curated, not crowdsourced, speaker line-up, blending global insight with African context. Thousands of students will also attend virtually at no cost through the YOUTH1000 programme, in partnership with MASA.

The agenda may change due to elements outside of the organisers’ control. The full agenda is available here.

Nedbank IMC
www.imcconference.com

The 14th Annual WesBank New Generation Awards Announces Esteemed Judging Panel

By

Meggan McCarthy, Modern Marketing

-

July 2, 2026

The 14th Annual WesBank New Generation Awards Announces Esteemed Judging Panel

A premier awards platform requires a premier line-up of minds. The 14th Annual WesBank New Generation Awards are proud to reveal the official judging panel, a powerhouse collective of 31 South African agency leaders, corporate visionaries, and tech innovators, all ready to evaluate and honour the country’s best work. Modern Marketing is a proud media partner of the awards.

From creative brilliance and technical prowess to performance-based marketing and strategic ROI, the judges are looking for the campaigns that set a new standard for the industry.

‘Our sincere thanks to the judging panel for dedicating their expertise, time, and passion to driving the definitive benchmark of digital excellence in South Africa,’ said Stephen Paxton, Founder of the Awards.

The prestigious judging panel includes:

– Astrid Ascar, Chief Growth Officer at VML South Africa – Head Judge.
– Mondrē Bremner, Senior Manager: Digital Channels Strategy | Integrated Marketing and Experience at Nedbank.
– Thato Soato, Senior Specialist: Digital Marketing at Vodacom.
– Tristan Vogt, Head of Innovation at Ogilvy.
– Dashni Vilakazi, Managing Director at The MediaShop.
– Dani Morley, Executive Head, Growth: Shyft and Global Markets Retail at Standard Bank.
– Xolisa Koyana, Creative Director at Penquin.
– Barry Louzada, Founder and Managing Director at Mettlestate.
– Nicolas van Zyl-Smith, Founder and CEO at Naritive.
– Jacques Bezuidenhout, Equity Manager: Chocolate South and East Africa at Mondelēz International.
– Celia Collins, Commercial Officer and Digital Transformation at Omnicom Media.
– Yvette Gengan, Managing Director at Lucid Performance.
– Darren Morris, CEO at Lucky Hustle Agency.
– Courtney Chapple, Director of AI and New Business at Forge by Brave/Brave Group.
– Katie (Lu) Alomia, Fractional CMO.
– Lee Smith, Digital and AI Marketing Executive at RCL FOODS.
– Jeremy Crowder, Managing Partner at Dialogue.
– Zanele Zwane, Managing Director at HaveYouHeard Marketing Agency.
– Justine Nienaber, CEO at PUNKYSTARFISH.
– Jamie-Leigh Barnett, Director of Growth and Development at Algorithm.
– Merissa Himraj, Independent Media and Marketing Strategist.
– Kyle Oosthuizen, CEO at Blue Robot Group.
– Kathryn McKay, Executive Creative Partner at Black&White (The Up&Up Group South Africa).
– Tara Turkington, CEO at Flow Communications.
– Darren Leishman, Co-Founder and CEO at Spitfire Inbound.
– Ciarán McKivergan, Chief Creative Strategist | Visionary Founder | Cultural and Tech Trend Analyst, at 8909 Digital.
– Roxana Ravjee, CEO of dentsu South Africa.
– Lauren Dixon-Paver, Senior Social Art Director at BOUNDLESS.
– Duduzile Ngomane, Creative Director at CREACHA.
– Jenna Chisnall, Co-Founder and Director at Fenix Marketing.
– Rob Garden, Creative and Communications Director at Mscsports.

This is the final week to lock in the standard entry fee rate. Submit your work before the window closes on 3 July, midnight.

Need a little extra time to perfect your entries? No problem. The late entry fee phase runs from 6 July to 17 July, midnight (a 10% surcharge applies).

Meet the 31 faces behind the scores, and enter the awards here.

WESBANK NEW GENERATION AWARDS
https://www.newgenawards.co.za/

Why Mid-Sized Companies Are Turning To Fractional Marketing Leadership

By

Modern Marketing

-

July 2, 2026

Why Mid-Sized Companies Are Turning To Fractional Marketing Leadership — Bernard Jansen, Firejuice.

Bernard Jansen, Fractional CMO at Firejuice, traditional approaches to scaling businesses are undergoing a fundamental transformation as forward-thinking companies increasingly shift to flexible, fractional leadership models. This global workforce trend is most pronounced in the marketing sector, where international data reveals that open listings for fractional roles heavily outpace the available talent pool.

The Shift In Management Reality

Traditionally, when business owners think of marketing, they picture creative advertising, social media posts, or vibrant campaigns. Because these are the only visible outputs, it is easy to treat the entire discipline as a purely tactical exercise.

Focusing entirely on the creative outputs, however, means many companies overlook the internal leadership needed to orchestrate everything effectively. Without strategic direction, even the most enthusiastic marketing efforts fragment, leading businesses to write off the function as a fruitless expense.

This exact breakdown in marketing operations is driving a major realisation among privately owned companies. Entrepreneurs are starting to see that when marketing fails, it is rarely a creative failure. Instead, they are realising that the function also requires professional, executive-level management to succeed.

Three Pillars Of High-Performance Marketing Management

To turn marketing into a reliable engine for growth, businesses must look beyond creative execution and focus on structural discipline. That means mastering three core management functions:

Organising and elevating external suppliers: Marketing partners, whether they are specialised agencies, independent contractors, or freelancers, need strict project management to thrive. Strong management involves selecting providers based on specific strengths, enforcing clear timelines, and offering rigorous feedback to keep outputs aligned with business objectives.

Tracking real results over fiction: Modern marketing depends on a practical, clear-eyed look at what truly works. Effective leadership means implementing simple software tools and dashboards to closely monitor performance, allowing the business to tweak campaigns based on hard facts rather than gut feel or guesswork.

Streamlining rigorous, repeatable processes: True marketing management relies on methodically integrated operational habits. This includes replacing verbal instructions with thorough, written creative briefs, maintaining strict cost-tracking systems, and delivering transparent performance reviews to the executive team.

Bridging The Leadership Gap Fractionally

Establishing the necessary structural controls to drive effective marketing presents a dilemma for medium-sized enterprises. Building a high-performance marketing engine requires seasoned, executive-level experience. Yet most privately owned companies lack the budget or the ongoing workload to justify hiring a full-time, veteran Chief Marketing Officer, so they need a different model.

To fill the leadership void, business structures are moving towards fractional leadership. A Fractional CMO steps into the business as a part-time executive, taking true ownership of the marketing function with explicit accountability. In this model, strategic leadership and executive guidance enter the company without the massive financial commitment or long-term baggage of a traditional executive hire.

Ultimately, tangible marketing results depend as much on expert management as on brilliant execution. Building an effective marketing function requires the right leadership to steer strategy, processes, software, and suppliers in the same direction, effectively closing the gap between strategy and execution. The fractional CMO model now offers even the smallest business the opportunity to manage its marketing as it should be.

FIREJUICE
https://firejuice.co.za/

How To Build More Effective Social Media Strategies

By

Modern Marketing

-

July 2, 2026

How To Build More Effective Social Media Strategies — Dan Brocklebank, Second Rodeo.

When social media campaigns underperform, the algorithm or creative often gets the blame. But according to Dan Brocklebank, Strategy Director: Content and Editorial at Second Rodeo, the real issue often lies elsewhere.

The real challenge usually rears its head after the reporting cycle. Performance data gets shared, the next month’s content is planned and somewhere along the way, the connection between what the data is telling us and the decisions that follow breaks.

It is an easy gap to miss because everything looks like it is working. Most social media campaigns already have reporting in place. The hard part is making sure those conversations actually change what happens next. When they do not, creative takes the fall in trying to fix something it cannot.

Social media moves quickly, and agencies are built to keep pace. There is not always time to stop and ask a simple question: are last month’s results actually shaping what happens next?

So over the past 10 months, we decided to try something different. Working with a client in the South African financial services sector, we introduced what we call an Editorial Board. Once a month, we looked at the performance data before a single new content brief was written. Those conversations shaped what we did next. When the following month’s results came in, we could see whether those decisions had made a difference.

It was not long before the impact started showing up in the data. Reach increased significantly, follower growth often beat its annual target ahead of schedule and share of voice moved from outside the top ten to inside the top three. Net sentiment also reached its highest recorded level during the campaign.

Looking back now, what stands out is not any single metric. It is how much changed once every month’s performance became the starting point for the next month’s planning. Run a campaign like this for long enough and you start to see patterns that strategy-level thinking tends to miss.

Consistency Beats Campaign Chasing

Early on, the engagement numbers were pretty basic. By the second half of the campaign, they had settled into a much stronger rhythm, with the final three months all performing above the fourteen-month average.

It was not one standout campaign that made the difference. It was turning up month after month with content people genuinely wanted to spend time with. Over time, that consistency seemed to build a habit. People kept coming back, and the algorithm noticed too.

Every Platform Plays By Different Rules

Every platform measures success differently because people use them differently. Looking at one big set of numbers can hide what is really happening. Looking at each platform on its own gives you a much clearer picture of what is working, what is not and where your attention needs to go next.

It is probably not the most exciting part of social media strategy, but it is where a lot of better decisions begin. The simple things still matter most

The content that consistently performed well was not especially complicated. It had a clear purpose, worked for the platform it appeared on and made the next step obvious.

When people were not sure what they were being asked to do, they usually did nothing. A post might generate plenty of impressions or views, but those numbers do not mean much if they are not leading to the behaviour you want.

By the end of the campaign, we realised that understanding what we wanted people to do before moving straight into creating new content changed the quality of the work we were doing.

One thing we did not expect was how quickly the conversation about brand and performance started to change. They are often treated as two different conversations, even though they are both trying to understand the same audience. We found they became much easier to balance when we looked at them through the same lens.

The brand still shaped the content, while the performance data helped us decide what to do next. We spent less time debating opinions and more time looking at what the audience was telling us. That shift also changed the way we thought about planning. Every month started with what we had learned from the last one, instead of beginning with a blank page.

If there is one question I would encourage marketing teams to ask, it is this: What happens between your reporting meeting and your next content brief?

You do not need a new platform or another reporting dashboard. Start by making sure last month’s performance genuinely influences next month’s work. Build that into the way your team plans, so reviewing performance becomes part of the creative process instead of something that happens after the work is done.

For us, that shift was the turning point. It did not replace the campaign’s creativity, it just gave it a fighting chance.

SECOND RODEO
https://www.secondrodeo.co.za

AI-Generated Code Often Lacks Security Controls And Architectural Discipline

By

Modern Marketing

-

July 1, 2026

AI-Generated Code Often Lacks Security Controls And Architectural Discipline — Adolf Lategan, CTO, Rogerwilco

The rise of vibe coding has all the hallmarks of a technology gold rush. Adolf Lategan, CTO, Rogerwilco, says businesses should favour good architecture over good vibes, and discusses what the latest Drupal Advisory teaches us about building for the long-term.

With AI tools now capable of generating websites and applications from a simple prompt, businesses are being sold a seductive vision of faster delivery, lower costs and less reliance on specialist developers. Beneath that hype, though, a real security problem is forming.

Recent research from Escape.tech examined more than 5,600 publicly deployed AI-generated applications and found over 2,000 high-impact vulnerabilities, alongside hundreds of exposed secrets. Building software has never been easier. Building software that is secure, scalable and maintainable over time remains as hard as ever.

AI-generated code is increasingly common in websites and applications that clients ask us to maintain or improve. It usually works, doing what it was designed to do, but it often lacks the security controls, architectural discipline and long-term maintainability a business-critical system needs.

This is not a criticism of AI. These tools are genuinely useful for prototyping and accelerating development. The problem starts when a working proof of concept gets mistaken for a production-ready solution. When we run security scans across inherited code, vibe-coded sites tend to light up like a Christmas tree, with issues flagged across the codebase. Often, it is faster and safer to start again than to fix what is there.

Why The Platform Underneath Still Matters

For most businesses, a website is far more than a marketing asset. It stores customer data, integrates with internal systems, supports revenue generation and often serves as the primary point of contact with customers and stakeholders. These deserve the same governance, security and ongoing maintenance as any other critical business infrastructure.

This is where mature platforms like Drupal continue to prove their value. While it powers a relatively small share of the web overall, Drupal remains the open-source content management system of choice for many government departments, universities and financial institutions, all organisations with the least room for error.

On 20 May 2026, the Drupal security team issued advance notice of a highly critical update to its core architecture. As is standard practice, organisations were given a release window rather than technical detail, so attackers could not get ahead of the patch.

That window fell at 7pm South African time. We had 21 enterprise client sites to secure. As each patch landed between 7pm and 11pm, our team reviewed, implemented, peer-reviewed and tested it within 45 minutes. Our environments turned out to be largely unaffected by the underlying vulnerability, but that was never the point. Every site was secured before attackers had a realistic opportunity to exploit the vulnerability.

That response was not luck. It was the product of established systems, proven processes and a team that treats security as a discipline, not an afterthought. Security is not about reacting once something goes wrong. It is about being ready before it does.

AI Is A Tool, Not A Strategy

None of this is an argument against AI in development but we feel its most valuable uses sit outside code generation. Documentation, testing, troubleshooting and knowledge-sharing consume a significant share of any project’s lifecycle, and that is exactly where AI is proving its worth.

AI-assisted documentation has lifted the quality and consistency of our project records. AI is often better at spotting bad code or security issues than at writing clean code itself. Visual testing, traditionally one of the slowest parts of quality assurance, now moves much faster, freeing developers to focus where it matters most.

Used this way, AI sharpens the judgement of an experienced team. Used as a substitute for expertise, architecture and governance, it creates new risk rather than removing it.

Choosing The Right Foundation

Out-of-the-box website builders have their place; they get something online fast, and for the right use case, that is genuinely valuable. But Drupal is a different kind of decision, an investment in not having this same conversation again in two years. Think of it as the difference between building a property you can extend as you grow and renting a pop-up tent you will inevitably outgrow.

The recent advisory should not cause alarm. It is a reminder to ask: who is responsible for monitoring your platform? How quickly could you respond if this happened tomorrow? Do you actually have visibility into your own digital risk?

Too many organisations have traded long-term digital thinking for template-driven shortcuts. Security is the most visible symptom. Originality, resilience and sustainable growth all require investment in doing things properly rather than simply copying what everyone else is doing.

AI can accelerate development. But speed should never be mistaken for safety. For businesses that take security seriously, good architecture will always matter more than good vibes.

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