Three AI-Powered Strategies For South African Retail

July 15, 2026

Driven by intense macroeconomic pressures, consumers in South Africa are actively rewriting the rules of the omnichannel shopping journey. Globally, AI usage has hit 70%, driven not by casual first-time experimenters, but by competent, habitual users. This behaviour is directly shaping how they shop. To meet growing AI usage among consumers, South African brands and retailers need to reinvent themselves as AI-competent and confident.

Using AI-powered strategies and new consumer trends from Google and Ipsos, here is how brands and retailers can improve AI maturity, meet evolving shopping behaviours, and increase sales.

1. Meet Generation Gaps: Utility vs. Inspiration

How people use AI for shopping depends heavily on their age. In the shopping journey, Millennials lead on using AI for automated shopping such as monthly grocery or pet food refills, and for data-rich answers for longer queries. Meanwhile, Gen Z uses it for inspiration and discovery for events or special occasions.

Furthermore, 22% of shoppers use AI to make better choices when hit with decision fatigue, and 21% use it for personalised recommendations such as meal inspiration for vegans; a trend driven significantly by both Millennials and Gen Zers over older demographics.

Solutions: AI Max And Creative Variety

Meeting double intent: Supercharging Search campaign with AI Max will automatically match the right creative asset to the Gen Z searcher, while delivering price-and-utility messaging to the Millennial planner, satisfying both types of intents simultaneously.

Creative asset variety: Create a bank of high-quality creatives with Asset Studio. This will support AI Max campaigns in capturing both types of shoppers. Lifestyle images, user-generated content, and short-form videos will help convert Gen Z searchers while reviews, pricing data, product specifications and FAQs will give research-based queries data-rich answers for Millennials.

2. Navigate The Cost-Of-Living Squeeze: The Cost-Conscious Budgeter

South Africans are facing severe inflation and cost-of-living constraints, making the country the fourth most price-first country globally, tied with the U.S.

A staggering 87% of consumers are strongly prioritising budgeting and financial savings, which is reflected in their online activity. Driven by drastic increases in petrol prices, search interest for ‘South Africa fuel price forecast‘ spiked an astronomical 28X in late May 2026.

To mitigate these transport and living costs, consumers are actively looking for ways to tighten their spending, such as cooking at home instead of eating out.

– Ad messaging: Instead of generic product ads, deploy upper-funnel campaigns built around local budgeting thresholds. For example: ‘Meals Under R50’ or ‘The Ultimate Grocery List for a Strict R2,500 Monthly Budget’ supported by a shoppable catalogue, so that customers can buy the entire list immediately.
– Keyword targeting and smart bidding: Using broad match and smart bidding, generalised, informational keywords about personal budgeting and cost-saving hacks will inform the algorithm. This will find users whose digital footprints signal that they are planning their household budgets right now.

3. Retain The Fickle Consumer: When Brand Loyalty Is Swapped For A Discount

An astonishing 54% of consumers across four verticals (grocery, consumer electronics, clothing and home) made a purchase at a brand-new store they had never shopped at before within the last month, with price cited as the top driver for brand-switching.

Concerningly, traditional loyalty programmes are failing to act as a defensive moat. Having a loyalty subscription is ranked second-to-last as a reason for choosing a specific retailer.

Solutions: First-Party Data And Proof Of Trust

– Predictive refills with consented first-party data: Feed customer data from a loyalty programme into performance campaigns. If the data shows a customer buys a specific brand of baby formula every 30 days, campaigns can automatically serve them tailored reminders or automated click-to-refill ads at day 25 across search, social, and email.
– Review integration: Nearly half of consumers (49%) agree that reviews strongly influence their final purchase decision. Retailers can use dynamic creative optimisation to pull five-star customer reviews from their website and inject them directly into their ad creatives.

IRVINE PARTNERS
www.irvinepartners.co.za

Airports Are Presenting Better Opportunities For Advertisers

Modern Marketing

July 15, 2026

Airports Are Presenting Better Opportunities For Advertisers

Major infrastructure investment and new direct routes are turning regional airports into high-value gateways for travellers, brands and local economies. A wave of capital spending at regional airports across George, King Phalo International Airport, Upington International Airport, Chief Dawid Stuurman International, Bram Fischer International Airport and Kimberley is reshaping how, and where, we fly, with knock-on implications for brands wanting to reach travellers beyond the country’s traditional major hubs.

These airports are becoming high-attention environments in their own right, offering brands access to business and leisure audiences in premium, high-dwell spaces that are often less cluttered than larger transport environments.

The scale of investment is hard to overstate. Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) is rolling out a R22 billion capital programme that touches nearly every airport on this list. George Airport, gateway to the Garden Route, handled more than 911 000 two-way passengers in 2025, an 11% jump on the previous year, and is now operating at full capacity. ACSA has earmarked roughly R310 million to double the terminal’s capacity to around two million passengers annually, with construction due to start in October 2026.

Mzukisi Deliwe, Director of Airport Ads, said, ‘For brands targeting leisure travellers, second-home owners, local business operators and the wider Garden Route tourism economy, George’s expansion will create more visible points of engagement with travellers who have disposable spend and time in the environment.’

In the Eastern Cape, King Phalo Airport in KuGompo City is heading into its centenary year backed by a R450 million modernisation and a separate R213 million runway overhaul. Passenger numbers climbed sharply over the 2025 peak season, with the airport processing about 90 000 arriving and departing passengers, up from 83 000 the year before.

As passenger volumes rise, airports such as King Phalo become more commercially relevant for brands wanting to reach regional business travellers, families, holidaymakers and returning residents in a setting where attention is less fragmented than in many traditional media environments.

The biggest single project is in Gqeberha, where Chief Dawid Stuurman International Airport is undergoing a R4.6 billion, five-year upgrade, described as the city’s largest infrastructure investment since it hosted matches during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The terminal will be expanded to handle up to 3.5 million passengers a year, while current annual traffic already stands at around 1.5 million.

Further west, Upington International Airport, home to the Southern Hemisphere’s longest runway, continues to attract global automotive manufacturers for extreme-climate vehicle testing, alongside a growing solar energy footprint.

The latest passenger data shows where that momentum is concentrating. Inland regional airports posted some of the strongest domestic growth in ACSA’s network in April 2026: Upington International Airport and Bram Fischer International Airport each grew domestic passengers 11% year-on-year, Kimberley climbed 6%, and Gqeberha’s Chief Dawid Stuurman posted a 6% increase. International travel also grew, up 2% year-on-year across ACSA’s major gateways. George and King Phalo, both mid-upgrade, remain ahead on a full-year basis following 2025’s record passenger growth.

These numbers point to the growing value of regional reach. As passenger growth becomes less concentrated around the traditional metropolitan hubs, brands have an opportunity to follow travellers into environments that are closer to the point of destination, decision-making and local spend.

Deliwe said, ‘Regional airports are no longer simply feeder routes to the big hubs. They are becoming destinations and gateways in their own right, with passenger growth and infrastructure investment to match. For advertisers, that means new opportunities to reach valuable audiences closer to their destination, when travel decisions and local spending are often top of mind.’

For brands and marketers, the shift matters because it changes who is reachable, and where. Regional airports serve audiences that have historically been difficult to target through traditional out-of-home or airport networks, including Garden Route holidaymakers, Eastern Cape business travellers and decision-makers, Free State and Northern Cape travellers, and a new wave of flyers using direct regional routes for the first time. These passengers often spend meaningful dwell time in smaller, less cluttered terminals, and travel through environments where they’re already thinking about meetings, accommodation, local experiences, retail, restaurants and transport.

Each of these airports also anchors a distinct regional economy, from tourism in the Garden Route, surf tourism and business growth in KuGompo City, and the automotive and university economy in Gqeberha, to renewable energy and industrial testing in Upington, inland business and government travel through Bloemfontein, and mining, agriculture and heritage tourism around Kimberley.

‘Brands do not have to view these airports in isolation. The value lies in being able to build a presence across multiple regional gateways as travel patterns decentralise and these audiences become more visible.’

As ACSA’s capital programme continues to roll out over the coming years, the media opportunity will mature with it. For brands, the timing is important: regional airport advertising still offers uncluttered access to emerging travel audiences, but that advantage will narrow as investment, passenger growth and route expansion draw more attention to these spaces, ‘The brands that move early will be better placed to own these gateways as they become busier, more connected and more commercially competitive.’

AIRPORT ADS
https://airport-ads.com

AI Is Only As Good As The Data On Which It’s Trained

Modern Marketing

July 15, 2026

Generative AI is transforming how marketing ideas are developed, adapted, and scaled. But real advantage comes from creative that is most relevant, resonant, and connected to the people it is designed to reach.

The brands creating the strongest creative outcomes are increasingly combining the power of AI with the power of community. They’re using participation as intelligence, turning cultural signals into activation, and building creative systems that continuously learn from the audiences they serve. This creates an ‘intelligence loop’ that gives brands a compounding creative advantage.

New research by WARC and LIONS Advisory, in partnership with TikTok, explores how community intelligence is reshaping creative success in the age of AI, and why the future advantage belongs to brands that can learn, adapt, and create alongside culture as it unfolds.

Lexi Wolf, Head of Thought Leadership, LIONS Advisory said, ‘WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit 2026 found that belief in the effectiveness of demographic segmentation is waning. Yet this study with TikTok found that demographics were still the number one input marketers used to brief AI. Meanwhile, participatory media environments are giving us something far richer: real-time signals from people who search, comment, share, remix, create and buy.

‘The opportunity isn’t to make the existing system faster. It’s to build a better one: one that helps brands learn from people more continuously, respond with greater speed and relevance, and turn efficiency into effectiveness over time.’

Andy Yang, Global Head of Creative & Brand Ads, TikTok said, ‘The brands winning today are not the ones using AI to generate the most content. They are the ones learning the fastest from the people they serve. We call it cultural intelligence, and it is fast becoming advertisers’ most durable competitive advantage.

‘Yet the research for this report shows that most brands are briefing powerful AI creative tools with weak inputs: static demographics and legacy assumptions, resulting in creative that scales efficiently but fails to connect. The future belongs to brands that close the loop by creating alongside culture, not behind it.’

Methodology

The research includes findings from a survey of 400 marketers across the UK, US, Australia, and Brazil, conducted in May 2026. All respondents are directly involved in decisions about how marketing creative and content are produced. Additionally, a series of interviews with senior marketers and industry experts was carried out, combined with a review of WARC and TikTok’s global data, industry knowledge, and examples.

Key takeaways outlined in ‘The new creative advantage: How community signals are reshaping creative success in the age of AI’ study are:

In the age of AI, community insights are becoming even more valuable

Most marketers (90%) agree that AI has quickly become part of the creative toolkit. However, while 88% of marketers say Gen AI has increased creative volume, fewer than half (45%) say it has significantly improved quality.

Demographics remain the most common input when prompting AI, say 67% of marketers, despite 59% agreeing that traditional demographic segmentation is no longer effective, according to WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit 2026 survey. Only 17% of marketers always incorporate community or audience insights into Gen AI workflows.

As scaling creative becomes easier, the advantage is shifting to brands that are best at learning from community insights and use AI to turn live human understanding into more relevant, resonant creative action. Most marketers (86%) say audience behavior and community signals will influence creative development more in the next three years.

Marcos Angelides Managing Director L’Oréal Lab & Head of AI Operations, Publicis Media said, ‘Where the advantage comes is the data that you use to train those models, because AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. You’ve got to have behavioral data. You’ve got to know what people actually do, not just what they said they do.’

The Intelligence Loop Turns Community Signals Into Creative Advantage

Most brands are chasing culture, only catching trends after they break. Participatory platforms surface shifts in behavior and cultural momentum while they are still emerging. Community participation continuously generates signals that help creative systems learn, adapt, and improve over time. This becomes an Intelligence Loop: a four-stage cycle in which community participation and AI creative reinforce each other over time:

1. Participation creates signals: Community engagement generates layered cultural and intent signals.
2. Signals reveal demand: Participation data surfaces leading indicators of emerging creative opportunity before it becomes explicit.
3. Demand shapes creative: Signals are routed into the AI briefing process, changing what the tool is working from.
4. Creative fuels participation: Resonant, community-informed work earns stronger engagement, generating fresh signals for the next cycle.

The real value of the Intelligence Loop is the strategic learning each cycle creates. Brands that feed those signals back into their next brief get sharper by creating improved briefs, more resonant creative, which in turn feed back into stronger product, brand and media decisions.

A Framework For Action: Introducing S.C.A.L.E.

The S.C.A.L.E. framework sets out five principles for using AI to accelerate the loop, from more precise briefs and creator partnerships to stronger governance, optimization and learning. Each step builds on the one before it.

S: Select: Align media and audience objectives first before briefing the AI, then use platform-native signals to shape what gets made.

C: Connect: Treat creators as intelligence sources, not distribution channels. AI-enabled creative systems can make this process more systematic, helping teams identify creators and creator content based on community fit, cultural relevance, and campaign goals, not just reach.

A: Anchor: Input strong, distinctive brand assets into AI to avoid the output looking like every other brand in the same category.

L: Lead: Brands should lead with internal governance by being transparent when using Gen AI, use clear guidelines, encoded before the brief, that make safety a structural feature rather than a last-minute check.

E: Evolve: Brands should treat every campaign as a live learning system and apply findings from one campaign to another. The brands building structural advantage with Gen AI treat measurement and creation as a single continuous process.

The new creative advantage: How community signals are reshaping creative success in the age of AI report is available to read in full here.

WARC
https://www.warc.com/

How Creativity Helps Shape South Africa’s Football Culture

Modern Marketing

July 15, 2026

How Creativity Helps Shape South Africa's Football Culture — As demand for authentic makarapas grew, so did opportunities for other artists.

Vicki Scheffel, Founder of Ge:Skenk, writes that in a country where a match has a way of bringing people together like very few things can, she believes the moments that unite us also create an opportunity to think differently about where our spending goes and who benefits from it.

Most of us have been a part of it. During a World Cup, the office becomes louder and conversations around the coffee machine start with last night’s match. Fridays are ‘wear your supporter jersey to work’ days. It’s also the perfect time for businesses to join in because gifting has never been more Proudly South African. Events ramp up, desk drops and hampers get teams excited, and branded merchandise is the order of the day.

I love seeing it and being a part of it, but I’ve also realised that I look at it rather differently these days.

Watching the 2026 FIFA World Cup unfold has taken me back to a project I worked on ahead of the 2010 tournament. At the time, I was involved in the procurement for a campaign for a large international food brand. One of the client’s gifting ideas was a makarapa, a colourful hand-cut and hand-painted miners safety hard hat, and it really felt like the perfect choice. It celebrated something unmistakably South African and reflected the excitement surrounding the tournament.

Like many procurement projects, the job started with finding a supplier who could meet the brief. But it wasn’t until we began exploring different options that I realised we were making a much bigger decision than I first thought.

One promotional company recreated the makarapa using conventional manufacturing techniques. The finished product looked polished and carried the branding beautifully, meeting our every requirement.

The other option was to source authentic handcrafted makarapas from South African makers whose work had first given the makarapa its place in South African football culture.

As I spent more time understanding the people behind those creations, I came across the story of Alfred Baloyi, the entrepreneur widely recognised for transforming the decorated miner’s hard hat in 1979 into the colourful makarapa that became one of South Africa’s most recognisable football symbols. Long before the 2010 FIFA World Cup, he had built a successful business around that creativity, and as demand for authentic makarapas grew, so did opportunities for other artists working alongside him.

The more I learnt, the harder it became to see this as a straightforward supplier decision. We weren’t simply comparing two suppliers who could produce something similar; we were deciding whether the budget would support the people who had created the story.

That project completely changed my perspective. Now, whenever I see branded merchandise or client gifts for a major event, I find myself asking questions I probably wouldn’t have asked before. Who is already doing this work? Who has spent years developing the skills behind the product? If there is a genuine choice, what would it mean to place that order with them? What is the long-term impact a simple procurement choice can make?

I often think about that when I remember the completely unexpected South African craze that shook the 2010 World Cup: vuvuzelas.

Around 800,000 vuvuzelas were sold in South Africa during the tournament, with another one million sold internationally. Areport from 2010 estimates that up to 90% of those sold in our country were made in China. It’s an extraordinary number. Now imagine if more of those orders had consciously supported the businesses, makers and entrepreneurs whose creativity helped shape South Africa’s football culture instead.

That doesn’t mean every order belongs with a small business or a local artisan. The reality is that procurement is not that simple. Of course, there will always be commercial realities that influence the final decision, but believe impact deserves a place in the conversation whenever there is a genuine choice.

After the final whistle, shirts will be packed away, branding will come down, gifts will be given to kids or packed in a storage cupboard and the excitement will fade. But the businesses we chose to support will still be living, working, growing and, most importantly, sustaining themselves and the communities around them.

Every purchase order tells a story. I think it’s worth asking whose story we’re helping to write.

GESKENK
https://ge-skenk.co.za

The Success Of AI Will Ultimately Be Determined By Trust

Modern Marketing

July 15, 2026

The Success Of AI Will Ultimately Be Determined By Trust — Sujatha Iyer, ManageEngine.

Sujatha Iyer, Head of AI Security at ManageEngine, talks about how organisations can unlock greater value from AI by focusing on secure, well-governed, and transparent IT environments, while highlighting the importance of human oversight, data visibility, and cybersecurity as AI adoption accelerates across South Africa.

With organisations in South Africa preparing to mark AI Appreciation Day on 16 July, conversations around AI should turn their focus to a more important question: can organisations trust the systems that power it?

Across South Africa, businesses are increasingly using AI to improve operational efficiency, strengthen cybersecurity, support decision-making, and enhance customer and employee experiences. Yet, deploying AI is only one part of the equation. Its long-term value depends on whether it operates within environments that are secure, transparent, well-governed, and subject to clear human oversight.

As organisations accelerate their digital transformation, many are doing so against the backdrop of constrained budgets, legacy systems, skills shortages, and growing cyber risks. In these conditions, AI cannot be implemented as another standalone technology initiative. It must be built on the same foundations that support resilient IT operations: reliable data, strong security, governance, compliance, and enterprise-wide visibility.

‘AI has demonstrated the potential to transform the way organisations operate, but its success will ultimately be determined by trust. Businesses cannot simply layer AI onto fragmented systems and expect meaningful results,’ said Sujatha Iyer, head of AI security at ManageEngine.

‘They need visibility into their data, robust security controls, accountable governance, and human oversight from the start. When implemented responsibly, AI empowers people to make better decisions, improve operational resilience, and focus on higher-value work. Without those foundations, it risks amplifying existing challenges rather than solving them.’

TRIBECA
www.tribecapr.co.za

Communications Advisory Firm Announces Strategic Partnership

Modern Marketing

July 15, 2026

Communications Advisory Firm Announces Strategic Partnership

As investment into Africa continues to accelerate, organisations increasingly require more than regional communications support. They need experienced advisors who understand stakeholder complexity, policy environments, reputation risks and local market dynamics. The partnership responds directly to this growing demand by combining international strategic expertise with authentic local execution.

Johannesburg-based strategic communications and reputation advisory firm Inzalo Consulting has joined the United Partners Network (UPN) as its strategic communications partner for Africa, strengthening the global network’s ability to support organisations expanding across one of the world’s fastest-growing and most strategically important regions.

The appointment positions Inzalo as UPN’s gateway to Africa, combining the network’s international reach with Inzalo’s established Hub & Spoke operating model that provides coordinated communications support across South Africa and the continent through trusted local specialists. The partnership enables multinational organisations to execute communications programmes with global consistency while adapting strategies to the business, cultural, regulatory and media realities of individual African markets.

For Inzalo Consulting, joining United Partners Network provides access to a global ecosystem of independent communications agencies operating across more than 65 markets, creating new opportunities for collaboration, knowledge sharing and international client support. For UPN, the partnership significantly expands its capabilities across Southern, Eastern and Western Africa through an established network of experienced communications professionals.

Founded in Johannesburg, Inzalo Consulting advises organisations on strategic communications, reputation management and Value Intelligence™, helping leadership teams navigate complexity through market intelligence, stakeholder insight and senior strategic counsel. Its proprietary Hub & Spoke operating model combines central strategic oversight with experienced communications specialists across multiple African countries, delivering regional coordination with deep local expertise.

‘Joining United Partners Network represents an important milestone in Inzalo Consulting’s growth and reinforces our vision of helping organisations navigate Africa with confidence,’ said Bridget von Holdt, Founder of Inzalo Consulting.

‘Clients are no longer looking for agencies that simply execute campaigns. They are looking for trusted advisors who understand the commercial, political and cultural realities that shape reputation across African markets. This partnership allows us to combine our pan-African expertise with a truly global network, giving clients the best of both worlds: international strategic alignment supported by experienced professionals on the ground.’

Maria Gergova-Bengtsson, Founder and CEO of United Partners Network, said Africa has become an increasingly important market for organisations pursuing international growth.

‘Africa is central to our clients’ ambitions. With Inzalo Consulting, we can offer senior, on-the-ground expertise across the continent while maintaining the global consistency and quality our clients expect. Their deep understanding of African markets, combined with their strategic approach to communications, makes Inzalo an outstanding addition to our network.’

The partnership reflects a broader transformation within the communications industry, where specialist independent consultancies are increasingly collaborating across borders to deliver senior strategic expertise, agility and authentic local market knowledge. Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all models, organisations are seeking trusted partners who can deliver globally connected communications programmes with genuine local credibility.

Together, Inzalo Consulting and United Partners Network provide organisations with an integrated communications model that combines international reach with African insight, supporting multinational organisations entering African markets while enabling African businesses to access world-class strategic communications expertise through a trusted global network.

The partnership takes effect immediately, with both organisations collaborating on cross-border client opportunities, strategic advisory services, knowledge exchange and communications programmes that support sustainable business growth across Africa.

INZALO
https://inzalo.consulting

What Leaders Can Do To Protect Work That Builds Brands And Shifts Businesses

Modern Marketing

July 9, 2026

What Leaders Can Do To Protect Work That Can Build Brands And Shift Business — Roanna Williams and Fran Luckin, Boundless.

The Nedbank IMC has announced Fran Luckin and Roanna Williams, Co-Chief Creative Officers at Boundless, as speakers for its 2026 conference. Under the 2026 theme Shift Happens™, Luckin and Williams will deliver The Creative Shift: Why Brave Work Wins. Modern Marketing is a proud media partner.

The joint session will focus on how good ideas are weakened inside organisations and what leaders can do to protect work that can move people, build brands and shift business.

Their argument is direct: the industry does not have a creativity problem as much as a bravery problem. Too often, distinctive work is softened by caution, politics and over-processing before it ever reaches the people it is meant to influence. The event is taking place on 17 September 2026 at Mosaïek Teatro, Johannesburg.

Luckin, Co-Chief Creative Officer at Boundless, has spent more than 20 years leading creative departments and shaping brave work across South African agencies, including Grey South Africa and VML South Africa. She has judged at Cannes Lions, D&AD and other major international awards, and is recognised as the first South African female jury president at Cannes Lions. She is also a founding director of Open Chair, which helps more women move into leadership.

Williams, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Creative Officer of Boundless, is known for work that enters culture rather than simply fills media space. She has judged at Cannes Lions, The One Show, Clio Awards and other major creative platforms. As the first woman to chair the Creative Circle, she pushed for a braver, more diverse and less self-serious industry. She is also a director of Open Chair.

Together at Boundless, Luckin and Williams are building around a simple belief: the best ideas are rarely the safest ones. Their session will be relevant for marketers and business leaders who need work that is more distinctive, more effective and more culturally alive.

‘Luckin and Williams bring the kind of creative honesty marketers need right now,’ said Dale Hefer, CEO of the Nedbank IMC. ‘They know how great ideas are made, and how quickly they can be diluted. Their message is a sharp reminder that bravery is not a mood. It is a business skill.’

The Nedbank IMC 2026 will blend global insight with African context. Thousands of students will also attend virtually at no cost through the YOUTH1000 programme, in partnership with MASA.

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. The event is taking place on Thursday, 17 September 2026 at Mosaïek Teatro, Johannesburg or online. The full agenda is available here.

Win One Of 20 Virtual Tickets To Africa’s Biggest Marketing Conference

To stand a chance of winning a ticket, tell us in the comments of our Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn pages: What is the biggest shift affecting the marketing industry in 2026?

The 20 best answers chosen across all Modern Marketing social media platforms will win tickets. Competition closes 17 July.

Nedbank IMC
www.imcconference.com

Advice For Marketers On Navigating The Big Industry Shifts

Meggan McCarthy, Modern Marketing

July 9, 2026

Advice For Marketers On Navigating The Big Industry Shifts — Khensani Nobanda, Nedbank.

The theme of the 2026 Nedbank IMC is ‘Shift Happens™’. Media partner Modern Marketing interviewed Khensani Nobanda, Group Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Nedbank, about the shifts needed in marketing leadership, brand connection and more.

The shift to more valuable partnerships. What needs to change in the relationship between brands and their agencies to ensure it shifts from a transactional deal to a successful partnership?

Marketing leadership is no longer defined by the ability to communicate messages at scale. It is defined by the ability to build meaningful, emotional connections that inspire trust, loyalty, and long-term value. In an increasingly complex and competitive environment, brands must move beyond rigid, campaign-led thinking towards purpose-driven storytelling that reflects authentic values and resonates with consumers on a human level.

The relationship between brands and their agency partners must continue to evolve. The era of purely transactional, supplier-client engagements is over. The strongest partnerships are built on shared purpose, mutual accountability, psychological safety, and a commitment to co-creating value. When brands and agencies operate as strategic partners, challenging one another, sharing ownership of outcomes, and collaborating openly, they unlock greater creativity, deliver stronger commercial results, and build brands that endure in an increasingly dynamic marketplace.

Culture shifts rapidly. How do brands remain relevant as new generations reshape markets, culture and influence?

Brands stay relevant by maintaining cultural fluency, continually listening, learning, and responding to the values, behaviours, and influences shaping new generations. Rather than chasing every trend, they engage authentically in cultural conversations where they can contribute meaningfully and credibly. The brands that endure are those that successfully balance heritage with innovation, remaining both familiar and future-facing.

Can’t escape the AI shift. Some marketers are afraid that AI will take their jobs while others think it will magically do their jobs for them. What needs to shift in marketers’ approach to AI, and how do they ensure campaigns are not just more AI slop?

Marketers need to move beyond seeing AI as either a threat or a miracle solution and start treating it as a powerful tool that enhances productivity, personalisation, and decision-making. AI can make marketing faster and more responsive, but it cannot replace the distinctly human capabilities of strategic thinking, creativity, cultural understanding, and sound judgement that build meaningful brands. The campaigns that stand out will not be those that use the most AI, but those that combine AI’s speed and scale with authentic human insight, strong brand stewardship, and a clear understanding of what matters to customers.

The mindset shift. What are the fundamentally human challenges marketers face, and what needs to change so marketers can thrive?

The biggest challenges facing marketers today are increasingly human, not technological: consumer trust is declining, content overload is fuelling fatigue, and too many brands are competing for attention without creating meaningful distinction. To thrive, marketers must move beyond managing tools and become orchestrators of technology, creativity, and human insight, combining data-driven decision-making with empathy, cultural understanding, and authentic engagement. Success will belong to those who use AI to enhance, not replace, human creativity, building trusted relationships and memorable experiences that drive long-term growth.

Leadership approaches are shifting. What does the next chapter of marketing leadership look like?

The next chapter of marketing leadership is about driving growth at the intersection of data, creativity, technology, and customer insight, with marketing playing a central role in business strategy rather than a supporting one. It requires leaders who can build trust, and champion purpose, sustainability and inclusion as strategic growth drivers, and help organisations navigate constant disruption with confidence. Above all, successful marketing leaders will be those who remain true to their brand’s core purpose while continuously evolving how they connect with changing consumer needs and expectations.

What about when the ‘shift’ hits the fan? How do you recover from setbacks, and how do you guide your team through them, like the time when the campaign did not land the way you expected it to?

Setbacks are inevitable, whether it’s a campaign that misses the mark, a market shift nobody anticipated, or a strategy that delivers different results to what was expected. The key is to respond with curiosity rather than blame, understanding what happened, learning quickly, and using the insight to make better decisions going forward. As a leader, my role is to create an environment where teams feel safe to experiment, are accountable for outcomes, and resilient enough to adapt, because long-term success is built not on avoiding failure, but on how effectively you learn, evolve, and grow from it.

No shift in Nedbank’s support of the IMC. Why does Nedbank continue to support the IMC and what are you looking forward to most at the event?

Nedbank’s support of the IMC reflects our belief that marketing has a critical role to play in shaping business growth, consumer trust, and the future competitiveness of South Africa. The IMC remains one of the country’s most important platforms for bringing together industry leaders, thinkers, and practitioners to challenge conventional thinking, share new ideas, and elevate the impact of marketing as a strategic discipline.

What I look forward to most is engaging with diverse perspectives on how brands can navigate rapid technological, cultural, and economic change while continuing to create meaningful value for customers, businesses, and society.

Nedbank IMC 2026

Nedbank IMC
www.imcconference.com

Focus On Measurements That Reflect Real Impact For Brands

Modern Marketing

July 9, 2026

Focus On Measurements That Reflect Real Impact For Brands — Natascha Torres, iqbusiness.

According to Natascha Torres, Head of Digital Media Strategy at iqbusiness, 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.

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. 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 doesn’t 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

Sponsorship Is Evolving From Brand Visibility To Meaningful Consumer Experiences

Modern Marketing

July 9, 2026

Thato Matlhabegoane, Duma Collective.

Thato Matlhabegoane, Director of Partnerships, Sponsorships and Experience at Duma Collective, says consumers no longer measure sponsorship by logo placement or naming rights alone. They measure it by the experience a brand creates and the role it plays within moments that matter.

Take Heineken’s long-standing association with the UEFA Champions League, or how Rexona has built cultural relevance through strategic partnerships and purpose-led activations. These are not simply sponsorships; they are carefully curated platforms that have become synonymous with the experiences themselves.

This is where the conversation around sponsorship needs to evolve. Sponsorship has been viewed as a transactional exercise for a long time. Typically buying rights, securing visibility, and attaching a logo to a property. While awareness remains important, today’s consumers expect far more. They want meaningful engagement. They want brands to contribute to the experience rather than interrupt it.

As marketing budgets come under increasing scrutiny, the focus has shifted from exposure to effectiveness. The question is no longer, ‘How many people saw the logo?’ but rather, ‘How did this partnership move the brand forward?’ Did it drive affinity? Did it create cultural relevance? Did it earn attention rather than demand it?

The brands winning in this space are those that understand that partnership is not about presence but rather about participation. It is about strategically disrupting and placing your brand where it will be noticed, because consumers won’t remember if you don’t.

At its best, experience marketing creates a seamless intersection between a brand, a consumer and a cultural moment. When executed strategically, sponsorship ceases to feel like advertising and instead becomes an integral part of the experience itself. Consumers no longer see a sponsor; they see a brand that belongs.

This is particularly relevant in South Africa’s increasingly crowded events and entertainment landscape. Consumers have more choice than ever before. The differentiating factor is not simply showing up; it’s more about showing up with purpose. As specialists in this field, our task is not to place brands into culture. It is to identify where brands can credibly contribute to culture. The distinction is important.

The future of sponsorship lies in strategic partnerships that create mutual value for brands, rights holders, and audiences alike. It lies in identifying spaces where a brand has the right to participate and then building experiences that strengthen that connection.

DUMA COLLECTIVE
www.dumacollective.com

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