Building Genuine Strategic Partnerships With Agencies Drives Superior Business Outcomes

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June 24, 2026

Building Genuine Strategic Partnerships With Agencies Drives Superior Business Outcomes — Sean Devlin, Penquin.

Many brands spend months searching for the right agency, only to spend years treating them like suppliers. As businesses face mounting pressure to move faster, prove ROI and deliver consistent growth, agency relationships can often become reduced to a cycle of briefs, deadlines and deliverables.

While efficient on paper, Penquin’s Business Development Director, Sean Devlin, believes this approach frequently limits the very strategic thinking brands are looking for.

‘The biggest misconception many businesses have is that strategic value automatically comes with hiring an agency,’ he explained. ‘In reality, if an agency only receives a brief, they can only deliver against that brief. If you only share the brief, you will only ever get expected outcomes.’

According to Devlin, the most successful agency partnerships are built on something far deeper than project management. They are built on trust, transparency, context and shared accountability.

‘The brief is the starting point, not the solution,’ he said. ‘Great work comes from challenge, not just agreement. The best agencies do not simply execute instructions. They interrogate the brief, uncover the real business challenge and help clients solve problems they may not have fully identified yet.’

This shift from supplier to strategic partner requires commitment from both sides. For clients, it means providing agencies with greater visibility into business objectives, market pressures, commercial realities and long-term ambitions. For agencies, it means taking ownership beyond campaign delivery and being willing to challenge assumptions, ask difficult questions and contribute strategic thinking.

‘Dual accountability is critical,’ said Devlin. ‘Clients need to create an environment of openness and trust, while agencies need to earn their seat at the table by bringing insight, perspective and meaningful solutions.’

The result is often better work, stronger relationships and more sustainable business growth.

‘The more your agency understands your business, the more accountable they can be to your results,’ said Devlin. ‘You don’t get strategic value from a supplier relationship. You get strategic value from a partnership.’

As marketing landscapes become increasingly complex, Devlin believes brands should be evaluating agency relationships through a longer-term lens.

Too often, agencies are measured against individual campaigns, short-term outputs or isolated deliverables. While these metrics remain important, they can overlook the broader value agencies create when given the opportunity to contribute strategically over time.

‘The more your agency understands your business, the more accountable they can be to your results. Partnerships are about building momentum as much as they are about delivering campaigns,’ said Devlin. ‘When agencies have access to context and trust, they can help create consistency, identify opportunities earlier and contribute to stronger business outcomes over the long term.’

For marketing leaders looking to unlock greater value from their agency relationships, Devlin offers a simple piece of advice. ‘Stop treating the brief as the finish line,’ he said. ‘Treat it as the beginning of a conversation. Great work comes from challenge, not just agreement. The quality of the work is a reflection of the quality of the relationship behind it.’

As businesses continue to navigate an increasingly competitive marketplace, the brands that achieve the greatest success may not necessarily be those with the biggest agency rosters, but those that invest in building genuine partnerships with the agencies they choose to work with.

PENQUIN
https://www.penquin.co.za

Pepkor, Dentsu And CSA Create Access For Youth Into SA’s Expanding Creator Economy

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Modern Marketing

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June 24, 2026

Pepkor, Dentsu And CSA Create Access For Youth Into SA's Expanding Creator Economy

From Amapiano and fashion to comedy, gaming and township storytelling, creators have become some of South Africa’s most influential cultural voices. Yet while audiences continue to grow, many young creators remain excluded from the commercial opportunities their influence creates.

Recognising this gap, Pepkor’s FoneYam has partnered with the Dentsu School of Influence powered by CSA to help unlock the next generation of digital entrepreneurs and create new pathways into South Africa’s rapidly expanding creator economy.

The programme aims to shift the conversation from likes and followers to long-term commercial value, equipping creators with the skills needed to transform influence into enterprise.

For many aspiring creators, the challenge is not talent or ambition. It is access to technology, industry networks, mentorship and opportunity. And in today’s creator economy, access to technology is no longer a luxury. It is infrastructure.

FoneYam, a smartphone rental offering available at retail giants PEP and Ackermans, was created to make smartphone ownership more accessible through flexible and affordable solutions. Through this partnership, the brand is extending that commitment by helping young creators access opportunities within the digital economy.

From Creator To Entrepreneur

At the heart of the programme is ‘One Big Week’, an intensive creator accelerator where participants gain exposure to industry leaders, live business challenges and real-world brand engagement. The objective is simple: to help creators build sustainable businesses around their influence.

‘South Africa’s creator economy represents one of the country’s most exciting opportunities for youth employment and entrepreneurship,’ said Roxana Ravjee, CEO of dentsu South Africa. ‘Through the Dentsu School of Influence, we are giving young creators access to the skills, mentorship and opportunities required to build sustainable careers.’

Added Davin Phillips, Executive Director and Partner at CSA.global: ‘South Africa has no shortage of creative talent. What has been missing is the infrastructure to help that talent scale. This programme is about helping creators turn cultural influence into commercial opportunity and building careers, not just content.’

DENTSU

www.dentsu.com

The Future Of Agencies Isn’t Bigger Teams, It’s Sharper Ones

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Modern Marketing

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June 23, 2026

The Future Of Agencies Isnt Bigger Teams, Its Sharper Ones

Lucky Chery says before any agency relationship begins, more brands should ask who will actually do the work. Not who is in the credentials deck. Not who is in the pitch room. Not who appears in the case study after everything has gone well. Who is going to sit close to the business, understand the pressure, make the calls, carry the work and stay accountable when the real job begins?

That question matters because brands are no longer operating in a slow, predictable marketing environment. They are dealing with tighter budgets, faster competitors, more fragmented audiences, more demanding consumers and leadership teams that want proof that marketing is creating business value. The pressure on brand teams has changed. The agency model has to change with it.

For a long time, agencies asked clients to fit into their structures. A brand would sign with an agency and then inherit the team, the process, the layers and the pace of that agency. Sometimes it worked. Often, it created distance between the people making the decisions and the people doing the work. That distance is expensive.

It slows things down and dilutes the thinking. It creates too many handovers and too many places for accountability to disappear. It also makes it harder for the agency to become properly immersed in the client’s world, which is where the best work usually begins.

This is why bespoke, high-performance teams are going to become more important for brands that expect more from their agency partners.

A bespoke team is not a smaller version of a big agency model. It is not a loose group of freelancers pulled together at the last minute. It is a deliberate team built around a specific brand, a specific challenge and a specific standard of delivery. It starts with the client’s ambition and works backwards from there.

What does this brand need to win? What kind of thinking does the category demand? Where does the work need to be faster? Where does it need more depth? What level of senior leadership needs to be close to the account? What specialist skills are required from day one? Who has the right temperament for the pace of the business? These are the questions that matter.

For car brands for example, this thinking is especially important. Automotive is not a casual category. People do not wake up, see a clever line and buy a car on impulse. They research, they compare and they ask people they trust. They look for value, safety, design, performance, after-sales confidence and a sense that the brand understands their life.

That means the work has to do more than look good; it has to build belief. That kind of work needs the right team around it.

Talent is everywhere but focus is harder to find. A bespoke team works when talented people are given a clear problem, a clear role and a clear standard. It works when people know why they are in the room. It works when there are fewer layers between the thinking and the doing. It works when the client knows who is responsible and the agency knows there is nowhere to hide.

For brands, one of the biggest benefits of this model is that accountability becomes visible. In a large fixed structure, responsibility can sometimes disappear between departments. But a high-performance bespoke team has fewer hiding places and creates ownership. It makes standards easier to hold. It keeps the team close enough to the problem to solve it properly.

The second benefit is speed. Speed does not mean rushing work out the door. It means reducing unnecessary drag by ensuring that the right people are in the conversation earlier. It means decisions are made with context, not through endless relays. It means the team understands the brand well enough to move with confidence.

That matters because brands are competing in real time. A campaign that takes too long to make its way through the machine can arrive polished but irrelevant.

The third benefit is depth. When a team is purpose-built around a brand, it has a better chance of becoming immersed in that brand’s world. It understands the customer and category better. It understands the internal pressures better. Over time, that closeness creates sharper work because the team is not only responding to briefs but also helping the client see what the next brief should be.

The brands that win will be those with the clearest thinking, the sharpest teams, and the strongest partnerships. Because when the ambition is serious, the team behind it cannot be accidental.

LUCKY CHERY
https://www.linkedin.com/company/lucky-chery

How Brands Can Leverage World Cup Marketing Without Crossing Legal Boundaries

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Modern Marketing

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June 23, 2026

According to law experts Darren Olivier, Danielle van Deventer and Mandla Ngidi from Adams and Adams, few global events capture public attention like the FIFA World Cup™. It is important for businesses who are not sponsors but are seeking to capitalise on the excitement of the FIFA World Cup™ to strike a careful balance, leveraging the cultural moment without crossing legal boundaries.

For brands, such events present a unique opportunity to engage audiences, build visibility, and connect with consumers through the universal appeal of football. At the same time, the World Cup operates within one of the most tightly controlled commercial frameworks in sport. Sponsorship rights are sold at significant value, and the exclusivity granted to official partners is actively protected.

The Core Principle

The key distinction is straightforward but essential. Brands are free to market around football and the broader enthusiasm for the sport. However, they cannot market the World Cup itself unless they are an official sponsor or have obtained the necessary rights. Maintaining this distinction is central to avoiding both legal and reputational risk.

Why Caution Is Required

The commercial success of the World Cup depends heavily on official sponsorships. In return for their investment, sponsors receive exclusive rights to associate themselves with the event.

To protect this exclusivity, rights holders monitor marketing activity closely and enforce their rights rigorously. Campaigns that overstep the line may be challenged swiftly, often in a highly visible manner.

Consequences can include the immediate withdrawal of campaigns, legal proceedings, and reputational harm. In jurisdictions such as South Africa, additional regulatory frameworks may also apply, further restricting marketing that suggests an unauthorised association with major events.

Understanding Unauthorised Association

Unauthorised association arises when marketing creates the impression that a brand is linked to the World Cup, whether directly or indirectly. The assessment is not a technical legal exercise. Instead, it is based on how an ordinary consumer would interpret the message. If the overall impression is that the brand is an official partner or sponsor, the risk of infringement is high. This type of association can arise through explicit statements, but it can also result from more subtle cues, such as the overall look and feel of a campaign, its timing, or the themes it adopts.

Common Sources Of Risk

In practice, most problematic campaigns fall into a few recurring categories. One category involves suggesting a connection with the event, even where none exists. Another arises from the use of protected intellectual property, including event names, logos, slogans, or similar elements.

There is also the risk of so-called ambush marketing, which is a form of guerilla marketing. Guerilla marketing itself is a legitimate and widely accepted strategy, but ambush marketing sits at the point where such activity may or may not cross into unlawful conduct, depending on how it is executed. In the context of major sporting events, risk most commonly arises in four ways:

1. By intrusion into the event environment (for example, physical presence in or around stadiums).

2. By creating an impression of association with the event or its sponsors.

3. By using protected intellectual property such as event marks or imagery.

4. Through jurisdiction-specific legal restrictions that regulate event-related commercial activity.

Campaigns that fall within these categories are more likely to attract scrutiny, particularly where they create an overall impression of an unauthorised commercial link to the event.

A well-known example is the Bavaria Beer alleged ambush at the 2010 FIFA World Cup™. In this case, the Bavaria brand was not an official sponsor but allegedly arranged for a group of spectators to attend a match wearing coordinated orange dresses associated with its campaign. The dresses were allegedly designed to attract attention despite the absence of prominent branding, and the group was allegedly positioned in a way that ensured visibility during the televised match. The participants were ultimately removed from the stadium, and legal action followed against the organisers. While the campaign generated significant global publicity for the brand, it also attracted strong enforcement measures.

Increasingly, risk arises in online environments, where real-time marketing, targeted advertising, and the use of event-related hashtags can quickly create an impression of association.

Permissible Marketing Activity

Despite these restrictions, there remains significant scope for creative and effective marketing.

Brands may run campaigns that celebrate football as a sport and tap into the excitement surrounding major matches. The messaging with focus on the enjoyment of the game, fan culture, or shared experiences is generally acceptable, provided that it does not reference the tournament itself. Expressions of support for national teams are also permissible, particularly where they rely on general themes of national pride. However, care must be taken to avoid linking such support directly to the World Cup or specific fixtures.

Athlete endorsements can be effective, but they require care. Brands may feature players in campaigns, provided they avoid referring to the player’s participation in the tournament, specific matches, or opponents. However, focus should remain on the individual, not the event. Likewise, brands may engage audiences through general football-related content, internal activations, or viewing experiences, as long as these do not suggest a commercial link to the tournament.

Prohibited Marketing Practices

There are clear boundaries beyond which marketing activity is likely to be considered unlawful or to attract legal challenge.

The use of official event intellectual property is strictly reserved for authorised partners. This includes the event name, logos, trophies, slogans, and other distinctive elements associated with the tournament.

Marketing should also avoid any suggestion of sponsorship, endorsement, or official affiliation. Even indirect or ambiguous wording can create a misleading impression and give rise to legal issues. Promotional activity linked to the tournament is particularly high risk. Competitions, giveaways, or campaigns tied to matches or tournament outcomes may be interpreted as attempts to exploit the event’s commercial value. Social media presents additional challenges. The speed and visibility of online content can amplify risk, particularly where posts are linked to matches or use event-related terminology in a promotional context.

Areas Requiring Careful Judgement

Not all situations are clear-cut. Some forms of marketing sit in a grey area and require a more nuanced assessment.

Campaigns timed to coincide with key matches, influencer activity during the tournament, and player-related content released at peak moments of public interest can all increase the risk of perceived association. In these instances, a useful guiding question is whether the campaign feels like it is attempting to benefit from the event in a manner similar to an official sponsor. If so, caution is warranted.

Insights From Case Law

Judicial decisions across multiple jurisdictions provide useful guidance on how courts approach unauthorised association and ambush marketing in the context of major sporting events.

In FIFA v Metcash Trading Africa (Pty) Ltd (2009), the Pretoria High Court interdicted the distribution of ‘Astor 2010’ lollipops. Although the product did not expressly refer to the FIFA World CupTM, its packaging incorporated soccer imagery and elements of the South African flag in a manner that was held to create an indirect association with the tournament. The case demonstrates that even subtle visual cues, when viewed collectively, can result in unlawful association.

A similar emphasis on implied association appears in Australian Olympic Committee Inc v Telstra Corporation Limited [2017] FCAFC 4. In that matter, Telstra’s ‘I Go to Rio’ campaign was found to suggest a connection with the Olympic Games, despite avoiding explicit use of official Olympic branding. The court considered the overall impression created by the campaign and concluded that it conveyed a misleading message of sponsorship or affiliation.

The principle that certain event-related wording is strictly protected is illustrated in San Francisco Arts & Athletics Inc v United States Olympic Committee 483 U.S. 522 (1987). The United States Supreme Court upheld the Olympic Committee’s right to prevent the unauthorised use of the word “Olympic” in a commercial context. This decision highlights that certain names and descriptors associated with global sporting events may be protected to a degree that prohibits their use altogether without consent.

Courts have also shown a willingness to intervene in high-profile ambush marketing scenarios. While some campaigns attempt to operate at the margins of legality, the consistent trend is that where the overall impression is one of commercial association with a protected event, enforcement action is likely to follow.

Taken together, these cases confirm that the legal assessment goes beyond technical wording. Courts consider the overall impression created by the marketing, including visual elements, timing, and context. Even where no explicit reference is made, liability may arise if the campaign is perceived as trading off the reputation or commercial value of the event.

Practical Application

In practical terms, campaigns that focus on football in general, celebrate the sport, or engage with fans in a broad and non-specific manner are less likely to attract legal scrutiny. Conversely, campaigns that reference the World Cup, align closely with tournament fixtures, or incorporate promotional mechanics tied to the event are more likely to be challenged.

Where uncertainty exists, seeking legal input before launch remains the most effective way to mitigate risk.

The World Cup offers a valuable marketing opportunity, but it must be approached with care. The most effective campaigns are often those that embrace the spirit of football without attempting to appropriate the event itself. By remaining creative, authentic, and mindful of the legal framework, brands can successfully participate in the global conversation while avoiding unnecessary risk.

Adams & Adams
https://www.adams.africa/

The Conversationalist Era Has Arrived. Is Your Brand Ready?

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Modern Marketing

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June 19, 2026

Natalie Druion, Momentum Group.

Natalie Druion, Executive Head of Conversations at Momentum Group, says ‘I have been obsessed with stories for as long as I can remember. The longer I spend building brands, the more I realise this: a story told into silence is simply noise. It is the conversations that follow the response, the debate, the shared meaning that make a story matter.’

Right now the global marketing industry is gathered on the French Riviera for Cannes Lions, the biggest celebration of creativity our business has. Tens of thousands of delegates. Hundreds of stages. An ocean of rosé. And one question running underneath all of it: what actually makes creative work matter? Not reach. Not budget. Conversation.

It is telling that this year Cannes introduced a new Creative Brand Lion, rewarding brands that use creativity across the whole organisation to build lasting growth rather than chase a single campaign. Natasha Woodwal, the festival’s Director of Content, framed the 2026 programme around ‘new voices, new communities and new conversations’. The industry is finally naming the shift I have spent years living.

‘Most brands have mastered the telling, but very few have mastered the listening.’

We Are Drowning In Noise

The average consumer is exposed to thousands of brand messages every day. Across television, radio, social media, streaming platforms, outdoor advertising, and mobile devices, brands are competing for increasingly scarce attention, and yet many marketing teams still believe their campaigns are cutting through. Most are not.

We have become obsessed with reach, impressions, click-through rates, and conversion funnels. In the process, we have forgotten something fundamental: brands need to be interesting. Content has become wallpaper. Brands are talking. People are scrolling. The uncomfortable truth is that we have optimised ourselves into irrelevance.

The Creativity Crisis

Research tells us we’re born with 98% creativity. By adulthood, that number collapses to 2%.

Two percent. Somewhere along the way, marketing became less about curiosity and more about certainty. We stopped asking ‘what if?’ and started asking ‘what worked last quarter?’ The result is predictable. Much of today’s content looks the same, sounds the same, and delivers the same outcome: very little.

At the same time, people are engaging in thousands of conversations every day through WhatsApp groups, comment sections, DMs, podcasts, online communities, and face-to-face interactions. Yet many brands continue to treat their most powerful engagement channels as digital noticeboards. The opportunity is not to produce more content but to become part of the conversations people are already having.

Social Media Is Not A Billboard

Social media was never designed to be a broadcast channel. It is the world’s largest conversation platform. The brands winning today understand this. They are not asking, ‘How do we reach our audience?’ They are asking, ‘How do we create something with our audience?’ This shift represents a transfer of power.

Consumers are no longer passive recipients of marketing messages. They want participation, they want ownership, and they want to contribute to culture rather than simply consume it. The brands that understand this do not just build audiences. They build communities, and when communities reach scale, something more powerful emerges: fandom.

Fandom Is The New Brand Loyalty

Fandoms are earned, not bought. Think about the organisations and personalities that command extraordinary loyalty. They stand for something bigger than what they sell. Their communities share language, rituals, values, and identity. The same principle applies to brands.

Within Momentum Group, the #SheOwnsHerSuccess platform offers a compelling example. What began as a commitment to advancing women’s financial independence has evolved into a broader ecosystem of workshops, masterclasses, digital tools, funding initiatives, and resources. Its longevity has not come from a campaign budget, it has come from consistency.

People do not build emotional connections with campaigns; they build emotional connections with causes, communities, and convictions. Research consistently shows that younger generations increasingly expect brands to reflect their values and create opportunities for participation. For marketers, that represents one of the most underutilised opportunities available today. Building a fandom does not require massive budgets. It requires a clear point of view and the discipline to show up consistently over time.

Emotional Connection Is A Business Metric

This is where conversations become commercially valuable: when you analyse how people speak about a brand not just what they say, but how they feel you uncover insights that traditional performance metrics often miss. You begin to understand the anxieties, aspirations, frustrations, and victories shaping customer behaviour. You see the moments where trust is earned, strengthened, or lost. Tools such as sentiment analysis, topic mapping, and conversation monitoring are often viewed as reputation-management functions. In reality, they are empathy tools; they help brands understand context as they reveal where a brand can contribute meaningfully rather than interrupt unnecessarily.

Three Things Brands Need To Stop Getting Wrong

1. Stop Fence-Sitting

Brands cannot mean something to everyone. The organisations that create lasting relevance are willing to take a position. They understand their values, articulate them clearly, and consistently demonstrate them through action. Being brave does not mean being reckless. It means having the conviction to stand for something.

2. Stop Treating Communities Like Demographics

Audiences are not neat categories. The most vibrant communities are often complex, contradictory, and difficult to segment. They contain people with different motivations, identities, and perspectives. Brands that embrace that complexity build stronger relationships than those trying to force people into predefined marketing boxes.

3. Stop Broadcasting. Start Belonging.

The strongest communities are built through participation, they celebrate customer milestones, respond to content, invite collaboration and offer behind-the-scenes access. People do not want to feel like followers, they want to feel like insiders.

The Rise Of Smaller Communities

One of the most interesting shifts happening today is that meaningful engagement is increasingly moving into smaller, more focused spaces. Consumers are gravitating towards platforms and communities that feel more personal, more intentional, and more authentic. The success of platforms like Substack demonstrates this clearly. In a digital environment dominated by algorithms and endless feeds, people are actively choosing spaces built around direct relationships, trust, and shared interests. The lesson for brands is simple: meaningful engagement doesn’t require the largest audience; it requires the right audience.

Closer to home, Checkers Sixty60 demonstrates the power of this principle. What began as a grocery delivery service became something much bigger because customers genuinely loved the experience. The enthusiasm surrounding the brand wasn’t manufactured; it was amplified by people who felt emotionally invested in it. That is what happens when usefulness, consistency, and community intersect.

Five Principles For Modern Brand Builders

After years of building brand voices and managing conversations, five lessons continue to hold:

– Think like a producer. Consistency matters. Audiences love familiarity, provided it evolves over time.
– Act like a storyteller. Prioritise human moments over polished perfection. Authenticity is memorable.
– Edit like a detective. The strongest ideas survive scrutiny. Write freely, then refine ruthlessly.
– Experiment like a scientist. Protect a portion of your budget for testing. Innovation rarely emerges from certainty.
– Stay curious. Inspiration often comes from unexpected places. The most effective strategists remain lifelong students of people and culture.

The brands earning loyalty today are not necessarily the loudest, they are the most conversational. They understand that attention is earned through relevance, not volume. They recognise that community creates more value than reach. And they know that belonging drives behaviour more effectively than broadcasting ever could. The world is not getting quieter. Content volumes will continue to rise, and algorithms will continue to change. But brands that learn to listen, participate, and contribute meaningfully to the conversations shaping people’s lives will remain relevant long after the latest marketing trend has passed.

By Friday the Lions will be handed out and the Croisette will empty. The trophies matter for a week. The conversations a brand builds matter for years. That is the difference between winning a moment and earning a place in people’s lives. The rise of the conversationalist is not a trend; it’s a response to a world that has stopped listening to brands and started listening to each other.

MOMENTUM GROUP
https://www.momentumgroupltd.co.za/

CMO’s Can’t Ignore The Platform Shaping What AI Says About Your Brand

By

Modern Marketing

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June 19, 2026

Musa Kalenga, the Brave Group,

Musa Kalenga, CEO of the Brave Group, says for years, Reddit occupied an awkward corner of the marketing map: too chaotic to manage, too niche to justify a serious budget, too hostile to tolerate branded content. Most marketing teams treated it as a place to monitor occasionally and otherwise avoid. That instinct is now a liability.

Reddit is quietly becoming one of the most consequential inputs into how consumers discover and evaluate brands in the AI era. Understanding why requires a small detour into how large language models actually work.

How AI Learned To Think Like Reddit

The systems powering ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and the AI Overviews now embedded at the top of search results were trained on vast amounts of publicly available text. Reddit, with its billions of posts and comment threads spanning two decades of candid, specific, experience-driven human conversation, is among the richest sources of that training data.

Several of the largest AI developers have signed commercial licensing agreements with Reddit to formalise that access.

The consequence is significant. When a consumer asks an AI assistant which product to buy, which brand to trust, or what downsides no one mentions, the answer has been shaped in part by what Reddit communities have been saying about those categories for years. The official website, the press release, the carefully crafted product description: none of these carries the same weight as thousands of authentic peer conversations.

AI ‘Loves’ Reddit

As a result, AI experiences tend to reward content that looks like Reddit: problem-first, experience-driven, and debate-tested. Reddit threads begin with questions; replies are structured as answers; upvotes signal what the community considers credible. The platform is, in effect, a library of human judgment organised in exactly the same way AI systems are prompted.

There is a further dimension that many marketing teams have yet to absorb. Reddit threads regularly rank on the first page of Google results for relevant queries. A well-upvoted post recommending or condemning a product can persist at the top of search for months or years.

The lifespan of that influence vastly exceeds that of any paid campaign. One outdated complaint, one unresolved support incident handled badly in public: these can become disproportionately influential simply because they represent the most substantial public narrative available about a brand.

Dove And The Courage Of Radical Transparency

If the strategic case still sounds abstract, Dove’s r/eal Reviews campaign offers a concrete illustration of what engagement on Reddit’s own terms can achieve.

In early 2026, Dove launched a campaign for its Intensive Repair 10-in-1 Serum Hair Mask built on a premise that most brand safety teams would have rejected outright. The brand invited Redditors to try the product and share their honest opinions. It then promised to publish the first 50 reviews verbatim, without curation, and to use those unedited consumer voices as the creative itself across out-of-home billboards in New York City and across social media.

The reviews were exactly what you would expect from a platform built on candour. Most were enthusiastic. One reviewer noted that the mask smelled, in their words, like expired hotel shampoo. That review made the campaign.

Reddit’s Bottom-Line Results For Unilever

The results were remarkable: more than one billion impressions, hour-long queues at a Manhattan sampling pop-up, over 150 pieces of user-generated content, a meaningful lift in large language model search results for Dove Hair during the campaign period, and high single-digit growth in Unilever’s Hair Care category in the first quarter of 2026.

Emily Barfoot, Head of Dove US for Beauty and Wellbeing, frames the strategic logic with precision: ‘Transparency was not a risk. It was our strategy.’ She noted that Dove’s own research showed 71 per cent of consumers use Reddit to research brands before purchase decisions, and that the platform’s growing influence on AI and LLM outputs makes it not just culturally relevant but strategically critical.

What made the campaign work was not a clever media execution. It was the recognition that Reddit is a culture, not a channel. The brand integrated Reddit’s own Snoovatars into the campaign creative. It listened before it broadcast. It respected the community’s norms rather than attempting to override them.

The Trust Gap That Paid Media Cannot Close

The Dove campaign is not an isolated case study. It reflects a structural shift in how consumer trust is built and lost. The Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 found that peer recommendations now outrank paid advertising by 28 percentage points in consumer trust, and that gap is widening.

Companies with strong communities grow revenue 2.1 times faster than those without, according to separate research, with every pound invested returning an average of five pounds across acquisition, retention and reduced support costs.

For CMOs, the practical implications are becoming harder to defer. Specialist Reddit marketing agencies are now being formally recognised by industry bodies. Senior community roles at technology firms command salaries of $170,000 to $220,000. The title of Chief Community Officer has begun to appear on executive org charts. These are not vanity signals; they reflect belated recognition that community is a strategic function, not a marketing subtask.

What This Means For Marketing Leaders

The starting point is not a Reddit campaign. It is a Reddit audit. Identify which subreddits function as decision hubs in your category. Understand what consumers consistently say about your brand when no one from your company is in the room. Map the misconceptions that recur, the competitors being recommended in your place, and the unofficial truths that AI systems are absorbing and repeating. Only then does participation make sense.

The strategic mindset shift required is subtle but important. The question is not how to run Reddit as a channel. It is how to participate in the conversations that are already shaping your category narrative.

Brands that approach the platform as a distribution mechanism for existing messaging will earn distrust. Those who approach it as a reputation layer, one that requires patience, authenticity, and genuine contribution, can earn something far more durable.

In the age of AI-mediated discovery, understanding Reddit may matter as much as any line in your media plan. The platform is no longer where conversations about your brand end up. Increasingly, it is where the machines form their opinions about you.

Whether you are part of that conversation is, for the first time, genuinely optional. The consequences are not.

BRAVE GROUP
https://bravegroup.co.za

Infobip Positioned Furthest By Gartner For Completeness Of Vision For Second Year Running

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Modern Marketing

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June 19, 2026

Infobip Positioned Furthest By Gartner For Completeness Of Vision For Second Year Running

Infobip has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS)1 for the fourth consecutive year. For the second time, the company is positioned furthest for Completeness of Vision. Infobip views the Gartner recognition as a reflection of the company’s sustained ability to anticipate what comes next, not chase what is trending today.

Two decades ago, Infobip began with a simple mission: use technology to bring people closer together. What has followed is a consistent pattern of building ahead of the market, moving from SMS to omnichannel communications, then conversational AI, and now with the launch of Infobip AgentOS, bringing agentic AI to enterprise scale.

Infobip AgentOS enables businesses to deploy AI agents that autonomously handle transactions, manage routing, and optimise workflows in real time, safely and at scale, with less manual intervention and faster execution than before. Rather than forcing enterprises into rigid workflows, Infobip enables customers to compose exactly the capabilities they need, unlocking use cases that simply weren’t possible before.

Read a complimentary copy of the Gartner CPaaS Magic Quadrant 2026 report here.

1) Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Communications Platform as a Service by Lisa Unden-Farboud, Pankil Sheth, Ajit Patankar, 18 May 2026.

INFOBIP
www.infobip.com

How To Ensure Your Brand Shows Up In AI-Generated Search Results

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Modern Marketing

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June 19, 2026

Thelma Ngoma-Mavhunga, senior communications specialist at Flow Communications, says many people now receive direct answers from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, or through AI-generated summaries embedded in search results. This new reality changes what ‘visibility’ means in practice. It is no longer only about ranking, it is about whether your brand is part of the answer at all.

Google’s AI Overviews, which it has rolled out across search, make this shift visible. Instead of showing only links, Google generates a summary at the top of the page in response to some queries.

A Pew Research Center study published in July 2025 analysed the browsing activity of 900 adults and found that users clicked on traditional search results in only 8% of searches where an AI summary appeared, compared to 15% where there was no summary. Clicks on links inside the AI summaries were even lower, accounting for only 1% of visits. The findings suggest that when users receive a complete answer upfront, many do not continue beyond the summary.

That matters for brands. Fewer clicks mean fewer chances to shape how you are understood through content housed on your own platforms.

For South African corporates, this shift builds on an already competitive digital environment. Traditional search engine optimisation, media coverage and social media posting remain important marketing tools, but they no longer guarantee your visibility inside AI-generated responses.

GEO And How AI Systems Decide What Shows Up

Understanding how AI systems generate answers to search queries is the starting point. This is where Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) becomes relevant. It looks at how brands appear in AI-generated answers, not only where they rank in search results.

According to OpenAI, large language models are trained on large volumes of publicly available text. When answering a question, many AI tools pull real-time information from the internet to improve accuracy. In both cases, the output reflects what is already most present and consistent in the public record. Brands that appear frequently and across credible sources are more likely to be referenced in AI search results. Brands with fragmented or contradictory records are more likely to be misrepresented or ignored. This puts pressure on brands to pay closer attention to something most organisations underestimate: consistency.

If a brand is described differently across press releases, outdated bios, scattered reports and inconsistent media coverage, AI systems are more likely to produce incomplete or uneven summaries. This is not because the model is biased, but because the source material is fragmented.

When Fragmented Information Becomes A Reputational Risk

There is a reputational layer that is often overlooked. Generative AI systems summarise information that is publicly available online. They reflect what exists in the public record, without prioritising what a company intends to communicate. If outdated or negative information is more visible than official content, it can shape how an organisation is represented in AI-generated responses.

This is a real challenge for many South African organisations. Information is often spread across reports, PDFs, archived webpages and media coverage that are not always aligned. That fragmentation can affect how AI tools describe a brand.

What matters increasingly is coherence: consistent naming, updated leadership information, clear governance and impact reporting and media coverage that is easy to verify and trace. These established communication principles now influence whether a brand is accurately reflected in AI-generated answers.

Flow Communications is seeing growing demand from organisations to build connected information ecosystems rather than isolated campaigns. This means aligning media relations and owned content so that the public record is consistent and stable.

In practice, this includes both technical and editorial work. Technical work involves cleaning outdated information, aligning naming conventions and improving how reports are structured online. Editorial work focuses on clear, consistent messaging so that key information about a business is current and accessible across platforms.

As AI becomes a default gateway to information, communications is no longer only about creating content or running campaigns. It is also about maintaining a clear and credible public record. The organisations that do this well are more likely to be accurately represented in the answers people increasingly rely on.

FLOW COMMUNICATIONS
www.flowsa.com

Think Beyond Efficiency When Using AI

By

Modern Marketing

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June 18, 2026

Think Beyond Efficiency When Using AI — Scott Reinders and Izak van der Walt.

There is a seductive story being told across boardrooms right now: adopt AI, move faster, do more with less. The pitch is compelling. The dashboards are impressive. And yet, for most businesses, the returns are nowhere to be found. The most visible consequence has been headcount reduction. But organisations that treated AI as a staffing equation are discovering that removing people without rethinking how work gets done does not create a smarter business. It creates a thinner one.

This is according to Izak van der Walt, Project Director: AI and Automation, The Up&Up Group, and Scott Reinders, Chief Operating Officer, Connect (part of the Up&Up Group).

A 2025 report from MIT’s Media Lab found that despite $30 to $40 billion dollars in global enterprise spending on generative AI, 95% of organisations are seeing no measurable return on investment. McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI survey tells a similar story. While 88% of organisations now use AI in at least one function, only around a third are scaling it meaningfully, and just 6% qualify as high performers delivering real bottom line impact. Meanwhile, Gartner found that only 5% of marketing leaders using generative AI purely as a productivity tool reported significant business gains.

The pattern is clear. The industry has been fixated on efficiency. Speed, volume, output. But from our experience leading AI implementation and media strategy inside the same agency group, being fast is not a competitive advantage when everyone has access to the same tools. The real question is whether you are using technology to do the right things, not just to do things faster.

The Efficiency Trap

It is easy to understand why efficiency became the default objective. Budgets are under pressure. Expectations around quality, scale, and speed have not dropped. In many cases, they have increased. AI and automation offer a credible way to do more within those constraints. But efficiency on its own does not change what gets done. It only changes how quickly it happens.

McKinsey’s research draws a sharp line here. High performing organisations, the ones actually generating measurable value from AI, are nearly three times more likely than others to have fundamentally redesigned their workflows. They do not simply bolt AI onto existing processes. They rethink the processes themselves. Importantly, while 80 percent of companies set efficiency as an AI objective, high performers also set growth and innovation as goals. That broader ambition is what sets them apart.

A landmark study from Harvard Business School and Boston Consulting Group adds another layer. Consultants using AI completed tasks 25 percent more quickly and produced 40 percent higher quality results, but only when AI was applied to the right tasks. For tasks outside AI’s competence boundary, what researchers called the jagged technological frontier, AI actually made people perform worse. The first job is not to automate everything. It is to understand where AI genuinely adds value, and where human judgement and creativity are still critical.

More Ads Is Not A Media Strategy

From a media strategy perspective, Reinders sees this playing out every day. ‘The temptation is to use AI to produce more. More ads, more placements, more variations. But without asking whether that volume is actually driving outcomes,’ he said. ‘Every scrolling feed, every open web banner gets packed with deals and promotions. Scale without signal is just noise.’

Gartner’s data supports this concern. A 2024 survey of marketing leaders found that 87% of CMOs experienced campaign performance issues in the previous year, with nearly half terminating campaigns early. More output has not solved the challenge of cutting through in a cluttered market. If anything, it may be making it worse.

Reinders argued that the real competitive edge in media comes from making sharper decisions about where, when, and how to invest. ‘Platforms that deliver strong active attention, TikTok when creative aligns with the format, YouTube non skippable for storytelling, work because someone made a deliberate choice about the environment. That is an effectiveness decision, not an efficiency one.’

For South African brands operating with tighter budgets than their global counterparts, this distinction matters even more. When you cannot outspend the competition, you need to outthink it. That means using technology to improve the quality of strategic decisions, not just the speed of execution.

What Effectiveness Actually Requires

Moving from efficiency to effectiveness is not a matter of slowing down. It is a matter of redirecting where the speed is applied. From our experience, three shifts separate the organisations generating real value from those still chasing output.

From generic to contextual. When every company has access to the same AI models, plugging them in without adaptation produces the same generic outputs as everyone else. The organisations pulling ahead are the ones embedding their own context into how AI is deployed: how their teams actually work, the signals they respond to, the judgement calls that repeat across real situations. The tool is commoditised. The application of it is not.

From executional to strategic. Too often, AI enters the workflow at the point of execution: generating assets, populating templates, speeding up production. But if the brief was wrong, or the channel strategy was misaligned, faster execution just delivers the wrong thing more efficiently. The shift is to move AI upstream, into the strategic decisions that determine what gets made and why.

From linear to iterative. Traditional campaign cycles run on a launch-and-review cadence that measures results in quarters. By the time the data comes back, the budget is spent. Redesigning workflows around continuous optimisation, with shorter cycles, live feedback, and rapid adjustment, reduces the risk of full campaign failures and turns every deployment into a learning opportunity.

‘Intelligent Practice is our model for integrating human creativity, data, AI, and automation across six specialist agencies,’ said Izak van der Walt, Project Director for AI and Automation at The Up&Up Group. ‘We documented this approach in our white paper because the experimentation phase is over. Clients and agencies need results, not endless pilots. The cost of unfocused implementation, in wasted investment and team fatigue, is real.’

The organisations that thrive in this next chapter will not be the ones that moved fastest. They will be the ones that knew where they were going.

THE UP&UP GROUP
https://www.theupandupgroup.com/

Windhoek Campaign Shows Brand’s Commitment To Not Use AI-Generated Imagery

By

Modern Marketing

-

June 18, 2026

Windhoek Campaign Shows Brands Commitment To Not Use AI-Generated Imagery

Windhoek Beer has launched its integrated campaign ‘The Real Guy’, a culturally driven platform that challenges artificial perfection by celebrating real people, real stories, and human imperfection. Windhoek also formalises a commitment not to use AI-generated imagery in any consumer-facing communications. All brand content will feature real people, real beer, and real-world production.

At the centre of the campaign is James Kumar, whose story reflects its core idea. Born with polydactylism, a congenital condition resulting in him being born with six fingers on each hand, James has navigated conventional ideas of physical perfection. His hands become a symbol of authenticity at a time when AI still struggles to accurately render one of the most fundamental human features.

Hands remain one of the most commonly distorted elements in AI-generated imagery. Windhoek leans into this irony by placing Kumar’s real hands at the centre of the narrative, not as difference, but as proof that humanity cannot be manufactured.

The campaign moves beyond advertising into a wider cultural conversation about trust, identity, and authenticity in a world where reality itself can be generated.

‘Authenticity has always been at the core of Windhoek,’ said Keval Ramraj, Marketing Manager at Windhoek Beer South Africa. ‘As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, we wanted to make a clear and intentional statement about what we stand for. Not artificial perfection. Not manufactured humanity. Real stories, real people, and real beer.’

Developed collaboratively with Kumar, the campaign ensures his voice and perspective shape the storytelling. A documentary film follows his journey from upbringing and community life to his first major brand collaboration as a content creator, including his first flight, and his reflections on authenticity in a changing world. Produced with the team behind Chasing the Sun, the campaign rolls out across out-of-home, digital, social, and video platforms in South Africa.

Alongside the campaign, Windhoek Beer formalises a ‘100% Real’ Pledge, extending its philosophy across all communications. All consumer-facing content will feature real people, real product, and real-world production, including authentic human representation, genuine Windhoek Beer liquid, accurate pack shots, and real beer serves.

This standard is embedded in contracts with all creative agency, production, and content partners. AI-generated or fully synthetic humans, influencers, product renders, or pack shots are not permitted in final consumer-facing executions.

The policy does not restrict responsible use of AI in internal processes such as strategy, ideation, planning, optimisation, or production support, provided final outputs comply with the authenticity standard. Heineken Beverages will enforce this across all Windhoek partners.

‘This is not a rejection of technology,’ said Ramraj. ‘AI has a role in modern business. But when it comes to how we represent people, culture, and our brand to consumers, authenticity matters more than ever.’

WINDHOEK BEER SOUTH AFRICA
https://www.windhoekbeer.com/