Agency & Freelance
The assets are the people
Mining manages wear and tear on its assets. Creative industries never learned to. Musa Kalenga on grind culture, and the dare, care and share model the Brave Group built instead.
43 articles on marketing in South Africa, most of them drawn from conversations on the SA Digital Marketing Podcast.
SA Channels
Optimise for the system, not the platform
Google is going from almost all of search to one option among several. Graeme Stiles on why the foundations outlive every platform, and why he refuses to sell GEO as a new line item.
AI & the Future
Using AI, and using it well
Graeme Stiles is a Chief AI Officer, and his answer to how hard you should go in on AI is to do more of the thinking yourself. The two divides, and the discipline that crosses the second one.
SA Channels
Build the system before you have the idea
Doug Bird spent five years measuring Red Bull's in-person marketing. His argument: events are as measurable as digital, and the idea should be the last thing you work on.
Agency & Freelance
Small is a position, not a waiting room
Darren Morris took Small Agency of the Year twice running and says his five-year plan has no growth in it. The case for staying the size you are.
CX, Brand & Career
Your dashboard cannot see irrelevance
Tshiamo Maremela on the brand risk that never trends: nobody complains, the campaigns still perform, and people quietly stop caring.
AI & the Future
Backlinks are not the currency any more
Luke Marthinusen says LLMs do not weight backlinks, which quietly levels a field that favoured big sites publishing thin work. What to do about it this week.
CX, Brand & Career
Listening as a strategy, not research admin
Inside-out asks how we sell more. Outside-in asks what people are actually worried about. The four listening posts that turn research admin into strategy.
CX, Brand & Career
Drive your own bus: the marketing career on-ramp
Every impressive marketing career starts somewhere unglamorous. Bronwyn Pretorius began on Shoprite leaflets. How to build the fundamentals on purpose.
CX, Brand & Career
Education vs experience: the oldest career debate, resolved
A CMO on a national diploma, and marketers with degrees they never use. What South African marketing careers actually reward, and when a qualification pays.
CX, Brand & Career
The white puzzle: what CX actually is, and where to start
Charné Munien on CX as the white pieces of the puzzle: the joins between channels nobody owns, and where to start using data you already have.
SA Channels
The convention funnel that built an export agency
Kyle Puller's Cape Town agency exports to American tabletop-games companies. How niching down and working conventions built a funnel that fills the books.
SA Channels
PR is a relationship, not a press release
Chantal Riley built a twenty-year PR career on notes about people, not media lists. Why relationships beat press releases, and what to measure instead.
SA Channels
Five rules for nano-influencer campaigns, from the other side of the brief
Seven years of receiving influencer briefs as AfroDaddy: the five rules separating nano-influencer campaigns that work from the ones that waste budget.
SA Channels
Facebook is still gold in South Africa
The global discourse says Facebook is finished. The case for why it remains the highest-reach, lowest-cost advertising platform in South Africa.
Agency & Freelance
Two engines, one hard line: how to contract client expectations
Every disappointed-client story traces to the same three failures. How to contract expectations up front: two engines measured separately, one hard line.
Agency & Freelance
The team is the agency
If people are the product, hiring isn't HR admin, it's the business. Dylan Kohlstadt on hiring interested over interesting, and why culture is retention.
Agency & Freelance
The month-one system: how a 13-year agency onboards a client
Month one is setup, and clients are told so before they sign. The onboarding sequence a 13-year SA agency refined to prevent first-quarter disappointment.
AI & the Future
Resist the rebrand: the discipline that protects a brand
The person marketing Google's fastest-moving product argues for standing still: why a rebrand destroys memory structures, and the bar to clear before one.
AI & the Future
The aha use case: why AI adoption sticks for some teams and dies in others
Imke Dannhauser markets Gemini across Africa. Why AI adoption sticks in some marketing teams and dies in others, and how to find the one aha use case.
AI & the Future
Same-day content and the death of the approval chain
Your customers out-produce your agency, and the approval chain kills the idea without keeping you safe. How to move sign-off upstream and publish same-day.
Solo & Lean Marketing
Tiny experiments: how lean teams de-risk everything
Lean teams can't absorb a big-bang campaign that fails in month six. The tiny-experiments loop that lets small marketing teams de-risk everything they ship.
Solo & Lean Marketing
"100% of my brain, 20% of my time": when to hire (or become) a fractional CMO
Matt Brownell never planned to become a fractional CMO. When to hire one, when to become one, and why embedded beats advisory at every stage of growth.
Solo & Lean Marketing
Partnerships are your headcount
The lean marketer's answer to a budget that won't stretch is partnership. How aligned brands funded events, a studio, and headcount nobody paid for.
Marketing Leadership
We asked 19 heads of marketing what they're worried about. Not one said AI.
At the Marketing Cafe in Cape Town we asked nineteen heads of marketing what worries them. Four themes surfaced, and not one of them was AI.
Marketing Leadership
Leadership is being the calmest person in the room
The trait South African marketing leaders name most often isn't vision or strategy. It's being the calmest person in the room while everything explodes.
Marketing Leadership
How to actually know when to hire your next marketer
You don't hire to reduce workload, you hire to increase impact. Amy Hopkins on the gate every lean marketing team should pass before adding headcount.
Marketing Leadership
Data is not insight, and insight is not wisdom
Melanie van Rooy went from Reserve Bank economist to Clicks marketing lead. Her warning to dashboard culture: data isn't insight, insight isn't wisdom.
CX, Brand & Career
In real life is back — and now it's finally measurable
Experiential lost fifteen years of budget to digital. Doug Bird on why in-person is winning it back, and the measurement that finally makes it defensible.
CX, Brand & Career
You have to earn the right to tell a South African story
Borrowed slang and a struggle-era soundtrack are not a South African story. What earns a brand the right to tell one, and how to protect it afterwards.
SA Channels
The money quietly leaking out of your media budget
More ads are bought daily than people could ever see them. What ad fraud costs South African media budgets, and the checks that stop the quiet leak.
SA Channels
Six Google Ads mistakes in almost every South African account
Dean Lurie audits South African Google Ads accounts for a living. The six mistakes in nearly every one, starting with tracking that measures nothing.
Agency & Freelance
Fire the client who opens with "we've tried every agency and none of them worked"
Justine Nienaber's client filter after eight years running Punky Starfish isn't industry, it's people. The two she fired, and the opener to never sign.
Agency & Freelance
The freelancer trap: are you building a business, or just selling your hours?
Are you building a business or selling your hours? The distinction that separates a freelancer from an agency owner, and the unglamorous way out of it.
AI & the Future
Treat your brand like a Netflix series, not a 30-second ad
Xiaomi wanted an event and a TV ad. Darren Morris pitched a Netflix-style series instead, with a money-back guarantee. Why episodic brand-building won.
AI & the Future
The billable hour is dead. Here's what replaces it.
Darren Morris of Lucky Hustle on why agencies can stop hiding their AI use, and what replaces the billable hour once output no longer tracks to time.
Solo & Lean Marketing
The pyramid flip: how lean marketers spend their week on strategy, not slog
Fractional CMO Matt Brownell on flipping the marketing pyramid: when AI absorbs execution, strategy becomes the scarce work. How to restructure a week.
Solo & Lean Marketing
You are not under-resourced. You are running lean.
Most South African marketing teams are one to three people. That isn't under-resourced, it's lean — and lean has its own operating system. Here it is.
Marketing Leadership
The trust ledger: how Ford SA earns its marketing budget
Ford SA earns budget approval like a bank balance — small proven wins deposited early, so the brave campaign can be drawn as an overdraft against trust.
Marketing Leadership
Stop answering "what's the ROI of that billboard?" the wrong way
Melanie van Rooy's answer to the billboard ROI question: stop defending the channel and translate marketing into the language your exco already trusts.
Guides
Are marketing conferences still worth it for SA marketers in 2026?
Tickets, travel and two days out of office — what do SA marketers actually get back? An honest cost-benefit look at marketing conferences in 2026.
Guides
The best marketing communities in South Africa — and how to choose yours
Where do South African marketers actually connect in 2026? A practical guide to SA marketing communities, associations and networks, from MASA onward.
Guides
How to build a real marketing network in South Africa — without conference tickets
Practical, low-cost ways for South African marketers to build a professional network in 2026 — and why most networking advice fails marketers in SA.
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