We asked 19 heads of marketing what they're worried about. Not one said AI.

At the Marketing Cafe in Cape Town, we put the same two questions to nineteen marketing leaders, from Clicks, RMB, Allan Gray, Dermalogica, Yuppiechef, dotsure and more. The pattern in their answers is the state of the industry in miniature. And the most striking thing is what's missing from it.

Four themes kept surfacing

Community is the new moat. Miguel Netto of Bootlegger opened with it, describing brands winning by making people feel part of something, and it echoed all afternoon as organic community becoming the equity paid media can't buy. A Gen Z specialist predicted the swing back explicitly: paid made organic feel optional, and community is making it essential again.

Authenticity you can't manufacture. Melanie van Rooy: "The ones winning are saying — we've been doing this since day one. Authenticity cannot be manufactured." Matt Brownell's version from the UGC trenches is that if content isn't authentic, the platforms simply don't push it. "Beautiful branded content just falls flat."

The great offline return. The digital marketers said it through gritted teeth. Yudhvir Ranchod has swung Peach Payments back to in-person for enterprise, and Dermalogica's best-attended activations are run clubs that end at a coffee shop. RMB's CMO put the why simply: human connection is still the strongest form of connection.

AI is the floor, not the ceiling. Almost everyone uses it, and almost nobody named it as what marketing is about. Matt Brownell's framing was the sharpest of the day: "AI is a race to the middle. It's put pressure on really good marketers to become really great ones."

The wall

We asked every guest to finish the sentence "Marketing in 2025 is all about…". The answers, unedited in spirit: Community. Customer obsession. Everything — and knowing what to say no to. Creativity and humanity. Human beings. Purpose. Demonstrating value. Community and advocacy. Inspiring, informing and connecting. Bravery. People. Authenticity. Resilience. Impact. Connection.

Read that wall twice and notice what's absent: not one channel, not one platform, not one tool named as the point. The people running South African marketing are worried about people. That should tell us where to spend our energy.

Try this week: finish the sentence yourself, in one word, then check whether your current budget allocation actually agrees with your answer. Then pick the one theme (community, authenticity, in-person, AI-as-floor) where your brand is weakest, and put it on next quarter's plan.

Those nineteen conversations happened at an industry event, which is the honest case for showing up: are marketing conferences still worth it in 2026?

Sourced from nineteen on-the-record conversations with heads of marketing at the Marketing Cafe in Cape Town. Every person quoted above is named in the text.

First published on the SA Marketers' Circle.