According to Casey Mantle, Head of Digital at Special Effects Media & member of the IAB South Africa Influencer Marketing Committee, for years, the influencer marketing industry has treated disclosure as a small piece of campaign administration. Add ‘#ad’ to the caption. Select the paid partnership label. Put the required wording into the creator brief. […]
Henri Bam, Chief Product Officer at revX, says there is a moment in almost every campaign debrief where the numbers look good and the room still feels flat. Impressions were up. Clicks were strong. Cost per lead came in under target. And yet, somewhere between the dashboard and the sales floor, the optimism quietly evaporates. […]
Darren Morris, CEO of Lucky Hustle, says half the room thinks AI is coming for everyone’s jobs. The other half thinks it can magically do everyone’s jobs. Both sides are missing the point: AI is not the threat; unoriginal thinking is. AI Adoption Is No Longer The Debate The South African industry is already deep […]
The agency-client relationship is undergoing a radical transformation in 2026. The days of ‘creative for creative’s sake’ have officially been replaced by a demand for uncompromising accountability. With every cent of marketing spend under scrutiny, the definition of ‘value’ has shifted from the volume of output to the velocity of impact. According to Neill Robertson, […]
There is a quiet coup happening in the C-suite. It isn’t being led by a rival brand or a disruptive startup, but by a department two floors down: procurement, writes Pieter Geyser, Commercial Director, Humanz. In the modern corporate machine, marketing, once the engine of growth and the soul of the brand, has been demoted […]
Veronica Moleele, CEO of Penquin, is calling on marketers to embrace purposeful risk-taking as an essential strategy for success. Moleele argues that as platforms become increasingly packed with forgettable content, creative risk-taking has transitioned from a creative ‘extra’ to a business necessity. ‘Every second, someone is selling something. That’s why I believe creative risk-taking is […]
According to Willem Steenkamp, Flow Communications senior writer and editor, says that for the past few years, artificial intelligence has largely been in an experimental phase. But the focus for 2026 will likely be less about novelty and more about real-world application. Here are four trends for 2026. Trend 1: Integrated And Multimodal Generative AI […]
Human Rights Day, commemorated annually on 21 March, honours those who lost their lives during the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and recognises the ongoing responsibility to uphold the rights enshrined in South Africa’s Constitution. It is a month of national reflection, accountability, and recommitment to justice. In this context, Brandscapers Africa believes the private sector has […]
According to Thule Ngcese, Creative Partner, Distrikt 9 (a VML supplier development partner), AI is giving us flawless sunsets, flawless skin, flawless everything. But when perfection becomes the norm, it stops being a differentiator. Humans were never built to experience the world through sight alone. We have four other senses waiting to get back in […]
Richard Lord, a freelance media specialist, asks the controversial question: is programmatic digital OOH (pDOOH) a gimmick in its current state? Is it more about the ‘wow’ of the tech than the ‘win’ for the brand? Increasingly the South African media industry is being told that the future of OOH (out of home) is digital. […]