Avatar Co-Founder and COO Veli Ngubane chats to Duma Collective founder, Sibu Mabena, about her journey in entrepreneurship and how she strives for greatness as a female in the advertising industry. [vc_video link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIoFCXPj_Xo&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop"]...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plxK0ZghgOA&feature=youtu.be Ahmed Tilly (SA Advertising Maverick and Creative Advisor), Ahmed Tilly talks about women in advertising and the slow pace transformation in advertising. Tilly challenges white men in advertising to move the conversation forward. He posits that it makes no sense for only black people to talk about transformation. Ahmed Tilly, his career officially kicked off in 1996 as a junior copywriter when he joined Lindsay Smithers FCB. He spent a couple of years at the agency before doing a stint at Publicist. In 1999 he joined The Jupiter Drawing Room, Cape Town. 5 years later he returned to Johannesburg to start-up...
Zibusiso Mkhwanazi (born 10 June 1983, Soweto, South Africa) is Group CEO of M&N Brands and co-founder of Avatar, South Africa's largest black owned and managed advertising agency. Join Zibusiso Mkhwanazi tonight at 6pm on IG Talk, as he’ll be in conversation with Yolisa Pasipanodya, the MD of Meropa Communications. They’ll be chatting about her challenges, learnings and successes that she faces and her view on black prominent women in the industry. Tune in here: https://bit.ly/2YfOxCh #UnitedInCreativity IG: @sacreatives IG: @zibusisom...
Following a rigorous and detailed selection process with proposals considered from 16 short-listed companies across the delivery pillars required, South African Tourism (SA Tourism) is pleased to announce that we have appointed a suite of marketing and communications agencies in response to the RFP162/19 the organisation issued in June 2019. In line with South African Tourism’s commitment to the empowerment of small businesses, each of the agencies has subcontracted 30% of their scope and billing to a small black owned business. For the duration of the contract, South African Tourism will ensure that the subcontractors provide valuable input into the...
The Interactive Advertising Bureau of South Africa (IAB SA) has appointed of Veli Ngubane as its new transformation council head. Ngubane is the founding partner and group MD of Avatar Agency Group. Ngubane has served on the transformation council for the last year and takes over leadership from Avani Singh, Alt Advisory director and co-founder, who joins the IAB executive board. The council’s mandate is to lead the debate and monitor the progress of the interactive advertising industry regarding the challenges and opportunities related to transformation. Says Ngubane, “I’m honoured to be given this task to lead the transformation council at a...
by Zibusiso Mkhwanazi (@Zibusiso) Last week, I read Jarred Cinman’s 2020 trends piece here on MarkLives, #BigQ2020: The future is here, and I would like to expand on his views, which I fully agree with. What a difficult year 2019 was for what seems to have been a majority of ad agencies in South Africa. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut SA’s GDP growth prospects for 2020, from 1.1% to 0.8%. This in turn means that, when there’s little growth, marketing budgets are in the front of the chopping queue. This isn’t good news for SA agencies: our industry will...
The digital marketing and communications sector is driven by the ever-changing technologies in this era of the digital economy. Thus it is safe to assume, even without the stats, that there is a gap between the digital marketing skills and available opportunities. Some background According to African Development Bank, Africa’s economic growth rates for 2019 and 2020 were projected at 4% and 4.1% respectively. This is on the back of sustained growth for several years now. However, the continent is plagued by jobless economic growth. Opportunities and challenges The digital marketing and communications sector holds promise for employment opportunities for Africa, given that this...
BY: PABALLO MOLAHLEHI Back when rose-tinted glasses were considered chic, I was thoroughly optimistic about working in the ad industry. This passion grew stronger in varsity, having caught a glamorised glimpse of life in that space. From the fast-paced nature of the ad beast, to the ad folk’s inclination to excessive drinking (I’ll find any excuse to drink, to be honest), while being able to significantly influence pop culture – it was clear that this world was where I belonged. Or so I thought. Nothing could have prepared me for the disillusionment I’d be confronted with upon realising that the same industry I so...
Everyday there is a debate on transformation in the advertising industry and mainly that it is not happening fast enough. Transformation is a very broad term and it is usually misunderstood as everyone seems to have tailored its definition to their own business needs. It is usually defined from personal business needs point of view based on the challenges that a particular business is faced with but to be able to clearly understand transformation we first need to ask ourselves why we need transformation in the first place, once we know the answer to that question it will then become easier to...
While I cringe at the title of this article, it’s a fair question. It’s like asking if there’s a viable market for Chinese advertising agencies in China. But the question is relevant here, given our political history and the current economic structure. The most-transformed sector in the county is the public sector, simply because we have the political power. http://www.marklives.com/2016/06/motive-is-there-a-viable-market-for-black-ad-agencies-in-sa/...