The Lead Creative

Marketing can master AI and still miss what matters to people. As advertising and brand teams adopt new tools, how much attention are they giving to the psychological changes that come with them? Tahaab Rais, Group Chief Strategy Officer of Publicis Groupe MENAT, joins Mongezi Mtati on The Lead Creative for a conversation recorded at the 2026 Nedbank IMC Conference. Rais explores how technology changes the people brands serve and the teams creating the work. Five key insights for your m...

The people who will drive your brand’s future growth may already be influencing what gets bought today. Gugu Mthembu, CMO of Telkom, explores why brands should listen to younger audiences now and use that understanding to think about the products they may need in five years. Gugu shares how Telkom’s approach to the creator economy began with African language radio DJs and the communities that trusted them. She explains why a brand’s role in culture depends on understanding those relationships...

Algorithms optimise towards the familiar. Brands, however, need to be remembered for something distinctive. In this episode of The Lead Creative’s Marketers’ Brief series, Refilwe Maluleke, Executive Head of Marketing at Discovery Health, and Bridget Harpur, Head of Marketing at Volkswagen South Africa, join Mongezi Mtati and Bizcommunity Managing Editor Danette Breitenbach to explore why intelligent, experienced marketing teams still produce advertising that looks and sounds like everything ...

Influencer marketing investment is growing, but consumer trust remains uneven. What separates creator partnerships that build brands from those that generate a brief spike in attention and disappear? In this episode of The Lead Creative, Mongezi Mtati speaks to Fluence Africa Founder and CEO Jolene Roelofse and content creator, storyteller and media personality Alphi Mkhwanazi. They explore why long-term creator relationships often produce more believable work, why brands need to look beyond ...

AI may be changing advertising, but is it really the industry's biggest challenge? In this episode, Mongezi Mtati sits down with Alistair King, co-founder of former King James, creative at large and Vice-Chairperson of the Philipstown Wirecar Foundation, to unpack the future of creativity, brand building and agency life. They explore why so much advertising feels predictable, why brands often mistake relevance for imitation, and what made campaigns like Allan Gray and Bell's stand the test of...