South African Digital Marketing Podcast

Marketing budgets are moving back from digital to in-real-life. The trouble is that most brands still can't show what an event, a sponsorship or an activation actually did for them.

Doug Bird has spent more than 20 years in South African experiential marketing, including five as head of sports marketing at Red Bull, and he's the founder of WILD AIR Agency. His argument: in-person marketing is often as measurable as digital, as long as the systems are in place before the idea.

In this episode:

- Why digital won the budget: it's easier to defend in the board meeting
- How Red Bull counted interactions, captured first-party data and measured trial at its events
- Why the idea should be the last thing you work on
- Going where your customers already are, instead of asking them to come to you
- How Saucony took on the big running brands at run clubs with a trailer and 25 pairs of shoes
- Why there are no easy wins without systems, and why word of mouth sits at the centre
- Go Badger, the platform Doug is building so brands can buy in-person connection the way they buy digital media

Connect with Doug on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-bird-wild-air/

Want the live version of conversations like this? The SA Marketers' Circle is where South African marketers think out loud. Every month, a past guest joins us for a Hallway Session.
Apply to join: https://www.samarketerscircle.co.za/join
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In this episode, I sat down with Musa Kalenga, group CEO of the Brave Group.

Our conversation focused on how agencies and marketing teams should actually treat the people who do the work: the dangers of grind culture, avoiding burnout, and getting real buy-in from your team.

This one is a great look at what marketing leaders should be aiming for when thinking about how to run their modern marketing agencies.

Connect with Musa on Linkedin
Join me and other top South African Marketers in the SA Marketers' Circle
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This conversation really focused on an issue that is many marketers are concerned about: AEO.

That’s right, you’ve finally got a handle on SEO, and now you have to figure out AEO. Don’t worry though because in this episode we talk about what AEO is and how to ensure your brand is actually being seen in AI search results.

Connect with Luke on Linkedin
Join me in the SA Marketers' Circle
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Ad fraud is the marketing problem nobody wants to talk about.

I sat down with Marc Dhalluin from TruthsetsOnline.com for the first episode of Season 5, and I came away quietly panicking about every campaign I've ever run.
Here's the line that got me: more online ads are bought and paid for every single day than there are humans on earth who could ever look at them.
Sit with that for a second.

We spoke about bots inflating your bounce rate, why the platforms aren't exactly rushing to tell you when your ads never reached a real person, and the difference between plain old wastage and someone actively defrauding you.

The good news is it's not all doom. Marc's whole point is that you can find out what your money is actually doing, yet most of us just never look.

If you spend a cent on digital advertising, this one's worth your time.

Follow Marc here
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What turns a once-off buyer into someone who keeps coming back?

Charné Munien, Strategy Director at RogerWilco, has spent years around the world helping brands build customer experiences people genuinely want — and in this episode we put her in the hot seat to explain why CX deserves a slice of your limited time and budget.

We get into what "customer experience" really means beyond the buzzword, why a CMO or head of marketing should treat CX as a growth lever rather than a nice-to-have, and how to build something irresistible without a global-brand budget.

If this one has you looking hard at your own customer experience, our free Honest Marketing Audit asks the same kind of questions. Download it free

Connect with Charné on LinkedIn

Want the room where conversations like this carry on every day? That's the SA Marketers' Circle — a WhatsApp community for South African marketers to think out loud together. Join at the early-bird rate (R100/month, locked in for life) here.

Connect with Terence on LinkedIn

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