The Lead Creative

How does your marketing change when customers start using your brand differently? Pride Mnene Hlungwani, Senior Marketing Manager at bp Southern Africa, joins Mongezi Mtati to explore how customer expectations should influence brand strategy and customer experience.
Recorded at the Nedbank IMC Conference, this conversation examines bp’s evolving role in everyday shopping, the value of understanding customer routines and how loyalty data can make communication more relevant. Pride also shares why franchisees and frontline teams belong in the conversation about what customers need.
We explore the balance between a global brand’s core and its local expression, including regional food preferences and bp’s involvement in Red Bull Shay' iMoto through bp Ultimate. Pride reflects on the openness marketers need to support ideas shaped by South African culture.
Five insights to take into your marketing decisions:
Reassess what customers rely on your brand to provide.
Make loyalty communication useful within their routines.
Combine data analysis with knowledge from customer-facing teams.
Create room for local culture within the brand strategy.
Let listening and feedback improve ideas before execution.
 
Sponsored by award-winning digital agency Rogerwilco. 
Hosted by Mongezi Mtati.
Thanks to our production partners, Soweto Media, for the production and post-production on this episode.
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Produced in collaboration with our partners, Soweto Media.
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How people find music can show how culture takes hold. Siya ‘Slikour’ Metane remembers listeners using Datafile Host to discover and share songs. A routine born of need gave people a way to hear something new and pass it on. For marketers, there is something to learn in how that routine worked and why it stuck.
Mongezi Mtati talks to Slikour, Group CEO and Founder of SlikourOnLife, and Kabelo Mabalane, a musician and endurance athlete, on The Lead Creative at the 2026 Nedbank IMC Conference.
How repeated behaviour becomes something people pass on
What Kabelo recognised in early amapiano
Why Slikour keeps coming back to purpose as attention shifts
What a grocer can learn from the way customers shop
What it means to back people building their own businesses
Continue the Nedbank IMC series with Dr Thebe Ikalafeng on what turns belief in African brands into brand preference.

Sponsored by award-winning digital agency Rogerwilco. 
Hosted by Mongezi Mtati.
Thanks to our production partners, Soweto Media, for the production and post-production on this episode.
___________________________
Buy us coffee here to help us grow.
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Produced in collaboration with our partners, Soweto Media.
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The Lead Creative Podcast is available on:
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Make a donation to Threads for Ikasi, a foundation that provides school uniforms, dignity packs and other essentials to children in townships, rural areas and under-resourced communities.
To support them, go to: https://threadsforikasi.org
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How can African brands turn belief in the continent into customer preference? Dr Thebe Ikalafeng, Chairman of Brand Africa, joins Mongezi Mtati at the 2026 Nedbank IMC Conference to examine what influences the brands people choose.
Thebe explores the historical preference for foreign products, the growth of African brands and the barriers emerging businesses face when trying to reach customers. A young beverage entrepreneur’s experience with a branded fridge makes the distribution challenge concrete.
Key insights:
How perceptions of African quality influence brand preference
What successful African brands could help others understand
Why trust depends on how a brand fits into people’s lives
The human judgement Thebe wants to retain when working with AI
Sponsored by award-winning digital agency Rogerwilco. 
Hosted by Mongezi Mtati.
Thanks to our production partners, Soweto Media, for the production and post-production on this episode.
___________________________
Buy us coffee here to help us grow.
___________________________
Produced in collaboration with our partners, Soweto Media.
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The Lead Creative Podcast is available on:
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If your team can produce content faster, what keeps it distinctly yours?
Dawn Rowlands, CEO of dentsu Africa, discusses the importance of data quality and adaptable design systems with Mongezi Mtati on The Lead Creative, recorded at the Nedbank IMC Conference.
She describes using conversational signals to inform campaigns and explains why the foundations behind the output deserve attention as production accelerates.
In this conversation
How the quality of the underlying data affects creative output.
Why design systems need to support adaptation as well as recognition.
The risk of producing work that resembles the competition.
What marketers need to understand about platform distribution.
Why quicker tools also require a workable approval process.
The discussion also explores customer loyalty, changing agency competition and the decisions needed to put greater ambition into practice.
Sponsored by award-winning digital agency Rogerwilco. 
Hosted by Mongezi Mtati.
Thanks to our production partners, Soweto Media, for the production and post-production on this episode.
___________________________
Buy us coffee here to help us grow.
___________________________
Produced in collaboration with our partners, Soweto Media.
___________________________
The Lead Creative Podcast is available on:
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Follow us on:
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Support the show
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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 marketing strategy
Understand the human changes behind your technology plans.
Give people a reason to value your brand through the four E’s.
Use community passions to develop culturally relevant ideas.
Build channel thinking into the brief from the start.
Address team confidence as AI changes the creative process.

Sponsored by award-winning digital agency Rogerwilco. 
Hosted by Mongezi Mtati.
Thanks to our production partners, Soweto Media, for the production and post-production on this episode.
___________________________
Buy us coffee here to help us grow.
___________________________
Produced in collaboration with our partners, Soweto Media.
___________________________
The Lead Creative Podcast is available on:
Apple
Spotify
YouTube
Follow us on:
LinkedIn
Facebook
X
Instagram
Send us mail!
Support the show
Buy us coffee here to help us grow.

Follow us for more on:
YouTube
LinkedIn 
Instagram
Send us mail!
Support the show
Buy us coffee here to help us grow.

Follow us for more on:
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