Describe your job: What do you do?
I’m an entrepreneur, a creative, a global citizen. I’m responsible to develop our business strategy and lead our team towards our transformative purpose and client-centric mission. This means that I have to build a sustainable business linked to a greater cause than just being another business.
Which level do you occupy within the business? Who do you report to?
I’m the Founder and Managing Partner at BRANDTRUTH//DGTL – the Integrated Content Practice® . We help brands grab the attention of their audiences through multi-channel digital and social content. We develop powerful brand stories by using strategy, creative, media and the latest technology.
I don’t report to anyone and have a responsibility to my partners Zubeida and Sbosh to lead a progressive and agile business.
What are soft and hard skills you require to be effective in your role?
The skills required are a delicate balance between soft and hard skills. Soft skills are often most important in providing transformational leadership, strategic direction and to steer our company into the future. It’s not about management, it’s about leadership that harness the power of the collective team to achieve our business objectives. In my role, it’s vital to have excellent people skills, to be able to communicate extremely well, be a good presenter and be able to negotiate. Regarding hard skills, my financial expertise, business understanding and projection acumen are the ones that benefit me the most. To be effective in my role it’s important to have the ability to wear many different hats in various environments during each day and to draw on the specific skills needed at that particular moment.
Tell us what constitutes a typical working day for you?
In our space, each workday is exciting with new experiences, and no two days are the same. My days are filled with collaboration and adventures with team members and our client partners, creative sessions and problem-solving briefs, innovation discussions to see how we can help our clients meet their goals, and business planning. I also spend a lot of time mentoring team members and creating meaningful connection sessions with our staff and clients. Off course, there is also a lot of fun and laughter happening in everything we do!
What are the best parts of your job?
The best part of my job is having the freedom to implement a business strategy, people strategy and team culture that supports our broader vision. I love being able to see our bold vision come to life, shaking up the market with innovative digital advertising executions and creating an awesome creative workspace for our team members to thrive and grow both in a professional and personal capacity.
What are the least favourite parts of your job?
I prefer not doing administrative tasks. I love creating the vision and turning that into tangible outcomes.
How do you define and measure success? What KPIs do you use to do so?
In my view, success is the ability to keep on moving forward and achieving growth. At BRANDTRUTH//DGTL, we measure success based on pre-defined objectives, targets, goals and ratios – and how we achieve these critical numbers on a daily basis using our reporting dashboards.
What are your favourite technologies and platforms that you use to make yourself more productive and get more done?
Living in a digital era and leading a digital business, there is an array of tools to complement our agile and collaborative work environment. Our entire business is built on collaboration tools all the way from managing processes right through to the tools our creative teams use. On a daily, I use G Suite for Business, Xero, Hi5, LucidChart, JamBoard and ProcessSt to name a few. We love platforms that enable us to spend our time where it matters most, whilst the rest of the actions can be automated.
How did you end up at your current company? Tell us about your journey to where you are today?
I founded BRANDTRUTH//DGTL in 2016 and have since been building the business with my co-founder Zubeida Goolam. As people, we crave lots of things. Mostly we desire the human truth of being connected, to live and to experience. We want to laugh, to feel and to create.
It’s this truth of connectivity that inspired us to start a business that changes how brands and clients approach digital and social media marketing. A business that challenges how we work as a collective and rethink how we work with clients as true partners.
This dream was bigger than simply being another digital and social media operation. It was bigger than just being another business.
What PR campaigns stand out for you and what brands produce the best campaigns locally in your opinion?
The campaigns that stand out the most, all form part of an integrated marketing approach that spans across many marketing channels, working collectively to achieve the required outcomes.
For me, one of the best digitally-lead local integrated marketing examples in our South African market was the Castle Lite #HoldMyBeer campaign. It started with a conversation on Twitter which the brand used as a launchpad to turn a crisis into a positive campaign and then leveraged the message on multiple marketing channels.
