IDIDTHAT and Heineken Beverages presents I SAID THAT, the Q&A series featuring South Africa’s top creative talent.

In this one, Nkgabiseng Motau gets into what ten years of running Think Creative Africa has taught her, why courage is often the thing separating Bronze from Gold, the South African work she wishes she’d made, the person who opened an important door early in her career and why our industry could probably do with trusting its own culture a little more. She’s one of our faves and after reading this, we think she’ll be one of yours too.

Q: You co-founded Think Creative Africa in 2016 after working inside some of the biggest agencies. Ten years in, what have you learnt about building the kind of agency you want to work in?

Nkgabiseng: Ten years in, the biggest lesson is that the kind of agency you want to work in has to be built on purpose, not unfold by default. We left the big agency system because we wanted ideas to travel a shorter distance between creatives and the clients who sign off on them. At Think that has meant protecting closeness: keeping decision making near the work and working with clients who want ideas rooted in local insight rather than imported from elsewhere. The other lesson, harder to sit with some days, is that building the agency you want takes longer than building one that simply survives.

Q: You’ve spoken before about South Africa’s ability to draw from so many different cultures and versions of reality. Do you think South African advertising is making enough use of that creative advantage?

Nkgabiseng: I think we talk about it more than we actually use it. South Africa has an extraordinary range of cultures, languages and versions of reality sitting inside one market, and that should be our biggest creative advantage. Too often it gets reduced to casting choices or a soundtrack, rather than shaping the actual insight the work is built on. When it is used properly, work that comes out of this country does not need to borrow craft or ideas from anywhere else, because the culture itself is rich enough to carry it. We are getting better, but there is still a gap between the diversity we live in and the diversity we put into strategy documents. There is some work (and it is celebrated) that does this enviably well.

Q: What do you want to see much more of in South African advertising right now?

Nkgabiseng: More work that trusts the intelligence of a mass market audience. There is still a habit of simplifying ideas because they are meant for a broad audience, as if broad means less sophisticated. I want to see more brands willing to be specific and culturally confident, rather than reaching for the safest, most universal version of an idea. I also want to see more work that adds something to culture rather than borrowing its aesthetic for a campaign.

Q: You’ve judged work at Cannes Lions, D&AD, ADC, The One Show, Loeries, iPendoring and more. After seeing that much work, what separates something from Bronze to a Gold?

Nkgabiseng: Technique gets you a shortlist, you know, a strong entry and maybe even a formulaic case study video. What separates Bronze from Gold is usually courage: an idea that commits fully to a point of view instead of hedging to please everyone in the room. Craft still matters enormously, and a lot of Bronze work is beautifully made. But Gold work has usually taken a risk somewhere along the way, whether that is in the insight, the tone or how far it pushed an execution. You can normally tell within the first few seconds whether a team (brand and agency) believed in the idea or simply finished it.

Q: You were selected as a See It Be It judge at Cannes Lions this year, helping identify women with the potential to become the next generation of industry leaders. What are you looking for in someone who you think could really change this industry?

Nkgabiseng: It’s so hard to narrow down because this industry is spoiled for choice when it comes to great women and so many qualities come to mind. But If I had to pick I would say I look for generosity. People who want to bring others up with them rather than treat leadership as something to guard.

Q: What do you look for in a director or production partner, and when do you know you’ve found the right person for the job?

Nkgabiseng: I look for people who protect the insight under production pressure rather than smoothing it into something safer. The right director does not just execute the script, they understand why it needs to exist, and they fight for that on set when budgets and timelines start pulling in the other direction.

Q: Looking back at your own body of work, which piece are you most proud of, and why?

Nkgabiseng: It’s tough to choose but I can look at this in three phases of my career:
The early years – in the network agencies that shaped my love for the industry: Coca Cola ‘Share a Coke with Bobby’. I love this work because it changed the trajectory of my career and allowed me to view my own talent as world-class. It also taught me the value of collaboration – everyone on this project was phenomenal and it pushed the work to a great place.

Nkgabiseng (cont): The early entrepreneurship years: Yalu ‘Nothing to Hide’ – I love this work because it made real an agency that only existed in our minds for many years, along with the work we did on brands like DStv, we started to see the image of the work we set out to create find its way into the world.

Nkgabiseng: A decade in – I would say the agency itself. It is a tough journey to build and sustain a business in an industry built around fresh ideas and I am in awe of our team’s commitment to show up anew daily. I also think it allowed me to work with incredible clients and build a truly remarkable co-founder relationship with Mukondi. 

Q: What’s a South African commercial you’ve seen and thought, ‘Damn, I really wish I’d made that’?

Nkgabiseng: There are so many. Because I have never mentioned it in an interview before – The Zimbabwean ‘Trillion Dollar Campaign’. That work reshaped what I believed advertising could be. It is timeless to me.

Q: Name and fame: who’s doing work in South Africa right now that excites you?

Nkgabiseng: I believe my colleagues in indie-agencies are doing some inspiring work at the moment and it makes the industry feel like something that can take on change again. Boundless, Bananas, Bizarre – something about the Bs.

Q: Who opened a door for you early in your career that you haven’t forgotten, and what did they do?

Nkgabiseng: Again, I can mention so many people but to select one person – Neo Mashigo. I posted a Facebook status about being under-challenged at the agency I was working at and he hired myself and Mukondi and proceeded to challenge me far more than I was asking for. I am so grateful for those years. I still carry the spirit of doing things ‘namhlanje, manje’.

Q: You’ve been doing this for more than 15 years, running your own agency for ten of them. What still makes you want to fight for an idea?

Nkgabiseng: The moment an idea is genuinely rooted in something true about who we are as South Africans, and I can see it is about to be diluted or watered down for comfort. Running an agency for a decade teaches you to pick your battles, but it has not taught me to stop having them. If anything, having built something of my own has made me less willing to let a good idea die quietly in a meeting.

Q: What advice would you give someone wanting to start an agency?

Nkgabiseng: Know exactly what you are building it for before you start, because that clarity is what gets you through the years when it is hardest. Be deliberate about your first few hires, they set the culture more than any values document will. And be honest with yourself early about the business side of it – especially pricing and collections (if you can get pros in early, DO!)

Q: If you didn’t do advertising what would you have done?

Nkgabiseng: I feel like I use hobbies or my personal life to explore my other interests and somehow that always brings me back to Adland. I would have loved to host a show – I tested it out with a season of a podcast. I would have loved to work in policy, I use my friends and family for political rants and policy big ideas. There are many others.

Q: Day one advice you’d give someone starting out in advertising?

Nkgabiseng: Be curious about everything, not just the ads. Learn to take feedback without losing the idea underneath it. Start to intentionally build relationships in and outside of the department you work in.