PODCAST | Unearthing the inner workings of SA’s largest black-owned ad agency

Advertising business Avatar Agency Group is helping to position and grow Absa’s business. In this edition of Business Day Spotlight, we talk to the man at forefront of making this happen. 

Host Mudiwa Gavaza talks to Zibusiso Mkhwanazi, co-founder of Avatar and executive chair at M&N Brands. M&N is an ad agency network that houses advertising, communications and media businesses, including Avatar.  

With offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, Avatar is the largest black-owned agency in SA. The company’s clients have included the SA Revenue Service, Edgars, H&M, Telkom, Nokia and Johnson & Johnson.

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The company recently won a contract to become Absa’s advertising agency, helping to create the banks new positioning through a campaign called, “Your story matters”. 

Mkhwanazi details how this piece of business was won and the process of creating the campaign. 

He delves into lessons learnt from starting and growing the Avatar business, how banking-oriented creative outputs can straddle both realms of relatability for the major corporate client as well as the individual client with a savings account, and explains how different it is running a creative-based business compared to one in another industry. 

Topics of discussion include the size and scope of Avatar’s business; the role of technology and AI in storytelling; the state of advertising in SA during the pandemic; the place of radio, television and print advertising in a digital economy; and challenges faced by creative businesses.

The discussion also touches on the role of AI in advertising and the possible effects such technology on the wider industry. 

• Business Day Spotlight is a TimesLIVE Production.