Zibusiso Mkhwanazi (born 10 June 1983, Soweto, South Africa) is Group CEO of M&N Brands and co-founder of Avatar, South Africa's largest black owned and managed advertising agency.   Join Zibusiso Mkhwanazi tonight at 6pm on IG Talk, as he’ll be in conversation with Yolisa Pasipanodya, the MD of Meropa Communications. They’ll be chatting about her challenges, learnings and successes that she faces and her view on black prominent women in the industry.   Tune in here: https://bit.ly/2YfOxCh   #UnitedInCreativity IG: @sacreatives IG: @zibusisom...

Following a rigorous and detailed selection process with proposals considered from 16 short-listed companies across the delivery pillars required, South African Tourism (SA Tourism) is pleased to announce that we have appointed a suite of marketing and communications agencies in response to the RFP162/19 the organisation issued in June 2019. In line with South African Tourism’s commitment to the empowerment of small businesses, each of the agencies has subcontracted 30% of their scope and billing to a small black owned business. For the duration of the contract, South African Tourism will ensure that the subcontractors provide valuable input into the...

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of South Africa (IAB SA) has appointed of Veli Ngubane as its new transformation council head. Ngubane is the founding partner and group MD of Avatar Agency Group. Ngubane has served on the transformation council for the last year and takes over leadership from Avani Singh, Alt Advisory director and co-founder, who joins the IAB executive board. The council’s mandate is to lead the debate and monitor the progress of the interactive advertising industry regarding the challenges and opportunities related to transformation. Says Ngubane, “I’m honoured to be given this task to lead the transformation council at a...

by Zibusiso Mkhwanazi (@Zibusiso) Last week, I read Jarred Cinman’s 2020 trends piece here on MarkLives, #BigQ2020: The future is here, and I would like to expand on his views, which I fully agree with. What a difficult year 2019 was for what seems to have been a majority of ad agencies in South Africa. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut SA’s GDP growth prospects for 2020, from 1.1% to 0.8%. This in turn means that, when there’s little growth, marketing budgets are in the front of the chopping queue. This isn’t good news for SA agencies: our industry will...