SG Creative Africa
What does your company do?
Established in 2015, SG Creatives previously known as Siyabangena Group came to life.
We are a TTL marketing and media agency. We focus on bringing out the best in clients’ brands.
We’re a team of young, fresh thinkers and doers who put their all into every campaign, concept and project.
We are also dynamic in our offerings being skilled in both above the line and below the line offerings. Our core service offerings are:
BRAND STRATEGY
MEDIA BUYING
EVENTS AND ACTIVATIONS
DIGITAL MANAGEMENT
PRODUCTION
MARKET RESEARCH
PUBLIC RELATIONS
DESIGN
What is your biggest success?
Some of my greatest successes is taking legacy brands and being the agency that catapults them into the digital space. Can you believe that a legacy brand such as IWISA No1, the maize meal brand and Compral, headache and pain tablets brand, had no digital footprint till SG Creative Africa strategized and executed their digital launch? This is testament to our understanding of legacy brands as we were able to compete with larger agencies for these accounts. And we won!
Over and above this, we also strategized some brilliant campaigns that would see these brands seeded in township communities through specialised activations and events.
Another success I am extremely proud of is that we were commissioned by Plush SA to strategize and refresh their full product range's look and feel. This project saw us refresh 128 skews with my design team! From start to finish, we overhauled the outdated packaging of SA's leading home care and shoe care brand successfully refreshing it to compete on-shelf. I cannot fully explain to you how it feels to walk into grocery stores and smile in the aisles knowing it was your company that helped the brand achieve such a fete.
Overall, I would say, having a successful marketing agency for almost 10 years means that we can withstand the challenges while competing with giants in our industry. I am proud that a small agency like ours has and continues to work with large brands such as Danone, McCain, Reckitt, Adcock Ingram, Bioplus and more!
We do not toot our own horns. Hence you will not find us entering industry awards but perhaps it's time to look back, reflect and acknowledge our achievements. Regrettably, I am terrible at smelling the roses. But I am working on it.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
The biggest hurdle is sustaining the business in an ever-changing market. Bigger agencies are able to withstand the storm when contracts are not renewed or when there are budget cuts. For smaller agencies like us, we take the punches harder.
The greatest hurdle therefore has been to achieve a positive cashflow in a volatile market. It becomes even more challenging when working with larger corporations with 60 day payment terms that force us to use our current reserves to commence and close on projects and be remunerated 60 days after completion. We cannot say no because the opportunities are amazing however we are crunched by overstretching ourselves to play in the big leagues.
