The best client and agency partnerships lead to the most inspired brand communication work, which also helps brands to win the hearts and minds of more consumers. This is what award-winning work that shows the greatest ROI is made of, along with strong customer insights.

But what goes into making these relationships work?

Award-winning Executive Creative Director of Pacinamix, Colin Makhubela joins us on this episode of The Lead Creative to draw from some of his own experiences, where he unpacks what led to some of the brand and agency partnerships that he was part of. He shares observations and findings from working with brands like Nike, Nedbank, DStv, First National Bank, Lucozade, and many others.

Talking about some of his current work with McDonald’s South Africa, he says they created a more inclusive process that brings agencies and the brand closer. This inclusion, he adds, is working well for McDonald’s, where it is helping to shape communication in a way that enables the brand to entrench itself in the local market. This, while competing with popular fast food brands such as KFC, Nando’s, Chicken Licken, and others.

“Data in isolation is not the whole picture, it’s a habit. People are not habits. People can change their habits on any given day if their motivations, needs and wants change.” — Colin Makhubela

Makhubela also addresses the significance of utilizing customer data wisely to inform strategy, rather than taking the data to be insight.