By Charles Lee Mathews. Meta Media’s group MD on media’s narrow view, digital, creativity, and transformation.
For Kagiso Musi, group MD of Meta Media, the gulf between adland’s creators and media strategists is a strange puzzle that begs for resolution. “Creative and media still sit separately, which is bizarre. Whether you’re on the creative or the media side, the work that we all should be doing is bridging creative and commerce. Why? Because media does not exist without a creative product. And, creative cannot exist without it being used in media,” Musi says.
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“I think all agencies should be creative commerce agencies. If you understand this then you know the job that needs to be done by this industry,” she adds. “Creative people are still the most powerful people in the client’s eyes, right? I don’t think media people have stepped up to the plate and fully inhabited the centre of the roles they need to own. That’s where we stand as an industry,” she says, emphasising that transformation remains adland’s biggest challenge.
A classic overachiever, Musi held key positions across the industry. She has served on the executive committee of the Nahana Communications Group, chaired the Inaugural Effie SA Awards, and held board roles at The Jupiter Drawing Room and Wunderman South Africa. Musi was also on the board of Brand Council South Africa. In addition to her leadership roles, Musi’s skills span digital marketing, customer experience consulting, brand management, public relations, financial management, and project oversight.
End-to-end perspective
Given her experience, Musi has a holistic view of the industry and remembers its history well. “The marketing function was touted as the most important department in any organisation, right? This is because brands were everything, and were the central direction for business,” she says.
“Coca-Cola used to rule the roost and owned the conversation on consumers and marketing, but no longer. Same thing with Breweries, ” she says of South African Breweries, the wholly owned subsidiary of SABMiller that was sold to Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2016. “The marketing function has taken a backseat from a client perspective because what’s most important to the board today is commerce.” For marketing to regain lost influence and reputation, she says, creative and media must unite around commerce.
“Media people still operate as, “We just do TV and radio, right?” The media sector has obsessed so much on TV and radio that, with the rise of digital, other people have come along and done our job for us,” she says, pointing to the rise of independent digital intelligence companies like Measurebyte or Pragmattica Consulting. “And the people in our industry are happy about this because of, what do you call it? Oogklappe [blinkers].”
An aversion to change
“People are so happy doing what they’ve always done in this industry. We’ve also seen the rise of performance marketing, and then we treat it like it is different or another medium. Yes, it is a technical medium that requires a specialised skill, but we treat it like a different medium. And then we’re surprised that all the budgets go into digital because that’s where clients see the sexiness: data, insights, and results. We’re so siloed in our thinking that digital is a different stable,” Musi says.
Visibly brimming with energy, Musi says she embraces flux. “I am a big proponent of change. When I find no change, I get jittery. People generally don’t like change because it’s uncomfortable, but if I don’t have change in my life, I get bored and I get agitated. Maybe I’ve moved around in my career because I was always seeking what’s next. I am not talking about bigger or better, but I’m talking about compound growth,” she says.
Musi believes that real change demands diversity at the highest levels. “The number of Black media buyers in our industry is fairly reflective of the demographics of our country, but for me, this is not progression. Media buying is one of the easiest entries into the profession because all you need is a laptop and you can teach yourself. It’s easy enough to do. Transformation has to be progressive. Progression for me is about influence. How many more Black female leaders are there in this industry?” she asks.
Empowered transformation lags
Despite the billions of rands circulating in the industry, Musi points out a lack of Black-owned and Black-led agencies. “When there are more leaders and Black-owned agencies, we can talk about progression,” she asserts. The real challenge, she believes, lies in recruiting and training future leaders. “Why aren’t we training people adequately and fast enough? This is my sixth year in leadership at Meta Media, and I don’t see people like me. For me, this is not transformation. People are ticking boxes, but you can’t call this empowerment or progressive change.”
Musi expresses frustration that the media industry becomes a training ground for big brands: “Who do I blame? I blame ourselves and our clients because the latter continually steal our people,” she says. “If we were smart, we’d work together for a better future for everyone, and we’d come together and grow this industry and win back respect.” But then Musi’s a rare human who’s comfortable with change. A leader who looks at the future and says: “Bring it on.”
Charles Lee Mathews is a contributing writer to MarkLives MEDIA and MarkLives.com, as well as co-founder of The Writers, a writing consultancy.
