Meridian art and article text by Charles Lee Mathews. We announce the winners of MarkLives MEDIA’s Meridian Awards, celebrating innovation and maverick thinking in South African media.
South Africa’s media economy is undergoing one of its most turbulent periods in decades. Audience behaviour is shifting, advertising models are splintering, and global platforms continue to absorb most digital spend. Yet amid this volatility, the industry’s boldest thinkers are reimagining what media can be — and creating prototypes for its future.
To honour this type of work, MarkLives MEDIA introduces the Meridian Awards, an annual recognition of South Africa’s media mavericks and inventors. Named after the navigational lines that orient the world, the Meridians honour those who create new reference points: the ideas, technologies, and interventions that help chart the industry’s next direction.
The 2025 winners — MTN, Heineken, and Investec — represent three different but connected frontiers of innovation: business model reinvention, the creation of communal experiences, and high-impact creative technology.
Winners were selected through a multi-stage editorial process designed to identify true media innovation, not conventional marketing excellence. The editorial team nominated a long list of candidates based on systemic innovation, projected industry impact, and technical, strategic, and creative originality. The editors of MarkLives Media then selected the winners.
MTN: WINS THE MERIDIAN MEDIA INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR AWARD
A systemic intervention in the service of media sustainability
Telcos and tech platforms are often criticised for extracting value from media without helping to sustain it. MTN is the exception. This brand has initiated two major interventions designed to support publishers and strengthen the broader news ecosystem.
Its dual initiatives — MTN Ads and the Pan-African Media Innovation Programme — tackle two sides of the same crisis: publisher revenue erosion and the weakening of institutional journalistic capacity.
South Africa’s advertising industry is feeling the depreciation of cookies while publishers struggle against the dominance of global platforms like Meta and Google. “The loss of third-party cookies has removed between 50% and 60% of addressable audiences,” Jason Probert, general manager of digital services at MTN South Africa, who heads MTN Ads, told MarkLives MEDIA when we spoke to him in April 2025. For local publishers, this existential threat has eroded revenues as global platforms dominate advertising spending while traditional targeting mechanisms falter.
Yet, telcos occupy a unique position in this shifting landscape. “We know our subscribers and have built trust with them,” Probert notes. “With over 4 trillion data records collected monthly, we can offer advertisers privacy-first targeting that’s effective and compliant.” For local publishers, the implications extend beyond better targeting. By combining website and usage data into a single profile, MTN Ads offers advertisers a 360-degree view of their audiences. This innovation fundamentally enhances publishers’ ability to compete with global platforms.
But MTN’s innovation extends beyond targeting solutions. The company’s collaboration with the University of Johannesburg and the African Editors Forum to establish the Pan-African Media Innovation Programme (MIP) represents a long-term investment in media resilience across the continent. The certified course blends digital transformation, entrepreneurship, ethics, media law, and newsroom innovation, preparing the next generation of media practitioners for a future shaped by both technology and trust. The programme builds on a successful Nigerian pilot and is now expanding across MTN’s 16-market footprint.
What makes MTN’s approach stand out is how these two interventions work together. Sustainable media needs both viable business models and strong newsroom capacity. Privacy-compliant targeting tools mean little if publishers lack the skills to use them well. And skilled journalists can’t thrive without functioning business models.
MTN’s dual innovation offers both immediate utility and longer-term infrastructure building. MTN Ads provides sharper audience targeting and strong support for local publishers in an increasingly competitive environment. The Media Innovation Programme enhances the institutional capacity necessary for a robust information ecosystem.
HEINEKEN WINS A MERIDIAN MEDIA INNOVATOR MERIT AWARD
Heineken’s Social Screen: turning the lone view into a collective signal
In a digital world that fragments attention into individual pathways, Heineken posed a radical yet straightforward question: What if mobile screens could be stitched together?
That idea became Social Screen, developed in collaboration with Le Pub. This installation transformed 289 phones into a single, 17×17 synchronised viewing surface for the UEFA Champions League at Hyde Park Corner.
The installation demonstrated sophisticated technical execution, overcoming Wi-Fi congestion challenges and splitting DStv Stream’s signal in real-time across connected devices to deliver full HD viewing. But the innovation wasn’t only technical. Social Screen turned individual screens into shared infrastructure, transforming a private mobile habit into a communal experience.
While the technology could theoretically scale to around 700 devices in optimal conditions, the core innovation isn’t the number of phones. It’s the reframing that brands can help orchestrate: screens don’t have to pull us apart; they can also pull us together.
INVESTED WINS A MERIDIAN MEDIA INNOVATOR MERIT AWARD
Investec’s CGI Zebras: A new frontier for high-impact OOH storytelling
Out-of-Home media has entered a new era, not driven by bigger billboards or brighter LEDs, but by illusion, simulation, and the creative possibilities of CGI. Investec, in collaboration with Leagas Delaney and Run Jump Fly, demonstrated this masterfully through its CGI Zebra Crossing for International Zebra Day.
It generated 3.9 million views and reached 4.8 million users across social platforms — proof that new visual technologies, used well, can deliver strong earned media returns. while reinforcing brand identity in memorable, shareable ways.
Mapping the new Meridian
The Meridian Awards recognise three very different forms of innovation, but each challenges a major limit in today’s media:
- MTN challenges the assumption that local media must remain structurally disadvantaged against global platforms.
- Heineken challenges the isolation of mobile viewing by turning individual screens into a collective signal.
- Investec challenges the boundaries of physical media through accessible, high-fidelity CGI.
Together, they illuminate a path forward. A meridian is not shaped by incrementalism, but by decisive reimagination. As South Africa’s media landscape continues to shift, the question is no longer who will adapt, but who will chart new ground. The Meridian Awards exist to recognise those who do.
Charles Lee Mathews is a senior editor to MarkLives MEDIA and a senior writer to MarkLives.com, as well as co-founder of The Writers, a writing consultancy. Mathews contributed their art to Meridian’s design identity. As a writer and artist, Mathews strives to make sense of the world through words and brushstrokes, using digital, canvas, and mixed media. Mathews’ style comes from their self-chosen moniker, Charles, which means ‘free man’.
