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Building a Data Profile: A Q&A With Melissa Mc Nally — Part One
media update talks to Melissa McNally about the assumptions behind audience research, from the limits of consumer personas to the risks of AI-led targeting, and how research can keep pace with changing needs and motivations.
When Purpose Meets People — A Q&A With Tarri Parfitt
media update talks to Tarri Parffit about how the Smile Foundation communicates humanitarian influence and keeps people at the heart of the cause.
When Local Language Meets Global Default
South Africa's multilingual reality can get lost when local languages present a challenge for developing language technology. media update considers what it means when the language we use does not fit the systems built to understand it.
The Cost of Disconnected Marketing and Operations
media update considers what happens when businesses experience misalignment in marketing and operations by looking at the recent SPAR Chairman and Deputy Chair's resignations as case study.
The Human Edge in an Automated Communications Industry: A Q&A With Kevin Welman
media update talks to Kevin Welman about how agencies can balance integration with specialist knowledge, creativity with commercial value and technological efficiency with human relationships to build lasting credibility.
The Optics of Defence: AAD 2026 Through Communication's Lens
African Aerospace and Defence's (AAD's) air show is on everyone's lips after this past weekend's impressive display of skill, but the exhibition's story began decades before the first jet took to the Waterkloof skies. media update considers how AAD evolved from a simple air show into a major civil and military industry event.
When Literacy Development Meets Easy Answers: A Deeper Look at South Africa’s Literacy Crisis
media update considers how our relationship with AI and the decline in reading for pleasure fit into South Africa's literacy crisis.
Taking Local Global — What Durban FilmMart 2026 Asks of African Storytellers
Africa's leading film finance market returns this coming October under the theme Shifting Worlds: Turning Towards Ourselves. media update looks at how local stories reach global audiences without losing what makes them local.
The Digital Publishing Equation: From Traffic to Audience Relationships
AI crawlers continue to extract journalism with little traffic, if any, in return. Publishers from the United Kingdom (UK) debate newsletters and direct-audience strategies required for newsrooms to survive, while South Africa's Digital News Transformation Fund shows independent newsrooms already turning platform dependence into real self-built audience growth.
Roots to Reinvention — The Editor's Note
Spring notoriously signals new beginnings, meaning most industries lean on this symbolism for their own gain. media update considers how publicity campaigns can offer an edge to an overdone story by rooting a brand's future in its own history.
Taste as an Editorial Skill
media update considers how technology and trend culture shape our relationship with taste, and why developing discernment and an independent perspective remains essential to editorial judgement.
How Spaces Shape the Stories We Tell About Them
media update considers how the way we experience our surroundings can influence what we believe about them, and why changing that perception requires more than a fresh coat of paint.
Conservation NGO African Parks has partnered with VML South Africa with the aim to share the stories, celebrate the partnerships and highlight conservation outcomes across its portfolio.
South Africa has spent years asking whether children are ready for school. As Grade R becomes part of the country's compulsory schooling framework, an equally important question is whether schools are ready for the child.
After taking South African comedy to audiences around the world, Trevor Noah is returning home for a collaboration that celebrates the industry where his own journey began.
According to Harvard Business Review's analysis of recession-era marketing data, the evidence has exposed that businesses that held or grew their marketing spend through recent downturns came out of them growing 17% faster than the ones that pulled back.
Exabeam, a provider of Behavior Intelligence for the agentic enterprise, has announced that Craig Patterson has been named SVP of Global Channels and Marketing, reporting to CEO Pete Harteveld.
The South African documentary Hearts Remember (Pelo ya hopola) will officially premiere in South Africa on Monday, 21 September, coinciding with World Alzheimer's Day. The film was recently presented at the International Alzheimer's Association Conference in London this past July.
South Africa's FMCG market has returned to growth in 2025, with consumer spending increasing 3.3%, a significant turnaround from the 2.4% decline recorded in 2024, according to the latest Brand Footprint 2026 analysis from Worldpanel by Numerator.
Comic Con brings together exactly what marketers spend enormous amounts of time trying to curate: attention, passion, participation and community, says Ridhwaan Patel, Marketing Lecturer at AAA School of Advertising.
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