Fractional CMO | Global Speaker Ex @TikTok L’Oreal @Diageo | Host #InTheRoom Future Female @AdvertisingWeek Judge @Effies @Loeries @IAB Bookmarks
South Africa
Joined April 2009
- Tweets19.4K
- Following3K
- Followers5.3K
- Likes1.3K
Pinned Tweet
Had the pleasure of hosting @davido at our TikTok offices today. All the best with the drop. Epic 🔥loading with @AsaAsika #lifeattiktok 📸 @artvillain
I sat down with @Abeymokgwatsane , CMO of @Investec for In The Room. Feedback, conflict, and the one question most leaders never ask themselves. Grab the masterclass here 👇 youtu.be/Ayl2tGgUlxE?si=-X1Y…
Things the don't tell you! Every meeting is a silent audition.
People are watching how you think, how you communicate, how you handle pressure and whether you actually add value.
You don’t need to dominate the room to stand out.
You just need to make people glad you were in it.
#CareerAdvice #Leadership #PersonalBrand
What is conversation capital?
Something I learned throughout my career is that you have to intentionally invest in conversations that can compound over time.
The people you meet, the questions you ask, the value you bring and, most importantly, how you show up in the room all add to your conversation capital.
Because your network isn’t built in one conversation. It’s built through many of them.
#CareerGrowth #CommunicationSkills #PersonalBranding
Not every step back is a setback.
We’re taught to think success looks like one direction: up.
But up doesn’t always mean progress. And down doesn’t always mean failure.
Sometimes you need to change direction, play backwards, or take a different route to put yourself in a better position.
Stop measuring success by how your life looks from the outside.
Measure it by who you’re becoming.
We’ve all wanted to know what happens in the rooms we can’t get into.
So I’m letting you in.
Welcome to In The Room!🎙️
For Episode 1, I brought @fireboydml into the room.
We talk about building a global brand from Africa, getting the right co-signs, navigating relationships, earning respect and turning talent into a career.
If you’re an artist, creator, marketer or just curious about what happens behind the scenes, this one’s for you.
Episode 1 is live now.
youtu.be/F0aeF0_8Hfc?si=dy2b…
#InTheRoom #FireboyDM
A recruiter can’t find you under a blanket. New business won’t just come knocking. You have to make yourself discoverable! This is why building your personal brand is so critical for growth. #personalbranding #marketing #creators #career
Friend, let me tell you.
For every mentor and cheerleader I gained in my career, I also met bullies, opportunists and shape shifters.
The higher you climb, the more people reveal themselves.
One thing about growth? It will expose who actually wants to see you win. #careeradvice
April closed with a personal milestone,
first exit. I sold my culture platform.
What it reinforced:
Pitching isn’t just about ideas.
It’s a data game. And a people game.
Whether it’s a job interview or investment, if you can’t read the room, you don’t close.
Feed your feed. Looking to follow fresh voices of those working in marketing, entertainment & creator economy across West and East Africa.
Becoming a CMO at 40 meant integrating lessons from TikTok, Diageo and now L’Oréal.
Speed. Scale. Restraint.
Here's a thread of lessons that shaped me. #Africa
linkedin.com/pulse/what-got-…
Lesson 3: Being non-traditional is only an advantage if you integrate it
📌 I’ve never had a linear career and for a long time, I wondered if that would count against me.
It turns out, it only does if you treat your experience like fragments instead of a system.
Each chapter taught me something different:
Tech taught me speed. At TikTok, we reached 1 billion users in under five years. Momentum matters and so does learning fast when things break.
Premium spirits across Africa, built through distributor models, taught me the value of trust over control.
CPG and luxury are teaching me the art of scale with intention while building a brave and strategic team geared to recruit the next-gen consumer.
Lesson 2: Titles don’t transfer context. People do!
📌 A senior title doesn’t automatically explain how you think. Every new environment comes with its own power dynamics, cultural codes, and definitions of impact. What worked in one system won’t land the same way in another even if the title looks bigger.
I’ve learned to spend less time proving and more time listening, especially early on. Credibility compounds faster when curiosity comes before certainty.
Lesson 1: Your past success can become your comfort blanket. When you step into a new role, you naturally bring your “kit” with you. The frameworks that worked, the language you perfected, the way you learned to win in certain rooms. That’s not the problem.
The problem is when that kit turns into a comfort blanket.
The problem with drawing a line in the sand is that it can so easily fade away.
Without follow through, even the clearest boundaries will blur.
You can’t expect someone to level up just because you crash-landed into their orbit. Growth takes time and grace. Vulnerability is meeting people where they are, not where you wish they’d be.
Ego will slow you down. It’s ok to be vulnerable and ask for help when working on a passion project or side hustle & balancing a 9 to 5.
Think of your passion project like driving in F1, you’re in the seat, steering the vision, but even the world’s best drivers don’t change their own tyres or fix engines mid-race.
That’s what the pit crew is for. Outsourcing isn’t weakness, it’s strategy.
It means knowing your zone of genius and trusting others to handle the rest, so you can keep your eyes on the podium
I’ll never understand how some people on this app will go out their way to reply to a comment with hate especially when their full profile is so easily searchable. Yes, it’s funny for the moment and you have something funny to share in the group chat but the digital log lasts forever. I pity these people, same with high school bullies - instead of taking the lesson they mask insecurities with cheap humour.
What’s the circuit breaker?
As marketers , our job isn’t just to ship campaigns & be the budget bestie.
It’s to ask the uncomfortable question in the room.
For every great idea your agency lands you have to think and ask and prep (as if it were fact) for the worst case scenario.
We HAVE to take the romanticism out of the idea for just a short moment to consider what’s the potential circuit breaker.
Safety preps you for scale.