There is a difference between using AI and using it well, and Graeme Stiles spends his week inside that gap. He is CEO and Chief AI Officer at Algorithm Agency, the first CAIO we have had on the show, and the agency is building a second arm in AI transformation and capability training.

So his job is partly deciding what is worth teaching other businesses, and partly deciding what to leave out. Very little of what he teaches is about tools.He is blunt about the businesses that over-invested, told everyone to use AI, and rolled it back when the bill came in with nothing to show for it. He is just as blunt about agencies selling AI search as a new line item.

Underneath both is one argument: get the foundations right and they outlive whichever platform is winning this year.

Connect with Graeme on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graemestiles/

Connect with Terence on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terence-mentor/

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We keep framing this as a fight: the data and reporting side of marketing against the cultural and creative side. Tshiamo Maremela doesn’t accept the split. He’s a strategist and the founder of a cultural intelligence and creative advisory, and he helps businesses make sharper decisions when things are messy.

His line on it: data gives you a signal, culture gives you the context, and strategy is what you do with both.

The part that should worry you is the quiet risk. We all know the brand that misread a moment and got cancelled. Tshiamo is more interested in what happens when nobody says anything at all - your campaigns still perform, the dashboard still looks healthy, but the brand is quietly becoming less important in people’s lives. By the time a comms problem has run long enough, it’s a business problem.

In this episode:

• Why culture can’t be a single KPI, and what you can actually measure: behaviour, conversations, language, the movement of ideas
• Lived intelligence, his term for the knowledge that doesn’t come from research, and how to build a system that uses it
• Why ten layers of approval make an idea safe, and safe is the problem
• The defensive version of cultural marketing: an African proverb, an African print, an African song, and a brand you can’t tell apart from any other
• Why not every cultural moment needs a response from your brand
• Two brands getting it right, including an artist residency in Mexico that Tshiamo worked on as strategist
• His four-part practice: look, understand, decide, act, and why marketing can’t run it alone

Connect with Tshiamo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tshiamomaremela

Connect with Terence on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terence-mentor

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Are small agencies now the ones winning, and should in-house marketers be looking at them instead of the big names?

Lucky Hustle just won Small Agency of the Year for the second year running, which Darren Morris believes nobody has done before.Darren is honest in both directions.AI has changed what a team of 25 can take on, and clients have noticed that ten people for ten days has become two people for three.

But he's just as clear that a small agency taking on an account the size of a bank would fall over, and he's watched others try it until the house of cards came down.

In this episode:

• What counts as a small agency, and why staff numbers are still the measure
• Why big brands went big for so long: heritage, 95-day payment terms, and someone to bankroll the campaign
• The "more monster", and why his five-year plan is to sustain rather than grow
• Why "a long healthy three years" with a client is nowhere near long enough
• What to look for when you pick an agency, starting with people who won't kiss your ass
• The clients who say jump, and the brands that sink because the agency always asks how high

Darren was on the show before, talking about AI and trends for 2026. This one is about the business underneath the work.

Connect with Darren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-morris-527598151

Connect with Terence on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terence-mentor

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Marketing budgets are moving back from digital to in-real-life. The trouble is that most brands still can't show what an event, a sponsorship or an activation actually did for them.

Doug Bird has spent more than 20 years in South African experiential marketing, including five as head of sports marketing at Red Bull, and he's the founder of WILD AIR Agency. His argument: in-person marketing is often as measurable as digital, as long as the systems are in place before the idea.

In this episode:

- Why digital won the budget: it's easier to defend in the board meeting

- How Red Bull counted interactions, captured first-party data and measured trial at its events

- Why the idea should be the last thing you work on

- Going where your customers already are, instead of asking them to come to you

- How Saucony took on the big running brands at run clubs with a trailer and 25 pairs of shoes

- Why there are no easy wins without systems, and why word of mouth sits at the centre

- Go Badger, the platform Doug is building so brands can buy in-person connection the way they buy digital media

Connect with Doug on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-bird-wild-air/

Want the live version of conversations like this? The SA Marketers' Circle is where South African marketers think out loud. Every month, a past guest joins us for a Hallway Session.

Apply to join: https://www.samarketerscircle.co.za/join

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In this episode, I sat down with Musa Kalenga, group CEO of the Brave Group.

Our conversation focused on how agencies and marketing teams should actually treat the people who do the work: the dangers of grind culture, avoiding burnout, and getting real buy-in from your team.

This one is a great look at what marketing leaders should be aiming for when thinking about how to run their modern marketing agencies.

Connect with Musa on Linkedin

Join me and other top South African Marketers in the SA Marketers' Circle

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This conversation really focused on an issue that is many marketers are concerned about: AEO.

That’s right, you’ve finally got a handle on SEO, and now you have to figure out AEO. Don’t worry though because in this episode we talk about what AEO is and how to ensure your brand is actually being seen in AI search results.

Connect with Luke on Linkedin

Join me in the SA Marketers' Circle

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Ad fraud is the marketing problem nobody wants to talk about.

I sat down with Marc Dhalluin from TruthsetsOnline.com for the first episode of Season 5, and I came away quietly panicking about every campaign I've ever run.

Here's the line that got me: more online ads are bought and paid for every single day than there are humans on earth who could ever look at them.

Sit with that for a second.

We spoke about bots inflating your bounce rate, why the platforms aren't exactly rushing to tell you when your ads never reached a real person, and the difference between plain old wastage and someone actively defrauding you.

The good news is it's not all doom. Marc's whole point is that you can find out what your money is actually doing, yet most of us just never look.

If you spend a cent on digital advertising, this one's worth your time.

Follow Marc here

Follow Terence here

Join the SA Marketers Circle here

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What turns a once-off buyer into someone who keeps coming back?

Charné Munien, Strategy Director at RogerWilco, has spent years around the world helping brands build customer experiences people genuinely want — and in this episode we put her in the hot seat to explain why CX deserves a slice of your limited time and budget.

We get into what "customer experience" really means beyond the buzzword, why a CMO or head of marketing should treat CX as a growth lever rather than a nice-to-have, and how to build something irresistible without a global-brand budget.

If this one has you looking hard at your own customer experience, our free Honest Marketing Audit asks the same kind of questions. Download it free

Connect with Charné on LinkedIn

Want the room where conversations like this carry on every day? That's the SA Marketers' Circle — a WhatsApp community for South African marketers to think out loud together. Join at the early-bird rate (R100/month, locked in for life) here.

Connect with Terence on LinkedIn

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