08:00 - 10:30 (SAST)
Celebrating South Africa’s Consumer Brands and Examining Trends Within the Nation’s Sports Brands
Every year, Brand Finance assesses more than 5,000 of the world’s most prominent brands. Since 2013, the Brand Finance South Africa report has highlighted the country’s most valuable and strongest brands, offering a unique lens on their growth and influence.
At our Brand Finance South Africa Forum 2025, we will continue to celebrate South's Africa's most valuable and strongest brands. In an exciting new development, this year we are launching the Brand Finance South Africa Sports Report that will give sports bodies, teams and sponsors unique insight into the power of sponsorship in the South African brand landscape.
Hosted at GIBS Business School, we invite you to join us as we celebrate the achievements of South Africa’s 100 most valuable and strongest brands.
Abdullah serves as the CEO of The Strategists where he leads a world class team that play an active role in assisting companies and organisations craft competitive future strategies and innovation. He is also senior faculty at GIBS, head of faculty for strategy, sustainability and digital and head of the Harvard Business School Senior Executive Programme for Africa. He also hold the Chair in sport, media and entertainment
Known as the disruption expert, he has significant expertise in strategy, competitiveness and sector trends and facilitates a number of high-level strategy sessions and breakaways for companies and governments and also speaks globally in this area. He also plays a lead role on the Oxford University and Gates Foundation programme on South Africa in a Digital Age.
Abdullah has built a number of disruptive and truly innovative companies. He is thus able to fuse experience, insight, strategy and expertise into a beautiful tapestry that has relevance and application to companies and organisations around the world. He is a Harvard Business school alumnus and is currently finishing his PhD in dynamic capabilities and strategy
Abdullah authored the best-selling book Disruption Amplified: Reset, rewire, reimagine everything. He has been asked to present at some of the world’s leading institutions including the School of Public and International Affairs at Colombia University in New York, Tedx Euston in London, the OECD in Paris and Casa Asia in Madrid amongst others.
Rob began his career on the prestigious Unilever Graduate Training Programme before spending 16 impactful years at The South African Breweries (SAB). In his early roles, he led iconic brands such as Castle Lager, before focusing on managing SAB’s extensive sponsorship portfolio. As SAB’s parent company, SABMiller, expanded its global reach, Rob was appointed Global Head of Sponsorships, working across multiple territories to drive strategic partnerships and brand engagement.
After his time at SABMiller, Rob joined the Blue Label Telecoms Group as Chief Marketing Officer, where he championed a culture of customer centricity across both B2B and B2C businesses.
Currently, Rob is the founder and CEO of Incrementum, a company dedicated to helping organizations achieve growth by:
Beyond his professional achievements, Rob has contributed significantly to South Africa's sports and marketing landscape through various leadership roles, including:
Mtunzi Jonas is a seasoned sports marketing and sponsorship expert with over 18 years of experience in building impactful commercial strategies and partnerships within the sports industry. A self-described sports fanatic with a passion for the business of sport, he has successfully led high-profile sponsorship and brand initiatives across major corporations.
Before joining CSA, Mtunzi was the General Manager for Sponsorships at Absa Group Limited, where he developed and managed the group’s sponsorship strategy, overseeing large teams and budgets. His leadership experience also spans roles at South African Breweries (SAB), Red Bull South Africa, and Unilever South Africa.
Mtunzi holds a BCom in Economics and Marketing, along with General Management Programme and SuperSport Industry Leaders Programme qualifications from the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). His achievements include multiple SA Sports Industry Awards for the Absa Premiership and Absa Cape Epic, as well as industry recognition for SAB’s Carling Black Label "Be the Coach" campaign.
Mark Rowles has worked in the South African sporting industry for 20 years across various roles and businesses. This includes stints at some of South Africa’s top agencies in account management and strategic roles, before finding his way to Betway almost 9 years ago. He is currently the Head of Marketing for Betway based in Johannesburg and looks after the brand across 7 African markets.
David began his career in brand management at SmithKline Beecham (now GSK) in 1992 and worked on brands such as Aquafresh, Lucozade and Med Lemon. He successfully launched Tums into the South African market and very unsuccessfully launched Ribena.
He moved into advertising in 1995 at TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris as a strategic planner and later stumbled into client service. Through the years he worked on brands such as Standard Bank, BMW, Land Rover, Nissan, Reckitt Benckiser, Nandos, Apple, SAA, SA Tourism and Visa. He managed to convince clients to approve work that won Loerie Grand Prix’s, a few Cannes Lions and a host of APEX Effectiveness awards. He left in 2007 after a 5 year stint as Managing Director.
He joined Standard Bank as Marketing Director: Africa and was part of building their Africa franchise with acquisitions in Nigeria and Kenya.
In 2010 David moved to Kenya to become CMO of Standard Chartered Bank in Africa before returning to South Africa in 2013 to join Barclays Africa Group (Absa), primarily to oversee the change of Absa in South Africa to Barclays.
Post the Barclays PLC announcement to sell their operations in Africa, David headed the team that reimagined and guided the organisation through the successful rebrand and relaunch of the Absa Group.
He left Absa in April 2022 and is running a brand and marketing consultancy, In2Sight Consulting.
He is currently representing Brand Finance in Africa as the Business Development Director and is a Board Member of Hilton College.
He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Marketing, Economics and Law; but more importantly is the father of 2 boys; he loves to run, ride a mountain bike and can be found fishing on a river somewhere whenever possible.
Jeremy is the managing director of Brand Finance Africa and has almost 50 years’ experience working in between London and Johannesburg in marketing, advertising, graphic design, public relations, reputation management and branding. He founded and was the Executive Chairman of the Africa operations of the international branding group, Interbrand until he stepped down in October 2014.
Jeremy himself was awarded the prestigious Financial Mail AdFocus Lifetime Achievement Award, in 2010 and holds over 100 design awards.
Today Jeremy consults/mentors/advises, sits on boards/advisory panels, writes and speaks and is very active in the media, including hosting programmes for Classic FM.
As a well-versed brand advisor, Oliver have over 15 years of experience with Brand Finance advising strongly branded organisations, both large and small, on how to maximise shareholder value through effective management of their intangible assets.
During his time at Brand Finance, he has been the Global Account Director for Vodafone – a position held for five years. During this period Oliver directed 20 strategic projects for the Vodafone Global Brand team including valuing the Vodafone portfolio in 72 markets for four consecutive years. He also valued the Miller portfolio of brands following the acquisition of Miller by SAB plc for balance sheet recognition in May 2002. Some of his other clients include Absa, Brand South Africa, De Beers, FNB, Manchester United, Microsoft, Petronas, SANParks, Shell, Standard Chartered Bank, Telefonica, Telkom, and Virgin.
Beyond his role at Brand Finance, Oliver assists the Reporting & Analysis Team for a global volunteer organisation. His team are based in South Africa, South Korea, Japan, Austria, Netherlands, and the US.
He also holds a BA in Computer Science.