003 — Selected Work
Eight case studies across eight disciplines. Click any title to read the full story.
The Brief
There is a dumping site in Pimville, Soweto, that has been there so long — the rats have opinions about it. The brief wasn't a brand brief. It was a community one. A young man named Banele had been quietly pushing for recycling in his neighbourhood. No backing. No budget. No megaphone. Just a refusal to accept that this was just how things were.
"We had no media budget. No celebrity ambassador. No paid influencers. So we decided to make our own."
Three AI-generated characters became the beef — Mrijo the rat, Bizza the fly, and Celina the cockroach. A TikTok standoff between Pimville and its disgustingly glamorous pests. The community showed up and won. Church leaders. Recycling groups. Schools. The local councillor. Organic media coverage. A water tank raised for irrigation. A community garden where the dumping site used to be.
The Cast
The ringleader. Gold chain. Been at the site since before your gogo's gogo. Does not appreciate this clean-up talk.
Sunglasses on. Shrugging. Been there since before load shedding, since before the ANC, since before Hotsticks.
Mouth full of chips. Unbothered. The philosopher. Delivers the most devastating line when the community finally shows up.
The Strategic Reframe
Financial education has spent decades refining content, scaling distribution, and increasing access. Yet behaviour remained largely unchanged. The barrier was never awareness. It was context. We stopped scaling information — and started scaling relevance.
"Instead of asking how to improve financial literacy, we asked a more uncomfortable question: what if the system itself was never built for the people it claims to serve?"
The Manifesto
"We exist to be story bearers. For the voices that get left out of the rooms where decisions about their lives are made. That's not a mission statement we wrote. That's what we are — because it's what we've always been."
Covid-19 forced the most uncomfortable question of all: whether who we had become was still who we were meant to be. The agency went all the way back to the only question that has ever mattered: why do we exist? The answer didn't live in a design trend. It lived in the land. In history. In the Khoi.
The Origin — The Khoi
For the burning that has never asked for our permission to exist. The creative force that cannot be extinguished.
For the freedom we were born reaching toward. Movement without constraint. Ideas that travel.
Formed letter by letter by the geometry of a spear's movement through space. Forged not from a design brief — from a history.
UNLEASHED.
"We didn't rebrand. We remembered. And in remembering, we were unleashed."
The Brief
The brief was simple: a Women's Day emailer. Something warm. Something appropriate. Something that says "we see you" without really meaning it. We refused that brief. Not loudly — strategically. A celebratory emailer for women who are struggling is not celebration. It's erasure.
"We looked at what women in corporate South Africa were actually searching for. Not what they were saying in town halls — what they were typing alone, at night, into a search bar."
Campaign Visuals
What Women Were Actually Searching
IT'S THE STANDARD.
Human dignity begins when silence is no longer the loudest voice.
The Problem & Solution
The WalletWise WhatsApp bot had content, had modules, had everything a financial literacy programme is supposed to have — and nobody was using it. The instinct was to rewrite the copy. But the disease was the format itself.
"People don't consume lengthy copy on WhatsApp. They live there. They watch, they react, they forward. The bot was speaking the wrong language in the right room."
The fix: stories not modules, video-first learning, PDF cutdowns after each video, and PDFs designed to be shared. Learners became distributors. The bot became a self-growing ecosystem. Dwell time up. Drop-off down.
Presented in excerpted form out of respect for client confidentiality. The full Cheers Moments Reputation Management Toolkit was delivered to SAB as a complete strategic document.
The Diagnosis
Strong scores across jobs, economy, quality, heritage. Near-leading against global peers.
Leadership trust and responsible marketing trailed competitors. The gap wasn't performance — it was narrative.
"We're not just activating a campaign. We're closing a reputation gap — story by story."
Three Campaign Platforms
A celebration of local retailers as essential partners — inducted into a Wall of Fame honouring resilience and economic contribution.
Stella ArtoisPositions SAB as a premium partner in the trade ecosystem, not just a supplier.
Recognition Luncheon · Wall of Fame Reveal · Retailer Love Letters via regional brand managers.
The journey from farm to bottle — SAB's partnership with black farmers as a symbol of pride, progress, and local impact.
Castle LagerBrewed with 100% local ingredients. A national icon rooted in South African farming.
Immersive Taung farm tour · Stakeholder engagement · Seed to Sip doccie premiere · Unified toast.
Reframing alcohol-free moments as bold, feel-good choices. Moderation made modern, social, aspirational.
Castle Free + Corona CeroA diverse, celebration-forward sober bar. Local credibility meets premium positioning.
High-energy sober party · 0% Regrets Challenge · UGC social activation · Branded Spotify playlist.
THE G20 CAME TO AFRICAN SOIL.
South Africa's G20 Presidency — representing 87% of global GDP, 62% of the world's population, and over 75% of global trade. Sivu wrote all copy across all 31 sponsors: invitations, aide memoirs, speaker notes, and event communications.
The Brief
"There are moments in history when sponsorship stops being branding — and becomes nation building. This was one of those moments."
Matte BLK and BTM were appointed with sole responsibility for all 31 sponsors' rights — across Branding, Leadership, and full B20 Cycle Access. The writing mandate: every piece of copy that touched a sponsor's experience, at a summit where diplomatic protocol, ministerial schedules, and international media converged.
Keynote stages. Task Force seats. Rooms where the G20 agenda was fed by B20 recommendations. Africa was no longer asking to participate — Africa was convening.
The Brief
The brief: create an experience. Recognise the craft. Make the nominees feel seen — not as talent assets, but as storytellers who gave something of themselves to South African screens. The concept — The Story Behind the Story — reframed the occasion entirely.
"Each interaction is designed to feel personal, elevated, and intentional — reinforcing Netflix's commitment to South African storytelling excellence."
The Copy — A Toast To Us
To one story — born from many voices, crossing genres, languages, and borders.
To one industry — built together by creatives, crews, producers, broadcasters, and audiences, stronger because we stand as one.
To one future — full of promise, purpose, and possibility, setting the stage for what comes next. Here's to South Africa's screen legacy.
And to the stories still waiting to be told — together. SAFTAs 19
The copy doesn't celebrate a nomination. It celebrates a collective — moving from story to industry to future. The line "stories still waiting to be told" makes the moment feel like a beginning, not just a milestone. That's the difference between writing that lands and writing that lingers.
Every gift in the collection was South African — from Boschendal MCC to Africology, Babylonstoren to Afrikoa. The country's screen legacy, in a basket.