702, Wednesday evening

They are CMOs. They're probably mostly black and female. Yeah. If you have to look at CEOs, they're mostly white male. Male, right? But the CMOs are, you know. And then if you look at advertising agencies and you look at the chief creative officers or the MDs, they're mostly still white male, right? And so for me, it's important that we work with agencies that are committed to South Africa and committed to ensuring that they reflect the country that we live in. And it's not just what it means, I'll give you an example.

I'm quite clear that as a brand, we should never lean into stereotypes. And so there was an example where our agency presented an idea where there's a guy living in Madrid. He's got a very fancy BMW, but his apartment in Midrind has got a bean bag and no food in the fridge, right? That's like a seriously black stereotype. We're not going to be the brand that does that. Now, if you don't have diversity in the room to be able to say, well, that's not the stereotype, then that's the ad that goes out. And all of a sudden, you've actually offended.

To your clients. So I think that transformation for me is like very important. And fortunately, our partners are completely aligned with us in that. And if you look at our biggest agency, they went through a deal to be able to get majority black ownership. But also, there's a whole value chain in our industry. So let's take media. So out of home is one that we think we can make an impact on. So we have a commitment that 70% of our outdoors is in black hands.

And we've been able to deliver that. We can't deliver it everywhere. So, things like digital, like your Google's of the world, your Facebook's of the world, we can't. So, where we can, we really, really do. And so, it's really about doing it in a way which actually drives excellence at the same time. And I'm really proud of the work that we've been able to do. And then, you look at my marketing leadership team. It's, I think I've got a big team, like in terms of my exec and stuff, there's probably, I think, about five black women, like.