Marketing veteran, Happy Ntshingila,
was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2016 Financial Mail AdFocus awards.
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| Marketing and advertising guru, Happy Ntshingila. Credit: NPI Consulting |
Ntshingila is the co-founder of South Africa’s first
black-owned ad agency, HerdBuoys, in 1991. Ntshingila and partner, Peter
Vundla ran the company from Vundla’s rented home in Soweto. Six years
later, it merged with global ad agency McCann
Erickson to form Herd Buoys McCann Erickson.
Ntshingila and Vundla have pioneered transformation in South
African advertising.
Steps towards making history
Born in Soweto in 1960, Ntshingila graduated from the
University of Fort Hare with a Bachelor of Arts in communications in 1983. He
began his career the following year, starting out in Durban at the Unilever
Group in sales and marketing.
“I really enjoyed advertising. It just gelled with me,” says
Ntshingila.
In 1991, after four years at Oglivy & Mather and various advertising
and media gencies, Ntshingila and two partners, Peter Vundla and Dimape
Serenyane, started their own advertising agency HerdBuoys. “We didn’t have
any clients. Just a serious belief in ourselves and our abilities,” says
Ntshingila.
Ntshingila adds that the trio had the difficulties faced by
all business start-up, plus additional barriers to entry as the first black
owned and managed advertising agency in the country. He says they had to work
twice as hard to prove their worth – and they did just that, and more.
HerdBuoys went on to change the landscape of advertising in South Africa.
HerdBuoys’ rags to riches story is so colourful and
intriguing that Ntshingila has written a book about it. Black
Jerusalem tracks the events and people who shaped HerdBuoys. With
characteristic wit and flair, Ntshingila give a no-holds-barred account of
working through the night, pretending to have an office, and buying a TV
minutes before a crucial presentation. It’s fast paced, irreverent, and conveys
Ntshingila’s energy and determination which is an important ingredient in his
recipe for success.
By 2005 HerdBuoys had merged with McCann-Erickson and was
ranked amongst the top 10 advertising companies in the industry. HerdBuoys made
ads for South African Breweries (SAB), Coca-Cola, Vodacom, General Motors, and
Telkom to name only a few.
Ntshingila, who heads to the gym to work off the stress,
concedes that the hardest challenge he’s had to face has not been with a client
or an intimidating presentation in a packed boardroom.
It was the death of his mother in 1989. “A part of me died
too – at the time I did not know how to cope,” he says. His work suffered, and
he lost all motivation until he eventually took stock of his life and decided
to turn a bad situation around. This was an important life lesson for
Ntshingila and he says he’s always been able to walk into tough situations
since then knowing he has the strength to deal with it.
Nsthingila is currently Chairman of Washirika Holdings, an investment enterprise group.
Source: Profile SA and BizCommunity
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