Cape Town
Portfolio Night is an advertising event like no other, and its City Hosts are the local and national heroes of the event. Together we break down the walls between agencies and up-and-comers. We will take the future of the advertising industry into our own hands.
Date & Time:June 2nd, 2022 from 5pm to 10pm SAST
Address:Portswood House, Portswood Ridge, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town 8001
Tickets:Free
Register Now
Alistair King
Alistair, a copywriter by trade, is the founding creative partner of 24-year old advertising agency King James Group, recently acquired by Accenture Song. He is one of a handful of creatives to have been inducted into both the SA Creative Circle Hall of Fame (2017) and the Loeries Hall of Fame (2019).
In 1996, Alistair was named the most-promising person under the age of 30 in South African advertising. In 2008, he was named Financial Mail AdFocus Agency Leader of the Year. Industry survey MarkLives.com has voted him South Africa’s most admired Creative Leader, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. He has also been a career-long, serial entrepreneur, having owned a record label, a pop culture magazine and a beehive brand at various points along his journey.
He lives between his homes in Cape Town and Greyton.
Ana Rocha
Ana is interested in ideas, and finding amazing ways to bring them to life. They are what get her up in the morning, and keeps her up late at night.
Ideas that change behaviour, makes a difference, and add value to consumers. Ideas that are part of people’s lives.
Through her almost 20 years in advertising, she’s shaped award winning work on local and global brands, from Automotive to Mobile and FMCG to Financial Services, including winning the first Mobile Cannes in the South Africa.
She is curious about tech, the future of how we learn things, and always wondering when will we finally teleport.
Ashraf Majiet
Ashraf is an awarded Creative Director with 18 years of experience at agencies in Cape Town as well as in Dubai.
With a focus on design, he led creative on many iconic local and international brands. He created the identity for Africa’s most significant Museum of contemporary art, the Zeitz MOCAA and was part of refreshing one of SA’s most iconic retail brands, PEP.
He is an awarded creative at the D&AD, Clios and The Loeries and has worked on a range of clients across categories from fashion and beauty clients like Harvey Nichols, Superbalist, and PEP to automotive and entertainment clients like Audi, Astron Energy and Musica.
The longevity of great iconic brands is what Ashraf finds most intriguing about his job. The idea that the logos and identities we create will likely outlast us and inspire future generations of creatives is what guides his work and keeps him inspired.
Ashraf is 40, holds a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design (CPUT, 2000-2003) and is currently Creative Director at Superunion, Cape Town.
Sibs Zihle
Sibs Zihle is a Creative Group Head working on the Carling Black Label and Castle Lite brands at Ogilvy Cape Town. He has been in the industry for the past 12 years. His favourite ads are ones that make people laugh, because if you’re going to demand someone’s attention, the least you can do is reward them with a smile. However, he also believes that advertising can make a serious impact in the world.
His work includes campaigns like Volkwagen’s, “The Drive to Defy”, and “011 Beats”, KFC’s “Make a Meal of It” and CrunchMaster “Heh?”, as well as Carling Black Label’s recent campaign “Bride Armour”.
Suhana Gordhan
Suhana Gordhan is the Executive Creative Director at Duke Group, Cape Town.
As a Hindu, she learned quickly that there are no sacred cows in advertising. Gordhan’s favourite moment in her 18-year career was when she pissed off a dictator and was awarded for it. Other accolades include a Black Eagle, multiple local South African awards as well as some wins at Cannes, D&AD, and Best of Show in Radio at The One Show Awards.
Career highlights include being selected by FCB Global for a surfing and leadership program in Nicaragua, and being named one of Destiny Magazine’s Power of 40 Candidates in 2017. Her work for Coca-Cola featured in Contagious Magazine under ‘The World’s Best Strategies.’
Gordhan serves on local industry boards, as well as the International Board for The One Club For Creativity. She is the former Chairperson of The Loeries and runs ‘Open Chair’, which creates face time between young women and senior female leadership in advertising.
When not making ads, she does Capoeira – often mistaken to be an innocuous dance form.
Christ Gotz
Chris Gotz spent most of his career in South Africa as a ECD of Ogilvy Cape Town. Under his creative leadership the agency became the number 1 creative agency, the number 1 effectiveness agency and the top integrated agency in the country. Chris was the SA Advertising Achiever of the Year in 2014.
He won Gold Lions in 2013, 2014, 2015 and Grand PrIx in 2016.
He moved to the USA to head up Global brands for SC Johnson in 2017, winning another Cannes Gold Lion for Glade’s “Museum of feelings”.
Chris is now a partner in independent creative agency OFyt, where he gets to work with the funniest, smartest bunch of people in the Southern Hemisphere.
Fu’aad Kasu
Donned in all black, a slick fade and a baseball bat as his security blanket, the Lenasia big hitter makes some of the ads you love, and plenty of the ones you don’t. He moved to Cape Town after winning a Grand Prix in 2016 at the Loeries and now fills one of the seats as a Creative Director at Duke. Fu’aad has a passion for mentoring and nurturing young creatives. He loves The Office and baking. He is also a rice denier. When asked why he’s passionate about creativity he put himself on mute to work on something more exciting.
Here are some of Fu’aad’s favourite quotes about himself:
“He’s my favourite son.”
-Fu’aad’s mum
“He can’t parallel park but he tips well.“
-Security at his complex
“Who?”
-His Ex-wife
Lubablo Mtati
I'm a Creative Director at M&C Saatchi & Abel in Cape Town, South Africa who takes his fun very seriously. I’ve worked across a range of blue-chip brands at some of South Africa’s top advertising agencies. Being able to create things that connect with people is something special to me so I'm super passionate about finding cut-through conceptual solutions that resonate on a real human level.
Kassie Naidoo
Partner & Creative Director – Lampost Productions
Co-Founder and Creative Director - Lampost Luminaries NPC
Founder & Executive Creative Director – The Imaginarians
Kassie Naidoo built her career as a creative director over 3 decades ago, expressing her creative leadership through design, creative direction and creative strategy. She began her career in editorial design, but changed lanes many times over, thus garnering a wide work experience that saw her heading up brand design teams to herding creatives in leading advertising and design agencies. Kassie’s approach is highly collaborative, loving the energy of working with both large and small teams. She is not afraid of taking risks or trying to do something that’s never been done before, which in the past has given many of her production managers sleepless nights. With an eye for detail and strategic creative mind, Kassie’s work combines intuition with insight and experience.
Her 11 years in editorial design and art direction included the launch of Elle, Elle Decoration,
De Kat, Financial Mail and the relaunch of YMag. During her 15 years in advertising, Kassie headed up creative teams at some of South Africa’s best agencies including Draft FCB, TBWA/Gavin/Reddy (GRID Worldwide), King James Group and Young & Rubicam SA.
Since 2015 Kassie has collaborated with brands and agencies to create engaging, relevant campaigns as well as give her time and passion to NPOs wanting to bring about social change. She launched her creative start-up The Imaginarians a few years ago. She says: “The power of creativity is immense, I want to imagine better future worlds are possible through empathy, collaboration and conscious creativity.”
In 2019 Kassie joined Lampost Productions as partner and creative director, wanting to play her role in Africa’s visual storytelling culture. They successfully launched Lampost Luminaries in 2020, a fellowship aimed at transforming the photography /motion industry to have more visual stories headed by African creative women.
Steph Symonds
Steph's talent as an art director has taken her from Joburg to London and Cape Town, where she even chose to focus on making films for a while (weird since she hasn’t even seen Forrest Gump).
She’s collected some lions, birds, skinny figures holding squashed basketballs, pencils, and her neighbour’s cat along the way.
Now, she’s creating a cult following as creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi for clients like P&G and Mondelez who are slowly but surely learning what she meant when she said her ideas were ‘unusual’.
If you see her around, you’ll have what she’s having.
Ahmed Tilly
Ahmed Tilly started his career in advertising in 1996 as a copywriter at Lindsay Smithers FCB. He did a stint at Publicis before moving to Cape Town where he worked at The Jupiter Drawing Room. At Jupiter, Tilly eventually moved up into a Creative Director role. In 2005, he was given the opportunity to co-found an agency in Johannesburg. The ad agency, Black River FC, went on to become one South Africa’s hottest creative shops, winning awards all around the world including two Grand Prixs at the Loeries. In the 12 years at Black River FC, Tilly led a team that would make brands like Nando’s, 1st for Women, Channel O, Vuzu, M Net, Mini, Mazda, Virgin Money and Mzanzi Magic become the most talked-about brands in the country. In 2016, he left the agency and took on the role of Group Chief Creative Officer at FCB and Hello Computer Johannesburg. 4 years later, he left to start one of South Africa’s first Creative Consultancies called “Number 10 – A Creative Consultancy”.
Tilly has judged the Loeries’ Awards every year from 2002 - 2019. He was appointed to the judging panel for Cannes Lions in 2015 and served on the New York Festivals panel in 2019 and 2020. He was appointed as an Exco member of the Creative Circle in South Africa from 2012 - 2018. In 2016 he was appointed to the board of the Association for Communication and Advertising in South Africa. He has been voted a Top 10 Creative Director, for 5 consecutive years by his peers. In 2016 he was recognized as “The Most Admired Creative Boss” in South Africa after being nominated for several consecutive years. In 2022, he was placed on the Top 20 Chief Creative Officers list in South Africa.
He currently helps clients and agencies solve unsolvable problems in unexpected ways.
Whilst Ahmed has held the titles of Copywriter, Creative Director, Executive Creative Director, Co-founder, Group Chief Creative Officer, Consultant and Founder, the title he is most fond of is “The Creative Fixer”.