By Inamangwe Mtumtum, Senior Built-in Strategist at Boomtown
There’s a unusual efficiency constructed into technique.
We stroll into boardrooms, mission slide decks onto screens, clear our throats and converse within the language of confidence: “The client needs … the market is shifting … the chance is evident … the model should. We’re paid to make ambiguity sound elegant; to show collective panic into business pillars. To take a look at a rustic that seems like it’s being held collectively by debit orders, WhatsApp prayers and mid-month calculations and in some way produce a seamless means ahead.
However what occurs when actuality refuses to be simplified?
Proper now, South Africans will not be slightly below stress however live inside a matrix of overlapping crises. The official unemployment fee rose to 32.7% within the first quarter of this yr, with youth unemployment at an alarming 45.8%. This interprets to virtually one in two younger folks on the lookout for work unable to search out employment.
In the meantime, the price of residing retains rising with the typical family meals basket costing R5,452.09 in April 2026, up by R123.56 from the earlier month. On high of economic pressure, public establishments face intense scrutiny beneath the Madlanga Fee’s look into policing and systemic failures, whereas renewed parliamentary debates round presidential accountability maintain nationwide anxieties simmering.
Then there’s the extra insidious stress of synthetic intelligence threatening that your so-called invaluable talent set may be tomorrow’s automated effectivity saving.
We inform younger folks to construct careers in an economic system that may’t soak up them. We anticipate employees to be thankful for employment they’re frightened of shedding. And we bombard shoppers with conflicting cultural mandates: spend, save, heal, hustle, relaxation, glow, gymnasium, complement, self-care, make investments, soft-life, hard-launch – and in some way nonetheless have cash left over for gasoline. No marvel ashwagandha (a herb in conventional Ayurvedic drugs that helps the physique resist and adapt to emphasize) has change into a character sort.
The buyer situation is the contradiction
Within the midst of all this, strategists are requested to know the buyer, develop the model, unlock relevance and drive conversion. We’re requested to search out the elusive human reality that can compel somebody to spend slightly extra, swap slightly sooner or care slightly deeper.
At instances, it feels absurd, even mildly offensive. As a result of the sincere, uncomfortable query we should ask ourselves is: How do you ask folks to purchase extra when life is already taking a lot?
That’s precisely the place the strategist’s imposter syndrome begins. It doesn’t stem from incompetence, however from the truth that the job calls for absolute certainty from a actuality that solely affords compounding stress. We’re anticipated to offer definitive solutions whereas the shoppers themselves are nonetheless desperately negotiating fundamental questions corresponding to whether or not they may even afford the services or products: Can I justify shopping for this? Do I deserve this? Is that this accountable? Is that this pleasure, or is that this simply survival?
Contradiction is now not a client perception. It’s the buyer situation.
The normal strategist might traditionally cover behind neat, tidy segmentations corresponding to ‘The Aspirational Client’, ‘The Worth Seeker’ and ‘The Younger City Skilled’, amongst others. These labels really feel laughably skinny within the present atmosphere.
In the present day’s client might be anxious about their monetary future and nonetheless purchase luxurious fragrance. They are often deeply mistrustful of establishments and nonetheless gamble on-line. They are often exhausted by capitalism and nonetheless deeply want a Stanley cup, a pilates membership, an IV drip and the curated delicate life aesthetic.
The expansion of playing and on-line sports activities betting particularly, is a living proof. Whereas formal job alternatives proceed to shrink, South Africa’s betting income has grown fourfold since 2021. The native playing sector reported a staggering R1.5 trillion in complete quantities wagered in FY2024/25, with gross playing income reaching R74.5 billion. Betting has stopped being mere leisure. For a lot of, it has change into hope with odds hooked up – a small, high-stakes theatre the place folks can really feel like their lives would possibly essentially change by the ultimate whistle. That isn’t irrational behaviour. It’s rational behaviour working inside an irrational economic system.
Transferring from empathy to model accountability
What defines our actual work now could be to not make manufacturers sound sure, however to make them extra sincere.
We should cease pretending shoppers are merely “resilient.” Resilience has change into the well mannered, company euphemism we use when structural techniques have repeatedly failed folks. We should cease romanticising systemic wrestle into “hustle tradition.” Crucially, we can not use empathy as a tone of voice whereas our underlying technique stays purely extractive.
Empathy at scale can’t simply imply writing softer advert copy. It has to imply implementing sharper model accountability. Shoppers can immediately really feel the distinction between a model that genuinely understands their stress and a model that’s merely finding out it to gasoline a marketing campaign.
That is the place shoppers, companies and strategists must have way more uncomfortable conversations. We will’t maintain asking promoting to really feel culturally alive whereas concurrently ravenous it of the operational circumstances that make it significant.
The paradox is that whereas manufacturers are asking for emotional relevance, cultural breakthrough, natural loyalty and deep human connection, what they really present are compressed budgets, hyper-accelerated timelines, conservative approvals, generic CSI and risk-averse briefs.
We function beneath a flawed perception that tradition might be borrowed for a seasonal marketing campaign with out ever being invested in. We chase emotional relevance whereas refusing to take any emotional threat. Promoting can not maintain shouting “we see you” whereas doing completely nothing to show it.
Embracing the mess
The way forward for technique won’t belong to those that sound probably the most sure. It’ll belong to the individuals who can sit inside uncertainty with out flattening it.
The trade wants strategists who can have a look at a slide deck and acknowledge that the buyer is scared however nonetheless want issues; broke, however nonetheless expressive; offended, however nonetheless hopeful; exhausted, however nonetheless reachable. However they’re solely reachable if we cease insulting them with oversimplified messaging.
Perhaps the strategist’s job is now not to fabricate a false sense of certainty. Perhaps our job is solely to make higher sense of the mess; to assist manufacturers perceive that in unsure instances, folks aren’t simply shopping for merchandise for the sake of proudly owning the merchandise. What they’re additionally shopping for is reduction from fast friction, proof of their onerous work, management over a small a part of their day, standing, escape and continuity. They’re shopping for a fleeting feeling that life has not fully cornered them.
Probably the most sincere technique immediately begins with admitting that we don’t have an ideal reply. As a substitute, we now have a accountability to ask much better questions.
The buyer isn’t a static audience on a PowerPoint slide. They’re any person attempting to make hire, dodge debit orders, keep sane, look good, imagine in one thing, feed a household, survive the household WhatsApp group, keep away from the miserable information cycle, maintain their job – or discover one – and nonetheless retain sufficient inner softness to need one thing stunning.
So sure, being a strategist proper now seems like imposter syndrome. However perhaps that discomfort isn’t proof that we’re frauds however slightly proof that we’re lastly paying consideration.
