For much of my early career in creative agencies, media partners felt like distant cousins. They were briefed separately, looped in late, and rarely part of the real thinking. Integration was often a last-minute performance, a stitched-together deck, a shared logo, a nod to unity.
But it wasn’t collaboration. It was choreography.
That changed in 2018. I had just joined a new account at another agency when I encountered something different. The team at Carat didn’t just respond to briefs.
They leaned in despite being briefed separately, we reached out to each other, not out of obligation but out of curiosity. We wanted to solve the problem together. And for the first time, it felt like we were one team.
There was alignment. There was energy. There was synergy.
Working hand in hand
Two years later, when Carat invited me to join their strategy team, I didn’t hesitate. I had seen what was possible when media and creative worked hand in hand. The results weren’t just better. They were smarter. We weren’t building isolated plans. We were solving brand problems together.
Now, as a strategy partner at Carat and a 2025 Effie Awards SA Jury Member, I am more convinced than ever that the future of great work lies in radical collaboration. The best campaigns I have judged or helped shape are creatively bold. They are strategically seamless. They reflect a shared purpose, not a turf war.
So, what does real collaboration look like?
What makes partnerships tick
At Carat, we have been studying global case work across dentsu and our partner networks to understand what makes the strongest partnerships tick. The pattern is clear. True collaboration starts early and is built with intention.
Here are three habits we have seen consistently drive success:
- Brief together from the start: When all partners are in the room from day one, we build from the same strategic foundation. That is where co-creation begins, not in parallel workstreams but in shared ambition.
- Own the insight together: When data and audience insights are shared early, everyone solves the same problem, not their own version of it.
- Share responsibility for the ecosystem: Great ideas do not live in silos. Media and creative should co-own the full journey, from messaging and channel planning to execution.
From the media side, the business case is clear. When we start with the consumer rather than the format, we unlock smarter and more relevant work. We do not assume a 30-second TV ad is the answer. We begin with where attention lives and build from there.
Realities shape the creative
Take a recent campaign aimed at youth. The data told us TV would not cut it. So, we pivoted. We built a distributed video strategy that met our audience where they already were. It worked, not because we were clever, but because we were aligned. Media realities shaped the creative, and the creative respected the media.
But collaboration is not just about the brief. It is a culture. A mindset. A muscle.
That is why we are investing in ways to collaborate outside of live projects. One example is an attention study we conducted last year. It revealed how people engage with content across platforms. We shared those insights with our creative partners, not as a handover but as a conversation starter.
These small acts build trust. They create a shared language. And over time, they shift the culture.
Because real collaboration is not a one-off. It is a choice. One we make early, often and intentionally.
When we do, we stop building campaigns. We start building better brands.
Trained as a journalist, Babalwa Nyembezi’s career has been focused on helping brands tell their stories. She helps clients understand the cultural landscape on social media then creates strategies that help them access the culture – their audience. She’s worked on brands like Coca-Cola, ABSA, Standard Bank, Uber etc. Her goal? To bring the brands she works on closer to their audience by telling authentic stories and running campaigns that resonate.
