Artificial intelligence is transforming how brands create content, communicate and make decisions. But in South Africa, some of the country’s most resilient economic networks still run on something far less technological: human relationships.
Over the past five years, Rogerwilco’s Township Customer Experience (CX) Report has consistently shown that purchasing decisions in the R900 billion township economy are shaped by relationships, cultural familiarity and community validation.
Value-driven and trust-based
According to last year’s survey, nearly half of township consumers choose to shop at a spaza run by someone they know, even when larger retailers offer more convenience. At the same time, 71% participate in stokvels, pooling money through systems built on trust, familiarity and social accountability.
Township value-driven and trust-based systems offer an important lesson for global brands navigating the age of AI. Research from the US’s largest radio broadcaster iHeartMedia found that nine out of ten of its listeners, including those who use AI tools themselves, prefer media created by humans.
At last year’s Cannes Lions festival in France, an agency was stripped of its Grand Prix after failing to disclose the use of AI, not because of the technology itself, but because of the breach of trust.
Even more telling are studies where identical creative work is labelled differently. When people believe something is created by humans, rather than AI-generated, they consistently rate it as more meaningful and more valuable. The difference is not in the output. It is in the perceived intention behind it.
Human decisions
This is not a rejection of AI, but a demand for transparency, authorship and accountability. In that sense, international markets are only now beginning to articulate something South African consumers have long understood, which is that trust is not a feature of the product. It is a function of the relationship.
Within our agency, our approach to AI is a fundamental part of our B-Corp commitment. We use it to accelerate research, generate ideas and uncover patterns at speed. But strategy, judgement and creative direction remain human decisions.
Every output we produce originates from people and is AI-assisted, because we believe the goal is not simply to move faster. It is to produce work that is more considered, more relevant, more credible and more trusted.
How brands use AI matters far more than whether they use it at all. As AI-generated content floods every channel, the gap between what brands believe they are delivering and what consumers actually experience is widening.
Instructive failure
Our 2025 Customer Experience (CX) Report highlights the scale of that disconnect. While 93% of consumers say it is extremely or very important for brands to understand their needs and emotions, only 55% of businesses believe empathy should take precedence over functional efficiency.
At the same time, more than half of dissatisfied customers say nothing at all. They simply stop buying.
Brands that use AI to optimise for efficiency at the expense of empathy are not just making a creative misstep. They are eroding the very thing their customers value most.
South Africa is not immune to the risks of AI misuse. Last month, the Minister of Communications withdrew the country’s draft AI policy after a journalist identified fictitious citations generated through unverified AI use. It was a public and instructive failure, and a reminder of how quickly credibility can unravel when human oversight is removed.
Yet there is already a model for this, embedded in the everyday behaviour of township consumers.
The opportunity for brands is not to resist AI, but to apply it with far greater care and intention. The paradox is not that AI is advancing while consumers continue to value human judgement. It is that the more powerful AI becomes, the more valuable those distinctly human qualities become alongside it.
Charne Munien is strategy director at Rogerwilco.
