However, with great power comes much responsibility.

The isolation, loss and economic shifts of the past two years have made the world take stock of what truly matters. As creative leaders, we need to take stock of how our creativity shows up and what it does for the world around us.

While we are still under the same pressure to deliver with cultural relevance and universal resonance it is critical that, in our desire to move back to normal or even a new normal, we don't leave our audiences and their communities behind.

To quote the old rugby scrum adage what we need to do is touch, pause and engage.
  • When we touch, we need to be aware of societal shifts and nuances that may not have existed before that cause our audiences and society to evolve.
  • When we pause, we need to pause to allow data and meaningful empathy to drive our creative processes in order to deliver data-driven creativity that reads the room.
  • When we engage, we need to engage with the kind of intention that sees us move beyond a 'campaign to campaign' mentality and truly leverage the power of our brands and creativity to drive societal change.
At the SAB, there are over 7 000 employees, a value chain that supports over 250 000 people in an industry that fuels more than 1 000 000 livelihoods.

In the last two years, SAB has dealt with:
  • alcohol bans which made it unable to trade for 168 days
  • taking the government to court
  • the enduring civil unrest that put many of those livelihoods at risk, and
  • unexpected flooding in Durban where SAB Prospecton brewery was damaged.
All of these challenges have caused SABs to touch, pause and re-engage with the nation differently.

After SAB employees did what they could in these crises by responding with action rather than adverts, they turned to look at how it could saliently communicate how it is growing its category while championing responsibility.

SAB says that its first job was to tell the country that responsibility was more than just a footnote.

SAB adds that while its responsibility campaign was busy winning an Effie for Corporate Reputation, SAB still had to address a challenging relationship with the government.

SAB did this not by being a typical corporate Karen, but rather by shining a spotlight on lives, livelihoods and the beer economics that underpin its contribution to the very necessary economic recovery that our country so desperately needed (and still does).

Finally, SAB sought to further drive this reappraisal of its brand by building an evidence-based platform, which accentuated the brand's commitment to dealing with the harmful consumption of alcohol.

Through strategic partnerships with government and other stakeholders, we sought to invest multiples of millions of rands into how we fought the issues stemming from the harmful consumption of alcohol across four categories:
  1. Sell Sharp
  2. Drive Sharp
  3. Live Sharp, and
  4. Talk Sharp.
Thus SAB Sharp was born.

Vundla concludes, "It is my conviction that behavioural change leads to societal change and we did all of this while delivering SAB's highest reputation score to date. This is the power of branding done right, where our platforms can wield their power and influence for the greater good."

The true power of brands lies in the positive impact it makes on society with creativity being the fuel that elevates the impact.

By prioritising sustainable partnerships and programmes that can activate our creative campaigns to transform society — together with the measurement and evaluation of impact — we can, and should, move our creative industry beyond self-serving fluff. This is to gain the credibility that will empower us to show up in the world as we are meant to.

Don't just think through the line. Think through to society.

For more information, visit www.sab.co.za. You can also follow SAB on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.