AI Restores Marketing's Voice at Nedbank

Skyler Mattson:

Good afternoon from the gorgeous south of France. I'm Skyler Mattson with Infosys Aster and today we are at Cannes Lions 2026. We are talking with leaders about AI in marketing. And I am joined by Khensi Nobanda, group CMO of Nedbank. Welcome, Khensi. I'm so excited to talk with you.

Khensi Nobanda:

Yeah, me too. Thank you for having me.

Skyler Mattson:

You bet, you bet. So CMO, it's a big role and it encompasses so many different things. But tell me a little bit about what you're doing with Nedbank.

Khensi Nobanda:

As the chief marketing officer like I always say when I explain to people that whilst I take care of the brand, like the stuff that I do is actually what I call the easy part 'cause you see the advertising and you see but actually our brand is more than that. So if you think about it as what is the thing that the Titanic hit into?

Skyler Mattson:

Oh, like a giant iceberg.

Khensi Nobanda:

Iceberg, right?

Skyler Mattson:

Yes, you just see a little bit.

Khensi Nobanda:

You see a little bit, but actually under like the water, the service we give, the products we give, like what we do in society like all of that is actually a big part of what our brand is about. So for me, I always say like the biggest part of my job is ensuring that all of that connects together to build the Nedbank brand. So people are clear what that is. And it takes more than just marketing. So I also look after in my portfolio social impact. Because that's a big part of how our brand shows up in the market. I also look after something called transformation, which in South Africa is interesting, I guess, for people given our history, where obviously we had our first democratic elections in 1994 and you've got a massive number of black people who were not part of like the financial system and all of that. So it's about like how do we ensure that South Africa has opportunities for everyone and that's under my portfolio which is amazing. And then also fundamental thing about being I think a CMO is to ensure that you're growing the business as well. So like the ads are nice, the awards are nice.

Skyler Mattson:

Yeah.

Khensi Nobanda:

But if the business is not growing?

Skyler Mattson:

That's right.

Khensi Nobanda:

So yeah that's fundamentally my job.

Skyler Mattson:

That's right. Well it's a big job and a big responsibility, it sounds like, which you take, you know, incredibly well. I'm wondering how AI has changed the way you do your job.

Khensi Nobanda:

I was saying like 18 months, now I'm saying 12 months, now I'm saying in the last month because things are moving so quickly. Yeah and it's funny because I'm one of the marketers who loves AI. I'm not worried about it at all. And I always say to my team for me it's a tool. It's a tool that's going to do two things for us. one I think from an efficiency perspective it makes us, so if I think about time to market like with campaigns and stuff we've gotten like a lot quicker with campaigns efficiency in that campaigns that would normally go to our advertising agency and so from a cost perspective how much we'd pay but it's a campaign that you know you're running for a very short like you know period of time. Now you know we do it with AI. So we we reduce the agency costs in that sense and like I said we're getting to market quicker. So the efficiency part is like really important but I think where people should lean into more is the opportunity of AI so and I'll give you an example, we find that AI is helping us target better and so what does that mean? It means actually the messaging that we take out reaches the right people which means we've got a higher chance of selling a transactional banking account a home loan and stuff versus before and that's why I say like if you are scared of AI, I don't think about it in the context of taking my job or anyone's job or at all, I think about it in the context of it'll help me like really be much more efficient and build a much more efficient marketing team. But also I think build growth actually in areas that we would never, I'll give another example. So we're looking at our app right now as Nedbank and we're redoing our app. And normally when you talk to any bank or most organizations, the minute you talk about an app, it's led by group technology, right? They are the tech guys. I'm actually the sponsor of the redesign of the Nedbank app and so to have a marketer sponsor that is like very different.

Skyler Mattson:

Yes.

Khensi Nobanda:

And the reason that's the case is because I'm the person who said to the tech team, you can build a app that is going to allow people to see how much money they have and pay people. But if I look at our brand purpose as Nedbank, which is to use our financial expertise to make a positive impact on society, what would that look like in our app? And so when you start having a marketing lens to do that, it changes what's going to go into the app. And AI allows us to be able to give. So for example, like gambling is a big issue. Online gambling is a big issue in South Africa, where you're seeing people not spend money on groceries and actual gamble because, you know, it's like...

Skyler Mattson:

It's an addiction.

Khensi Nobanda:

An addiction, you know what I mean. So it'll prompt you to say, Khensi, last month you actually spent this much on gambling and this is how much you didn't spend on something else and AI allows us to do that. So for me, I think the opportunity is so much more. It's just about how we think about it as marketers and how we use it.

Skyler Mattson:

Yes, it's like ethical AI when you're using it in that way, which is so fascinating. I love that you brought up this notion of working with your tech team because I feel like marketing and IT departments used to be so siloed and now they need each other. And I'm wondering how that transition has been starting to collaborate with your IT team more. You certainly have a seat at the table. You are telling them important things that inform what they're building.

Khensi Nobanda:

Yeah.

Skyler Mattson:

Can you tell me a little more about that collaboration? Because I think it's going to happen more and more. And it's like right brain, left brain with like creativity and science, the art, the science. Any best practices in terms of how that goes best?

Khensi Nobanda:

I mean firstly, I guess I should say... If I think about traditionally as marketers, what were we told? Have a good relationship with your CFO, obviously your CEO, and then maybe HR, right? Because when you build your employee brand and all of that. As a bank, we did this tech journey where we're legacy, we're 125 year old bank and stuff. So our systems are quite legacy. And so a few years ago we started to this what's called managed evolution where we were updating our systems. But it was a very tech based like process and program. And in the end, I remember, I wasn't at the bank when it started, but like as it was finishing, we realized so much of the consumer was not in the thinking. It was actually just built by tech people, right? For what they thought and there was no consumer lens. And so what I then did is I said to the CEO even when we do products and most of banks are having digital products more and more, I don't want to get a product at the end and then you say here go market that or go sell that. I don't want to do that. I want my team involved right from the very beginning. And I said, look at managed evolution. We spent billions of Rands on it. And here's the outcome of it. Yeah, it's changed us, but it's not taken us to where it could have had we had a consumer lens in it.

Skyler Mattson:

Yes.

Khensi Nobanda:

And so I remember we started with one product. So my CEO was like, okay, let's see, I don't know. He's a chartered accountant. All the chartered accountants, they all look back, we look forward. Like that stuff. They tell us what happened in the past. What's going on? You know what I mean? So we we created one of our transactional banking products and I was the sponsor of it with the guy who runs that part of the business and stuff and the product that came out was very different to what normally would come out and then it's done really well for us in the market. So I had a case study and fortunately I also had a guy, Mutza, was open to that when I spoke to him and I said I want to show our CEO like that this is actually possible. And what came out was a product that's doing really well. So when we were now talking about we need to redo our app because for most banks your app is actually this is like what consumers interact with. Like yeah there's branches still there's engagement but actually your app is fundamental to the growth of the business. And I said you can't do that without having the consumer at the heart of it. It then became an easy conversation. That I want to be a sponsor of it because he'd seen what had happened with the transactional banking product. And so and and now this. And finally, in that period, I've had a new CEO, Jason Quinn, brought same principles, understands it. And about two, three months ago we launched, I would say the start of the project and standing up on stage was our chief information officer who looks after technology, our CEO, the guy who runs the business and me. And most people were sitting there going, the CMO, like

Skyler Mattson:

I love it. But I do think it's important to maybe get one win in.

Khensi Nobanda:

And it it doesn't have to be the big win, right? Like it can be whatever it looks like. And then you get the credibility.

Skyler Mattson:

Yeah.

Khensi Nobanda:

For you to be able to have that relationship with your... with the technology team.

Skyler Mattson:

And I think too, you can't go wrong if you put the customer at the center.

Khensi Nobanda:

Absolutely. You can't go wrong if you do that. And that's for me like the thing that I think as marketers we've maybe lost out on. So we we talk about marketers don't have the seat at the table, right? So a lot of CMOs don't sit on the executive board right of the organizations. I am fortunate that I do. And the reason we've lost that seat at the table is because we've lost our voice and we've lost our power. And one of our power is we've got the consumer at the heart like, we can bring that in. So let's think about AI. If you just think about AI as technology without bringing the human element of AI, which marketers will do, do you think the technology guy's thinking about the human element of AI? Our CFO is not thinking about that. No disrespect, however,

Skyler Mattson:

No disrespect, no problem, love these guys, right?

Khensi Nobanda:

They're not thinking of that. And so where we have power as marketers is exactly bringing that lens in. And then the guys go, we hadn't thought about that and stuff. And so that's how you regain power because we are the people who understand consumer insights, macro, like what's happening and how it's going to impact consumers. And so that's how you take back power actually.

Skyler Mattson:

I love that. I love that. So the quick wins, can I ask you a little bit about measurement?

Khensi Nobanda:

Yeah.

Skyler Mattson:

How are you measuring to say, okay, this was a win, give me that seat at the table again.

Khensi Nobanda:

So I mean one of, I did my performance review earlier on this year with my CEO. And I said to him, fundamentally, my job is to do two things. It's to strengthen the Nedbank brand and to grow our bank commercially, right? So business success. So I can have all these other KPIs like impressions, how many people went to the website. Like all of that. But what does it lead to? What does it lead to? So when I looked at my performance stuff, right, I was exceeding actually on all the other stuff. But our business for many reasons and you know you can when you talk to your investors, you've you've got all the reasons why we didn't achieve the numbers you said you were going to achieve and they were very valid. But our business didn't achieve what we said we'd achieve. We grew but we didn't achieve what we said we'd achieve. So I said, So I can't be excelling, like because what's all of that for if it's not leading to that? And I said to our CEO, by the way, that doesn't mean these are not important. They are very important because if we don't get these right, you're never gonna get that. So you've got to get both right, right? So I'm not saying that's not important. So I think that mindset for me is a powerful one that I've had to get even my team to because they come in, they walk into performance reviews, and they're like, yeah, but look at all my KPIs, I'm green. And I'm, yeah, but like... The KPI.

Skyler Mattson:

KPI, right?

Khensi Nobanda:

But from an AI perspective, again, what I love about it is we've gotten sharper in terms of return on marketing investment and how campaigns are performing. And so if I look at and I changed our operating model about two and a half years ago. So one of the things that struck me, it's probably three years now. So one of the things that struck me was that our technology team was working in a particular way. So agile, lean and all of that. They would bring a brief to marketing. We were still brief and then get something back in a month and then and the product is done. The technology team is looking at us, right?

Skyler Mattson:

Yeah.

Khensi Nobanda:

So I changed how we we operate as a marketing team where we've gone into a very agile way of working.

Skyler Mattson:

Nice.

Khensi Nobanda:

Very difficult for our agencies, by the way.

Skyler Mattson:

I mean even sure

Khensi Nobanda:

for us as well, it was, I mean half the time I don't even know what my team is saying. They're talking about stand-ups and all of that. I'm like, okay, have fun with that guys, as long as it's working.

Skyler Mattson:

Yeah.

Khensi Nobanda:

So when we did that, we then created, we've got what I'd called eleven missions that we want to achieve, right? And I'll give you an example of a mission is to say we want to grow department For the bank, right? Which is savings and investments and all of that. So that's a mission. And so the people who are working on that mission, they don't get judged by one campaign, they get judged by the overall mission outcome, which is did we grow deposits for the bank? Your campaign is a lead like into like growing deposits for the bank and stuff. And so what we've then learned is that AI actually helps us to be able to get that measurement quicker. We understand how we're able to pivot if something's not working like a lot quicker than we would have.

Skyler Mattson:

Yeah.

Khensi Nobanda:

So normally in the past we would sit three months after a campaign, go through...

Skyler Mattson:

it's too late.

Khensi Nobanda:

It's too late, it's too late. We can't do anything about it. So that's you know also like really helped us. And then I think again for marketers if you want to sit at the table, you must be the one telling the CEO and the CFO, this is what my marketing team contributed. And if you can't say that, you don't deserve to sit at the table.

Skyler Mattson:

Yes.

Khensi Nobanda:

And so I'm you know, I'm not scared of measurement, I actually want to be measured. This is now for CMOs how to run your performance review in a way that is going to be impressive for the CEO.

Skyler Mattson:

Exactly. Accountability.

Khensi Nobanda:

Accountability. And we say, so there's 13 of us who sit on the Nedbank expo, there's 13 of us running that bank. Whilst I look after marketing, I actually run that bank with the other 12 people. And the minute you change your mindset about like what's your role, yes, I run marketing, but actually I'm responsible for the delivery for this bank overall. Then things that you're maybe would not be interested in, like or you think are not in your space and you shouldn't then they actually become in your space... So I actually even listen to the compliance people yeah, yeah, but I don't understand.

Skyler Mattson:

I mean, you are in all of it.

Khensi Nobanda:

Exactly. And so yeah, so for me, AI actually has really helped us be so much tighter on measurement. Especially in a sense where we can say we can attribute this to the work that we did as marketing.

Skyler Mattson:

Get the credit. Yeah. I love it. I love it. You seem like you love almost everything about AI. But is there any challenge that you feel like, you know, AI is never gonna solve this, or there always needs to be a human in the loop at this part of the process.

Khensi Nobanda:

Yeah, look, I think, I would never still have work go out into the market without a human being seeing it, right? Because it would scare me, like because I don't know what would come out and be in the market that we don't know about. So that always you know, even from a creativity perspective, there's always someone who needs to sign it off. But I think we've got a bigger challenge in and I'll say not just South Africa, Africa. If you think about what's feeding AI, it's mostly the global West, right? So when you create, and I'll give you an example. You create a campaign for Africa Month and what gets spat out is basically, I would call it what is it a stereotypical view of what Africa is, which is Africa is so many other things, right? And so we need more Africans actually using AI tools because,

Skyler Mattson:

The input.

Khensi Nobanda:

The input because then AI starts to know more about like the rest of the world. I don't blame the tools right now for what they're bringing out because we've not used it enough to be able to when we then yeah continue to use it it starts when we say Africa pride or whatever, what comes out is not the stereotypical way maybe that the West looks at Africa. It is actually what Africa is. And so for me that's a major issue it's getting better over time as we continue to use it. But we've got to because I definitely don't want to be, I am quite clear that I've got to take care that our brand doesn't stereotype, you know like our people and all of that. And so AI sometimes can do that. And so we've got to ensure that from an ethical perspective it's actually showcasing what's really, really there. And then look, I think I mean from a banking perspective, so it's an opportunity and a challenge. We use very traditional ways of credit modeling people or risk rating people. So you come and apply for a loan. We've got very standard measures of why we should give you a loan or not, right? AI allows us to take data from different sources that we wouldn't normally put into our models. And so now so let's hopefully not my credit card bill.

Skyler Mattson:

I mean of course your credit card bill, of course your credit card bill.

Khensi Nobanda:

But I'll give you an example. South Africa's got like I would call it, it's two countries in one country. There's like a very sort of modern sophisticated part of South Africa. But there's also like poverty and but then there's also the system where there's money flowing in areas that banks don't know and don't understand because it's not going through banking channels. So I'll give you an example. Something called Stockfell. So Stockfell is like a group of like it's mostly women 'cause you know, of course it's us. So it'd be women and they would save money every month to get to December so that when Christmas comes they would have you know what I mean? That money doesn't go into a bank account. It's literally I don't know where they like it's different places where they put it and stuff. And so as a bank we don't see that. And so when you come and ask for a loan, for example, we don't understand that actually you're a great saver because we don't you know so for me, I would love to see AI being able to help us take these different forms of data that allow us to get more people into the banking system so that they can either get home loans or this and stuff. We're using data that as banks we don't normally would use. So I think it's a massive opportunity, but it must also, we're a bank, so we need you to pay us back. That's how you make your money. Yeah, you know what I mean. So how we then... That data has to be handled very carefully. So I think we've got to work with AI models for some time to ensure that that data that we've never used is actually data that's allowing us to make the right decisions and stuff, right? So it's an opportunity, but it can also take you down a path if you're not careful where you're using data that's not useful, actually, you know, you end up getting high bad debts and high impairments and stuff. Yeah.

Skyler Mattson:

An opportunity and a responsibility. Absolutely. Okay. I don't want to keep you from this gorgeous weather much longer, but I want to ask you one more question. You've been so fascinating to talk with. What are you most inspired by when it comes to AI and what it'll help you do?

Khensi Nobanda:

Yeah. Look, I mean, as marketing we have one of the best jobs in the world.

Skyler Mattson:

I agree.

Khensi Nobanda:

I always say I'm a logic and magic person and I have this job,

Skyler Mattson:

Logic and magic,

Khensi Nobanda:

that allows me you know to be able to do that. And actually what inspires me more about AI is it makes the logic so much more logical and be like based with facts and stuff. But then it takes away a lot of stuff that allows me to focus more on the magic as well. So like that for me is why I'm so excited still about AI.

Skyler Mattson:

I love that. AI, take away the busy work so we can focus on the magic. I mean that is, Khensi, amazing. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this.