I started with a laptop, a loft, and cold outreach. I left when we were the largest non-banking plastic card manufacturer in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Where I learned that moving up the funnel changes everything.
CardsPlus was a three-person operation when I joined as an early hire. There was no marketing function. No website worth mentioning. No content, no social presence, no systematic way of reaching new clients. There was a product — high-quality plastic cards for loyalty programs, national ID projects, and financial institutions — and a belief that the product could compete at the highest level. My job was to build the commercial infrastructure that would prove it. I started with cold outreach from a loft. I built the online platform, wrote the website copy, stood up the social media presence, and began the slow work of making a South African manufacturer visible to enterprise clients who had no reason to know we existed yet.
- Built a marketing function from scratch — strategy, content, web, social, client infrastructure
- Managed Woolworths and Rage loyalty program accounts as the key client contact
- Hosted VISA FIFA World Cup sponsors for ID badge production coordination
- Managed foreign national delegations for an undisclosed national ID card project
- Represented the company internationally — including travel to Dubai
A marketing function from scratch — strategy, content, web, social, and client relationship infrastructure all built in parallel. I worked closely with clients to establish loyalty and generate referrals, expanding brand development and web traffic alongside a content marketing program that gave the company a voice in its category. The client relationships I managed grew to include some of the most recognizable brands in South Africa — Woolworths and Rage loyalty programs, where the cards themselves were the physical expression of the brand promise. I was the key point of contact for those accounts, managing the relationship between their requirements and our production capabilities. Then the bigger projects came. I hosted VISA FIFA World Cup sponsors for their ID badge production — coordinating between an international brand with zero tolerance for error and a manufacturing floor that had to deliver on time, at scale, under pressure. I managed foreign national delegations for an undisclosed national ID card project — the kind of work where the stakes are a country's infrastructure, not a marketing campaign. I traveled to Dubai representing the company at that level. When I left to move to the United States in 2013, CardsPlus had grown to a 50+ person team and held the position of largest non-banking plastic card manufacturer in Sub-Saharan Africa. I can't claim I caused all of that growth — it took a whole company. But I built the marketing function that made the company visible enough to earn those clients, and I was in the room for the moments that mattered most.
This is where I learned that understanding the audience changes everything downstream.
It's also where I learned I could figure out almost anything if I started with the problem.
Ask for the title sooner. I was doing Director-level account management and business development work under an admin title because I didn't know yet that titles were negotiable or that the work I was doing had a name. I'd name it earlier. I'd ask for recognition that matched the scope earlier. That lesson took me longer to learn than it should have — but I did learn it.