Laurent Marty

Having completed his studies at Manchester Business School and his MBA in Lyon (France), Laurent Marty has gone on to become a respected businessman and leading strategist, with over 20 years’ experience on brands such as Anglo American, Cell C, Chicken Licken®, Clover, fifa.com, Jet, Nedbank, Nike and SAB. Early in his career, Laurent’s interest for brand strategy saw him taking up a position asMarketing Manager of Renault in 1998, as part of the team that reintroduced Renault into the SA market and successfully launched a number of models during his seven-year tenure as brand custodian.

In 2006, Laurent joined Joe Public as a strategist, where his like-minded approach to creating exceptional brand strategies in service of client growth saw him becoming not only head of strategy but also business partner, alongside Pepe Marais and Gareth Leck.

The process of him going from the client side as a marketer to the agency world as a strategist has put him in a unique position: on the one hand, being able to better interpret client needs – in particular the ability to think beyond the remit of advertising;  on the other, being a strong and rational advocate for creativity and right-brain thinking amongst clients.

In aligning Joe Public’s business strategy to its growth purpose, Laurent has been instrumental not only in helping the agency group to fuel the growth of its clients, but of its own growth too – always with a focus on the growth of its people.

Today, Joe Public is proud to be the largest independent majority black-owned brand and communications group in South Africa. In his spare time, Laurent is also an exhibited artist, voracious reader and learner of French, English, Afrikaans, German, Italian and Mandarin.