Andy Rice

Andy has considerable experience as a Master of Ceremonies, bringing a rare mixture of wit, discipline and quick thinking to this often under-rated role at conferences, launches and other such functions.

Andy Rice is probably South Africa’s best-known branding and advertising expert.

As a speaker Andy combines his professional brand consulting experience with his reputation as the co-host of Talk Radio 702‘s popular “AdFeature with Andy Rice” to create keynote presentations that memorably fuse wit with wisdom.

As a strategist he headed up Ogilvy Johannesburg’s account planning department before founding Yellowwood, a specialist brand strategy consultancy that grew to become South Africa’s leader in its field. Yellowwood is now part of the TBWA empire, with Andy continuing to stay involved as Chairman.

As a writer he has contributed numerous articles and opinion pieces to marketing journals and publications such as The Annual, The Journal, AdVantage and Brands and Branding in South Africa.

Using a combination of his background as a brand and marketing strategist and his broadcasting experience on similar topics, Andy has found that there is an important but largely unfulfilled niche for a speaker/presenter who can stimulate new thinking about the role of brands and marketing within commercial organisations – and who can deliver the topic with a mixture of wisdom and wit.

This is particularly valuable when presented at clients’ annual conferences, where staff are exposed to the company’s future business strategy, and need to understand their role in fulfilling it. It is now commonly accepted by marketers that every employee (and most external stakeholders as well) must contribute, through their behaviour and attitude, to the external perception of a company’s brand(s), but this message doesn’t always get through to staff beyond the marketing department, and Andy’s presentations, whether as a keynote speaker or part of a team of contributors, are designed to accelerate understanding of this message.

Andy also regularly delivers presentations on the future of brand communications (with his own views on social media paramount), on the increasingly important role of the corporate brand, on the growing threat to creativity within marketing, and even a 90-minute crash course on the essentials of brand strategy and communication.

Andy has enjoyed stepping up to the public speaking platform for many years, and happily it seems that his audiences have enjoyed what he has to say.