Hello!

This is our first official Happy Friday newsletter.

Since launching as South Africa’s first people-centric creative agency in September last year, it’s been quite a wild ride of shaking things up in the industry, crafting work that makes our clients deliriously happy and, of course, spreading that Friday feeling.

So, let’s get into it.

Say hello to our co-CEOs

At Happy Friday, we don’t do “traditional”; in fact, we’ve made quite the splash with our industry-bending changes, like our half-day Fridays and 25 annual leave days, to name a few.

Earlier this year, we disrupted the traditional leadership structure by announcing that our Group Managing Director Craig Naicker and Group CEO Janine Kruger would now be co-CEOs of Happy Friday.

Our new happy home away from home

This one’s hot off the press!

While we’ve fully embraced the hybrid working model and implemented a work-from-anywhere policy for our team, we wanted to create a happy hub for them to get together, connect with each other and craft happy work. Here’s a look inside our happy home away from home:

Welcome to the Happy Friday family

The Happy Friday philosophy also attracted some fresh talent, so we’d like to introduce the new happy people who joined our team.

Rosa-Lena Mabunda – Digital Account Manager

Rosa is a self-proclaimed “all-rounder ad girl”, who has taken on various roles in the advertising industry. She also dabbles in entrepreneurship, TV presenting, voice-over work, singing and modelling. Her fantasy dinner party guests are Elon Musk, Roman Reigns and Folorunsho Alakija.

Zandi Ndava – Production Manager

Zandi holds a BTech degree in PR, and her industry experience includes client account management; social media and community management; public relations management; and project management. When asked how her friends would describe her, she said, “Optimistic, approachable and trustworthy”.

Rashaad Saal – Production Assistant

Rashaad has vast experience in organising and running events and conferences. He has assisted with the co-ordination of gatherings at Cape Town Stadium and supervised various events for Computicket. He’s also quite the adventurous spirit, and calls sheep’s head the weirdest food he’s eaten.

Shameen Matthews-Green – Senior Account Executive

After starting out as a researcher in the mining and power industries, Shameen moved to marketing and production for a print publication. She then found herself in the advertising industry, where she worked on various accounts for some of the biggest retailers in South Africa. When asked about the strangest food she’s eaten, she replied, “Squid tentacles. Those little suckers freak me out”.

Stepping Up for PSG’s Stand-Out 2022 Conference

After a two-year conference break, PSG were eager to get back to making meaningful connections. Even as a hybrid event, it still meant that a select, lucky few were able to attend this prestigious event in person and “Step Up and Stand Out”, as per the theme.

In May 2022, over 550 delegates (and 1302 online participants), along with 22 product providers descended on Sun City for a two-day event focused on thought-leadership and relationship building.

True to form and the theme, Happy Friday stepped up and designed the conference collateral and managed the expo. What’s more, we collaborated with PSG and Concept G Global to conceptualise and execute an eye-catching exhibition stand for PSG.

Lenovo’s integrated digital campaign

When Lenovo came looking for an effective integrated campaign to launch their latest range of Chromebooks, we amped up the creativity and delivered the goods under the concept of “It’s a new way to laptop”.

We didn’t just list cool specs and features; instead, we showed how the devices really could benefit your life. We used Instagram, Facebook and YouTube pre-roll ads to reach our audience, who then clicked through to the website landing page where they watched the full 1 minute video.

New client win!

iPay joined the Happy Friday family and we got straight to work with a brand strategy session.

I spy with my double ii something beginning with “S”

That Friday feeling we bring to all our work is now available in a whole new world!

We’ve partnered up with Carver Media to create Swiitch, a tech-forward creative agency that crafts immersive brand experiences in the real world and digital realms.