17 Feb Digital Mastery 2026: The Marketing Reality Check You Didn’t Know You Needed

There’s a quiet shift happening in marketing right now.

Search isn’t what it used to be. Social isn’t what it used to be. AI isn’t a future concept anymore. And attention – real human attention – has become the most valuable currency in the room!

This year’s Digital Mastery Summit is designed for this exact moment: Not to inspire in theory, but to equip in practice. It’s a full-day immersion into how marketing is actually changing, what’s driving results now, and what teams need to rethink if they want to stay relevant.

If your job involves growth, brand, content, performance, media, or digital strategy, this is the room to be in!

Why this event matters right now

Marketing has entered a reset phase.

The old playbooks still exist, but they’re not delivering the same outcomes. AI is reshaping workflows. Consumers are finding information differently. Brands are competing for seconds of attention, not minutes. And the difference between those who adapt and those who stall is starting to show.

Digital Mastery is not about trends. It’s about clarity.

Across the day, you’ll hear from operators, strategists, and specialists who are actively building and testing in this new environment. People working inside agencies, platforms, and high-growth brands. People who can show you what’s changing – and what to do about it.

Who should be in the room

This isn’t a generic marketing conference.

It’s built for:

• Agency teams trying to deliver stronger results for clients
• Freelance marketers and consultants refining their edge
• Brand and performance managers under pressure to prove ROI
• Social media and content leads navigating platform shifts
• Founders and growth teams building modern marketing engines

If you touch strategy, media, creative, content, data, e-commerce, or growth, you’ll find something here that changes how you think.

What you’ll walk away with

By the end of the day, you won’t just feel inspired. You’ll have a clearer picture of where marketing is heading, and what needs to change inside your team.

Expect practical takeaways around:

• How attention is actually measured and won today
• Why search behaviour is shifting from Google to social to AI
• How first-party data is becoming a real competitive advantage
• What AI is truly changing inside marketing teams (and what it isn’t)
• How challenger brands compete without massive budgets
• What’s working in South African e-commerce right now
• Where the creator economy is heading next
• Why narrative – not just content – drives long-term brand value

This is about recalibrating your thinking and sharpening your toolkit.

A programme built around the realities of modern marketing

The day starts with the big picture.

The Attention Economy keynote from Emma Odendaal (Head of Influence EMEA, dentsu) and Lebogang Moerane (Head of Social and Influence, Dentsu Creative SA) sets the tone: how brands compete in a world flooded with content and shrinking focus.

From there, Kelvin Jonck (CEO, YOUKNOW Technologies) tackles the shift from search to social to AI conversations, and what that means for discoverability and strategy.

Theo Visser (Head of Growth, Flow) joins Musa Mangezi Sibisi (Senior Digital Advertising Lead, rain South Africa) for How Rain Captured the Right Attention Using First-Party Data – Powered by Flow; a grounded case study exploring how first-party data drives smarter targeting, stronger performance, and real competitive advantage in a crowded market.

Then the spotlight turns to one of the biggest questions facing the industry: Will AI really take over Marketing?!

This panel separates hype from reality, looking at what AI is genuinely changing inside teams, from agentic tooling to hiring priorities and how success will be measured over the next 12–18 months. Here we welcome to the stage Leigh Stefanski (MD, Now Boarding Digital), Mark Levitt (Co-Founder, trixta.ai), Trishana Moodley (HR Coach, TMA Proactive Partners) and Amanda Bester (Founder, Pragmattica Consulting).

Then, the focus shifts to transformation.

AI specialist Per Lagerstrom (Co-Founder of sens and Gain) unpacks The Reinvention of Marketing, showing how brands can deliver creativity and relevance at entirely new unit economics.

Adam Hewlett (Principal at We Are Rival) follows with The Challenger Brand Playbook, distilling years of research into bold, repeatable tactics that help brands rethink positioning, budgets, and media strategy.

Next comes a grounded, operator-led discussion on From Click to Commitment: E-commerce & the Attention Game.

This conversation covers the full conversion chain – from acquisition to checkout to retention – with insight from:

Tanja De Korte (MD, Rainmaker Media/ShopriteX)

Braam Breytenbach (E-commerce Ops Manager, PEP)

Ongezwa Mafunda (Performance Marketing, takealot.com)

These are the people scaling real platforms, sharing what actually drives movement from interest to action.

After lunch, the conversation moves into the cultural layer of marketing: From Influence to Industry Impact, led by Ace Labs‘ Nadia Jaftha (Co-Founder) and Zahra Pather (Creatives Coordinator), unpacks the creator economy through three perspectives: creator, brand, and agency.

This session explores what each side values, what metrics actually matter, where friction happens, and who’s set to win in the next era.

Then, a shift in lens: Joel Perlman, Owner and MD of Sleuth., reframes storytelling as the operating system behind loyalty, coherence, action, and long-term brand value in an attention-scarce world.

We close with the big picture!

The day wraps with Attention Economics, delivered by Graham Deneys, Chief Strategy Officer at dentsu.

Drawing on global campaign experience, he breaks down the seconds, platforms, and creative assets that genuinely capture attention, and how brands should rethink media and content strategy in response.

It’s a fitting close to a day built around one central truth: attention is the currency everything else flows from.

More than content – it’s the room!

Beyond the sessions, there’s another reason people come back to Digital Mastery: The room itself.

This is where agency leaders, brand teams, creators, founders and specialists connect. Where conversations continue over coffee. Where people compare notes on what’s working, what’s failing, and what they’re testing next.

You’re not just learning from the stage. You’re learning from the industry colleagues around you.

Get your tickets here.