Lessons in branding with 'the brandfather' of SA, Jeremy Sampson

Jeremy Sampson has had such an impact on the world of branding in South Africa, that many in fact refer to him as "

">The Brandfather" of the country.

Currently the chairperson of Brand Finance Africa after stepping down as MD in 2024, Sampson has almost 50 years’ experience working in between London and Johannesburg in marketing, advertising, graphic design, public relations, reputation management and branding.

In 1973, Sampson launched SA's first professional branding consultancy, which began as the 'thinking man's design agency.'

In 1992, he was approached by Interbrand, the world's leading strategic branding consultancy, to merge and take the multinational into Africa.

Sampson has won more than 100 branding and creative awards and been involved with leading brands which include the likes of SAB, Nedbank, Coca-Cola and the Springboks.

Born in the UK, this branding wizard went to art school and graduated at Canterbury College. His first job was in Fleet Street, as a designer at The Observer newspaper. While this was during the "swinging sixties", it wasn't exactly swinging in London, Sampson says ruefully.

Newly married, to a South African, Sampson suffered the pay freeze imposed by then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson during an economic downturn, and the couple decided it was time to head south.

Sampson says he's often been lucky and this was one of those occasions where his timing was perfect, coinciding with top American group Unimark opening an office in Johannesburg which he joined to kick off his career in South Africa in the late 60s.

Right up into the 80s, branding looked very different to what it does now both in terms of the process and the technology that was available.

However, there are enduring basic principles that lead to success.

"I always say that the cornerstone of a brand is the name. Once you've got the name, and it's registered and protected, then you need a logo and then you need colour and then you need to create a system."

"Back in those days that was about it - today you have the vision, the mission and the values, what a company stands for and what its purpose is. You've got all these layers of the onion around the brand now and, something that a lot of people forget, is that often when it comes to a company, their brands are the most valuable financial assets."

The word "brand" wasn't even used that much in the 70s and 80s, Sampson notes, but then as they entered the 90s people were beginning to realise that the value of companies wasn't just bricks and mortar and machinery, but involved intellectual property (IP).

"Today, if I tell you about the market cap of the top 100 brands in the world, over 30% is not on the balance sheet because it comes from IP, the value of brands."

"Sometimes logos change today. Why? Because they were blobs in the past, whereas today you want to bring them to life, you want to animate them, to do things with them on social media. It is very expensive and you have copyright law so you have to be very careful.... but a lot of people have changed their logos because they werent fit for purpose in today's tech world."

To illustrate the driving force for a change, Sampson tells the fascinating story of his involvement with remaking the Springbok brand which has now famously become a representation of South Africa's resilience and unity globally.

After the Boks won the World Cup in 1995 at the dawn of South Africa's democracy, there was huge pressure from the ANC to change the brand, Sampson relates.

Louis Luyt, with whom Sampson already had a working relationship, called him down to Ellis Park and said they had to do something or the Springboks "would not survive".

"That started the process, and we turned it around."

"When you have to work quickly, you have limited options. Getting a new logo would have taken a lot of debate and then you have to register it and copyright it around the rugby-playing world... so I came back with the solution to flip it. I said, I'm going to change the direction so it then becomes the Springbok sitting on top of the unity King Protea at the time."

This also illustrates that it's vital that brands have stories.

"The answer (for the Boks) was a scrapbook in Stellenbosch with Danie Craven. They brought it up to Joburg and I took some of my team; we went through it and out of that we were able to track the logos from 1906... and then we wrote a story and produced a brochure about the history. We said, this is the evolution of the Springboks."

"And brands can change, because they'll stand for different things through history."

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to this in-depth interview with "Brandfather" Jeremy Sampson