Johannesburg — KGAUGELO Maphai is a young Johannesburg entrepreneur who believes his township roots are a business asset far more useful than any black economic empowerment deal. His marketing edge has been honed hands-on in radio and TV, clubs and casinos, and in low-income consumer areas outside the urban centres.

His father is one of SA's leading business academics but Maphai has avoided using this to his advantage. Matriculating as the first black prefect at the prestigious Rondebosch Boys High, he opted in 1995 for a career in marketing - not following the conventional Madison Avenue route, but specialising in the newly empowered sector of mass consumerism.

"Self-belief is key to entrepreneurialism," he says. "There were no precedents to follow in the mid-'90s as millions found jobs and became consumers. My guide was a talk that Clem Sunter gave in my final year at school. He advised the value of trusting your instincts and having self-belief."

Maphai's beliefs gained further impetus during his first year at Varsity College where he was studying towards an IMM marketing graduate diploma.

He'd lived in the US in 1988-89, when his mother was studying at Harvard, and he saw little in the hardball American style of advertising that related to the unconventional trading of Jozi and Tshwane.

He proved the point by selling a new soft drink between his classes.

"I met someone who was introducing Boston Bay Iced Tea here and offered to sell a few cases to people I knew," he says. "Advertising was minimal and distribution was, like me, at street level. But I sold a lot of it and dealers were ringing me up every couple of days for resupply. Here I was at 19, confident that I could get my own business up and running straightaway."

As trade sanctions disappeared in the early 1990s, new business opportunities flourished. Entrepreneurs, promoters and hustlers took every gap to meet consumer demand. In fashion, two Wits students launched the popular Loxion Kulcha brand with designer beanies and a sharp- sharp logo. In music, DJ Oskido went from playing gigs in Berea parks to co-founding Midrand's celebrated indie record label, Kalawa Jazmee, in two years.

Part of that busy mix, Maphai managed a nightclub in Pretoria, at nights after his classes, and began to develop his own ideas about selling to the free-spending 18-24 age group.

"I was a barometer of every sector of that market," he says. "I'd grown up in Pretoria and Soweto. Before my parents were given the opportunity of tertiary study we were exposed to both township and semi-rural lifestyles - using candles and long-drops. Our schooling was always our parents' priority, though, at integrated Catholic schools like Sacred Heart College in Johannesburg. That empowered my self-belief even before I joined one of the most progressive high schools in SA."

Confident that his insights about the communities he knew were as relevant as the ad industry's research, Maphai wasted no time in getting to grips with the hurly-burly of the media business. In 1997 he joined the sales department of SABC's radio division.

"That's where my career gained focus," he says. "While learning the ropes about selling, I also studied strategic brand marketing through the ad industry's AAA school. What became clear to me during my time at the SABC was just how our cultural background shapes the way we make decisions."

Citing his 'ikasi' upbringing, Maphai believes consumers in townships don't always conform to the parameters of accepted marketing research. Brands that families grow up with become entrenched from generation to generation: toothpaste might generically be called Colgate, for example, or you don't buy beer, you buy Black Label.

His credo from the start of his marketing career has stayed constant: "It's consumers who determine a client's market share, not marketers."

Working with the SABC's 19-million listeners of the African language stations, Maphai also soon realised that being black didn't automatically give him insights into selling to the mass consumer sector. Its dynamics were evolving day by day, he says, as employment increased and regular income raised aspirations and changed the patterns of spending on food and drink, clothing, home entertainment and leisure.

He was offered many work opportunities, which opened the way to exploring other parts of the market first-hand.

Maphai has been head-hunted since he first entered the corporate world. He left the SABC in 2002 as acting sales manager for Metro FM, shortly after his father, Vincent Maphai, was appointed chairman of the corporation.

"That move was coincidental," he says. "Frankly, I haven't ever relied on family connections to open doors. My parents both have executive careers but I don't generally talk about them; they in turn respect my entrepreneurial choices."

From the SABC Maphai moved to its biggest rival in the TV ad market, e.tv. It made career sense, he says, because the SABC had segmented its sales division from the marketing and programming. At the independent station, all departments can work together under one roof, which assists one in understanding the business holistically.

"I saw e.tv as the only truly South African channel," he says, "which reflected the growing integration of the consumer market. A year later, I was invited to apply for the national sales manager's job at East Coast Radio in KwaZulu-Natal. I did, primarily to understand trends among its white, Indian and black consumers."

The upshot of that move was that in 2005 Maphai returned to Auckland Park to head trade marketing for all 18 SABC radio stations. For the next two years he put his township marketing strategies into action.

The "black diamond" market research was making waves at the time, about a new marketing category with similar incomes, lifestyles and brand choices to the high-income white and Asian consumers.

That wasn't Maphai's priority. "The majority of black consumers were in the middle to lower LSM (living standards measure) segments but they still had hugely significant spending power," he says.

"We wanted to profile them and their lifestyle to marketers as we felt they were neglected and their evolution not tracked."

Working with his agency at the time, FCB, Maphai launched the "Truth campaign" to give advertising clients and media planners inside experience of township trading patterns.

"We did household visits, weekend trips and pub crawls," he says.

"I took groups from anchor tenants in township malls to loan sharks and funeral parlours - all hubs of the lower-income economy. I wanted to show marketers the value chain in action, not from research data, which tends to be their only reference."

By 2007, Maphai was marketing hotels, resorts and casinos for Peermont Global, familiarising himself with both the upper and lower end of the gaming and leisure market. He finally opened his own agency, Omnicom Consulting, in Sandton in September 2008.

"My accumulated experience paid off immediately," he says.

"Within a month I was consulting for brands like Toyota, the National Lottery and Lexus through their agency, Draft FCB, while specialising in the lower to middle segments of the consumer market.

"Last year I started working with Urban Brew studios and also extended my business by starting a full management representation company in the entertainment sector."

Maphai's Dream Team Talent Management agency combines many of the facilities necessary to train, launch and manage entertainment personalities as business entities. Run by himself and equal shareholder Refiloe Ramogase, the agency has already scored a major coup in tying up Sony Music's TKZee group with MTN's current Ayoba campaign.

"Media of course is an integral part of everything we do," he says. "Our operation includes a financial services company, PR and interactive agency, a fitness and wellness company, an entertainment lawyer, brand strategist and a chauffeur service.

"They are all specialists and I met most of them through my Omnicom consultancy and we work as a collective."

Other acts on the Dream Team slate include the Bala Brothers, a trio of tenors consistently booked for corporate events, and international stage-musical star and TV actress KB Motsilanyane. TKZee's recording and marketing deal, the MTN campaign and a contract for song downloads, and a tour, were all negotiated by Maphai and his partner.

"We take a brand management approach to our clients' careers," says Maphai. "In entertainment today a major artist is a commercial product, offering high value to brands."

Dream Team also plans to engage the services of media and self-branding training from Melanie Millin-Moore, whose resumé in corporate media relations includes Sun International and Kerzner International in the global leisure market.

"We see substantial potential for the likes of TKZee outside SA," says Maphai. "This requires extensive brand synchronisation and it sets the bar for all the clients we represent."