FNB BUSINESS: "NO OTHER CARD WORKS HARDER FOR YOUR BUSINESS"

Year: 2024–2025
For: FNB Business
Role: Concept, writing, platform thinking

Most small businesses in South Africa aren’t failing because they lack ambition.
They’re failing quietly, internally, because they’re constantly asking a harder question:

Is this even worth it?

Not “Is it profitable?”
Not “Will it scale?”
But worth it: emotionally, spiritually, physically.

Long hours. Unpaid invoices. Sacrifices no spreadsheet ever sees.

Banks talk about growth. Entrepreneurs live inside doubt.

The tension was simple:  How do you speak about financial tools without dismissing the emotional cost of survival? How do you say “use this card” without sounding like you’ve never waited for money that didn’t come?

Instead of motivating people, we affirmed them.

We made a declarative statement, not about FNB, but about the person standing behind the counter:

Your effort is worth it. That's why no other card works harder for your business.
 

Gold wasn’t a product tier.
It was a value judgement.

Late nights became gold.
Trying again became gold.
Showing up tired became gold.

The card didn’t promise success.
It promised recognition, and tools that respected effort. By working as hard as you do.

The work reframed banking as partnership, not permission.

It allowed FNB to say: We don’t invest in businesses because they’re winning.
We invest because they’re trying. That distinction mattered.

Year: Post-Covid era
For: Ster-Kinekor
Medium: In-cinema experiential film
Role: Concept, writing, experiential design

The world after Covid felt emotionally unstable.

People were back outside, back at work, back in relationships,
but internally, things were still unresolved.

We were expected to be functional again before we were healed.
To keep moving. To keep coping. To keep pretending we had things under control.

Public life demanded composure.
Private life was anything but.

Cinema is literally a dark place. But emotionally, it’s one of the few spaces where we’re allowed to fall apart. The tension was this contradiction:

In the real world, darkness is something we hide.
In the cinema, darkness is something we enter willingly.

So how do you speak about cinema without selling escapism or distraction —
and instead acknowledge its deeper role as emotional release?

We reframed “being in a dark place” as a relief, not a warning.

Instead of marketing movies, we addressed the audience directly, at the precise moment they were already sitting in the dark.

Just before the film began:

• the lights dimmed
• the screen went black
• and the audience was spoken to, not at
   

Three versions were created:

• I’m In a Dark Place
• I’m In a Dark Place With My Girlfriend
• I’m In a Dark Place With My Family
   

Each version mirrored a different emotional pressure point —
acknowledging that who we’re with changes how safe we feel when emotions surface.

The cinema didn’t offer answers.
It offered permission.

The experience turned the cinema into a shared emotional container.

People didn’t just watch something.
They felt seen inside something.

It reframed Ster-Kinekor not as a place to escape life, but as a place where life is allowed to surface safely.

A space where:

• ugly crying is acceptable
• fear is thrilling, not paralysing
• overwhelm becomes catharsis

I’m In a Dark Place is about recognising that sometimes,
the healthiest thing a space can do is stop asking people to hold it together.

And let the dark do its work - because that's cinema.

Game. Lay-Bye - "Interesting"

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