A lot of South African creative industries have been busy handing out trophies lately.
The whole point of an awards ceremony is to determine what was best, but the more interesting question is what this says about what the industry wants to see more of.
Look at the big awards in the country and a pattern emerges: the work that is celebrated is rarely just good.
It has a certain quality that makes it stand out from the rest, and that is increasingly being defined by work that understands its audience and can demonstrate impact.
This trend is seen across the South African Music Awards, the IAB South Africa Bookmark Awards and the broader creative and advertising awards circuit.
The trophies may be different but the conversation is the same.
The work has to resonate with someone
The Bookmarks are perhaps the most obvious example of this shift in values.
Now in its 18th year, the Bookmark categories have been rejigged to focus on the role of digital in different areas of business, from building, communicating and connecting, to innovating, measuring and publishing.
It is less about the work itself and more about the impact it drives within a broader ecosystem.
This is an important distinction.
A beautiful piece of work that fails to connect with an audience is one thing, but a beautiful piece of work that drives behaviour, conversation and impact is something else entirely.
The Bookmark 2026 finalists are a great example of this approach, with campaigns such as The Philipstown WireCar Grand Prix, Forever Golf, Khuphuka Nathi, The Cold Case and #BehindTheLabel all using a cultural or social insight as a jumping-off point to create work that goes beyond just being pretty.
The WireCar Grand Prix in particular is a great example of a piece of work that has legs.
Created by Accenture Song for the Philipstown WireCar Foundation, the WireCar Foundation takes a grassroots community initiative of building wire cars and turns it into a multi-platform, multi-layered campaign that encompasses documentary, digital, e-commerce, skills development and jobs in the local community.
The WireCar Grand Prix has since picked up awards at Cannes Lions.
But what is interesting about it is that it is both very local and very accessible.
The community at the heart of the campaign is very specific – a group of residents in Philipstown, Northern Cape – but the campaign manages to elevate that to a universal story that can be understood by a global audience.
South African creativity doesn’t have to be diluted to be appealing elsewhere
The Bookmarks even have a Localisation & Cultural Relevance category that celebrates work that demonstrates cultural insight, inclusive storytelling and local relevance, with entries required to demonstrate how localisation and cultural relevance had an impact on the work.
This is an important shift, as it normalises cultural relevance as an integral part of a creative brief, rather than an afterthought.
The same can be seen in the South African Music Awards, which recognise work across a broad spectrum of music, from amapiano to maskandi, jazz, gospel, hip-hop, African adult contemporary and dance.
The last cycle, for example, saw big winners include Thandiswa Mazwai, Kelvin Momo, Sjava, Khuzani, Dlala Thukzin and 25K.
South Africa’s music scene is as diverse as its people, and the industry’s awards landscape reflects that.
Craft still matters, but it needs to serve a purpose
Another lesson to be drawn from the awards landscape is that, while there is an emphasis on ideas, the technical excellence of a piece of work still matters.
The Bookmarks in particular continue to celebrate work across interface and interactive design, digital content, sound, social media community management and innovative uses of technology, with its judging panels including experts from across creative, strategy, media, technology, publishing and brand.
But the idea has to drive the work, not the other way around.
The same can be said for advertising awards, where South African work continues to pick up international plaudits for its photography, direction, design, technology, sound and production values.
But it is the pieces of work that manage to combine a number of these areas that tend to stand out.
This is also reflective of the changing nature of the creative industries, where the director also has to think about the platform, the designer also has to think about the story, the strategist also has to think about culture, the musician also has to think about the visual, and the fashion designer also has to think about the community.
The boundaries between industries are blurring.
Collaboration is the new normal
One of the things that the awards landscape demonstrates is how many people are involved in the creation of a piece of work.
The WireCar Grand Prix, for example, has a long list of people involved in its creation, from creative directors to copywriters, designers, animators, composers, creative technologists and production teams, both local and overseas.
The work may have a creative director whose name appears on it when it is published, but the piece of work is the result of a team effort.
This is an important point, especially in an industry where the spotlight often focuses on the agency, the director, the artist or the star name, rather than the support staff, runners, production teams and others who make up the bulk of the people in the industry.
Awards may not directly address this imbalance, but the work itself speaks for itself.
We are rewarding work that understands culture, not just audiences
The biggest shift in recent years, however, has been that the work that wins awards understands that it has to connect with culture, not just target audiences.
It is a subtle difference, but an important one.
An audience is a statistic.
Culture is something that has memory, language, humour, history, habits and contradictions.
The most interesting work understands that.
That is why work with a distinctly South African flavour can find success on a global stage.
The WireCar Grand Prix has been able to transcend its origins as a community project in the Northern Cape to find favour with audiences and critics worldwide.
The same can be said for the music industry, where South Africa continues to put out work that can find favour with local and international audiences alike.
There is no need to dilute South African creativity to make it appealing elsewhere.
In fact, it is much more interesting when it doesn’t.
The lesson is really quite simple: know where you are.
South Africa’s creative industries are currently at a point where the work has to have something to say, something to do and somewhere to go.
So, what does South Africa value right now?
If the awards are anything to go by, we want work that has more from the creator.
Is it culturally intelligent? Is it beautifully crafted? Does it solve a problem? Does it have emotional resonance? Does it move beyond the screen? Does it give people something they don’t already have? Does it represent its audiences in a way that they can recognise themselves in it? And, most importantly, can it demonstrate impact?
These are much harder questions to answer than “is this work good?” but they are also much more rewarding.
Because the most exciting thing about South African creativity at the moment may be the trophies, but it is also the work that gets them.
