For many aspiring creators, the hardest part isn’t making something good. It is figuring out what happens after someone notices it.
A viral post can bring followers. A strong campaign can bring exposure. A competition can put a creator in front of industry professionals. But turning that moment of visibility into a sustainable career requires something more: access, mentorship, commercial opportunities and people willing to invest in what comes next.
For Johannesburg-based creator Kgomotso Masebuko, that next step has arrived.
After standing out during the Dentsu School of Influence’s One Big Week programme, Masebuko has secured an internship with Dentsu Influence powered by CSA, alongside an ongoing content partnership with FoneYam. Her progression offers a glimpse into what can happen when the creator economy is treated as a legitimate career ecosystem rather than a collection of one-off campaigns.
Beyond the brief
Masebuko was awarded the FoneYam Content Creator Excellence Award during One Big Week, where participants were given the opportunity to work with real briefs, mentorship and industry exposure.
What caught the attention of the judges was not simply her ability to create content, but the combination of authentic storytelling, strategic thinking and cultural awareness she brought to the work.
Those qualities have now translated into two very different but complementary opportunities.
At Dentsu Influence, Masebuko will work alongside strategists and creators, gaining experience inside an influence agency and learning how campaigns are developed and executed from the industry side.
Her relationship with FoneYam, meanwhile, moves her into the role of a long-term brand storyteller, creating content for a company whose focus is making smartphone access more affordable for young South Africans.
Together, the opportunities offer something that can be difficult for emerging creators to find: a chance to learn the business while simultaneously building a commercial track record.
From creator to commercial partner
South Africa’s creator economy has matured rapidly, but the pathways into it have not always matured at the same pace.
Creators are increasingly being asked to do work that requires strategic thinking, production skills, audience development and an understanding of brand culture. Yet many opportunities remain transactional: a brief comes in, content goes out, payment is made and everyone moves on to the next campaign.
Masebuko’s story points towards another model.
Her FoneYam partnership is positioned as an ongoing relationship rather than a single piece of sponsored content. At the same time, her Dentsu internship gives her exposure to the agency structures and strategic thinking that sit behind influence campaigns.
That combination matters because it allows a creator to build more than an audience. She is building experience, relationships, commercial credibility and professional skills.
It is a distinction the industry needs to pay attention to.
“We don’t have a talent problem”
Davin Phillips, Executive Director and Managing Partner at CSA, describes the challenge bluntly: South Africa does not have a talent problem, but an opportunity problem.
It is an argument that extends well beyond the creator economy.
There is no shortage of young South Africans making compelling work, building communities and developing distinctive voices online. What remains uneven is their access to the people, platforms and professional environments that can help turn those abilities into sustainable careers.
That makes programmes such as the Dentsu School of Influence particularly significant when they move beyond identifying talent.
The real test of an initiative like this isn’t how many people participate in a week. It is what happens to them afterwards.
In Masebuko’s case, the answer is an internship, a commercial partnership and a new set of opportunities to develop her craft.
Making the creator economy a career economy
For Masebuko, the significance of the opportunity is personal as well as professional.
She recalls that her family initially struggled to understand what building a career in the creator economy could actually mean. Her experience during One Big Week helped change that perception.
The lesson she took from the programme was that standing out comes from being unapologetically authentic. But authenticity alone does not build a career. It needs to meet structure, opportunity and the willingness of an industry to take emerging talent seriously.
That is where this story becomes bigger than one creator.
As brands search for voices that can build genuine relationships with audiences, creators are increasingly becoming part of the commercial infrastructure of the industry. The question is whether businesses will continue treating them as temporary campaign assets or begin investing in them as long-term creative partners.
FoneYam’s ongoing relationship with Masebuko suggests one answer. Dentsu’s internship offers another.
Neither opportunity guarantees a career. But both create the conditions for one.
And perhaps that is the more useful measure of the creator economy’s progress: not how many people can become visible overnight, but how many are being given a real path forward once the spotlight finds them.
