Phumzile Kumalo (Junior Production Assistant, MetropolitanRepublic) interviews Kamogelo Sesing (Executive Creative Director, MetropolitanRepublic)
Last year, we launched Future Ballers, an exciting monthly series and news source for creatives and professionals under 30, exclusively brought to you by the Association for Communications and Advertising (ACA). Future Ballers aims to keep you informed about the who’s and what’s of the industry and continue to attract brilliant young minds and talent from all walks of life to the agency world.
For the first feature of the series, Grey intern, David Sachane sat down with graphic designer turned Creative Director, Khanya Sijaji to chat about Sijaji’s thriving career journey and navigating through the advertising industry. Much like the first leg of the series, the second feature takes a look at Executive Creative Director at MetropolitanRepublic, Kamogelo Sesing’s climb up the industry ladder.
KAMO: Its Monday morning, I still haven’t had my coffee
KAMO: My name is Kamogelo Sesing, I’m the Executive Creative Director, at MetropolitanRepublic
PHUMEE: Hey Kamo, thank you for doing this. So first things first – for me, you know, black girl, family in the hood, when they ask you “What you do?” and I say “I’m in advertising.” my Grandmother still doesn’t understand it. Why Advertising? What was the one thing that made you say: “This is what I’m doing”?
KAMO: Look, I mean at school I was pretty good with languages, that’s probably where I got my highest grades and then from a writing point of view I’d always score pretty high in my orals and creative writing. I always had a natural inclination for story-telling and languages. Then when I got to matric I didn’t really know what the hell I could do with this until a friend of mine basically identified a school, AAA, The School of Advertising. Checked it out, drove to Joburg on the Open Day and that’s kind of the first time I realized I could do something with essentially what looked like a natural talent to me, and that’s how I started. It wasn’t because I was watching Generations.
PHUMEE: On that note, do you think that’s somehow what paved the way as an entry point to the Advertising industry?
KAMO: Definitely, I mean I think that TV Show and dramatizing the World of Advertising did definitely have a role in terms of making something that wasn’t apparent to a group ofpeople. It highlighted an industry that most of us knew nothing about.
PHUMEE: In the past year, we’ve had to deal with Covid and how it forced the digital /remote set up. Do you think that as an industry we’ve transitioned easily?
KAMO: You know funny enough I was having a conversation with someone about this the other day – that had it not been for Covid, would we actually have gotten to a place where remote working became common? I think for a long-time, organisations could ride off
“working from home is not going to work”. Thankfully to Covid, which is a funny thing to say; we were forced into a situation where we had to adapt and a lot of organizations have virtually acclimatized to the situation very very well and businesses are functioning as per
normal.
PHUMEE: What’s the one thing you wish someone would’ve told you before you entered this amazing industry?
KAMO: I wish somebody said “Don’t do it” (laughs). Wow… there isn’t anything that I wish somebody would’ve told me. This business is tough. I guess like any other business, there’s certain things you only can learn along the way. You definitely have to you know, “go
through it”. Learning along the way – that’s the lesson I guess.
PHUMEE: Thank you for your time, Kamo.
Watch the full interview here:
