Neo is Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy South Africa, with over 20 years of experience in advertising and brand strategy across Africa. Her work sits at the intersection of creativity, culture and effectiveness, using strategy as the connective tissue between human insight and business growth.

Her point of view is anchored in culture‑first creative strategy, informed by her academic and professional work across African markets. She believes the most powerful brand ideas bridge the rational gap between System 1 and System 2 thinking – aligning emotional instinct with deliberate choice through cultural intelligence.

This belief was deepened through her MBA in Creative Leadership at Steinbeis‑Hochschule University in Berlin, Germany, where her thesis focused on frugal innovation across five key African markets, examining how innovation emerges from sub-cultural needs to ensure access, relevance and scale.

Neo believes every brand carries an inherent cultural quotient – a measure of whether it exists below culture, within culture or above culture. This quotient shapes a brand’s ability to create category‑breaking work and to build meaningful connections in consumers’ preferred cultural spaces.

In community‑oriented, creator‑led markets such as South Africa, cultural intelligence is a critical strategic growth driver – enabling brands to move beyond communication and into genuine cultural participation.