HI. REMEMBER ME?

[Audio] Hi. Remember me? I'm live music. I took a few years off. Now I'm back, and everybody wants a ticket. Limp Bizkit at FNB Stadium. Riverdance's 30th anniversary tour. While the headliners got all the noise, a small team inside Nedbank was busy backstage, building something sneaky. Judges, I'll keep this quick. I know you've read a lot of case studies. This one has a till slip and a stopwatch..

[Audio] Big stages. Big queues. Two shows, two cities, and one very simple deal. Mastercard and Live Nation agreed that Mastercard cardholders get into presales first. Lovely. But a perk nobody hears about is just a rumour. Somebody had to tell Nedbank's cardholders, quickly. A presale lasts 48 hours, and the creative tends to turn up late. And the appetite is real. South African artists earned nearly R504 million on Spotify in 2025, up 28 percent on the year before. That's streaming, not tickets, but the direction is clear..

[Audio] Meet Rachel. She's not a real customer. She's the person we built this for, and the slide says so. Rachel is a millennial. She lives in a metro city, has money to spend, and spends it on experiences. Like most people in the middle market and up, she's multi-banked. She has a Nedbank card, and she has other banks' cards too. That's the whole game. Nedbank wants primacy: the card she reaches for first, and a bigger share of her wallet. So speed matters. If she hears about the presale first, the tickets go on our card, not someone else's. And it's a surprise. Early access, on the spot, from a bank she didn't expect it from. That's a happy moment. It lifts what the card is worth to her, and it builds brand love. (Note to self before recording: add a stat or Nedbank data point on multi-banking, or soften the first point.).

[Audio] Here's the brief. We called it the Marketing Fast Lane brief, and it fits on one line: help us get this offer out as quick as possible, and let's see if there's value in repeating it. No brief beyond that line. No agencies. No budget. Add the facts. The creative lands close to launch. LRC, NELS and Brand still have to sign off. And a presale only lasts 48 hours. That's not a brief. That's a dare..

[Audio] So, the budget. Here's the till slip. Agency fees: R0. New budget: R0. Production and incentives: R0, pending Finance sign-off. And because you're cynical, and you should be, here's the bit most entries hide. Zero budget means zero new money. It does not mean zero effort. The team's time and the Adobe licences still cost something, so they're on the slip, and the hours go in before you ask. The real saving isn't on the receipt. It's the hours we didn't spend..

[Audio] The old question was: how do we run a new campaign for every concert? Wrong question. So we swapped it for a better one. How do we build one campaign we can repeat, iterate on and scale, so it's out fast, and people buy their tickets on a Nedbank card? Underneath it sits a bet. A discount is easy to copy. Speed is harder. If the customer hears first, the ticket goes on a Nedbank card, and we capture more of her wallet. We haven't got research to prove that, so we've stamped it for what it is. A bet, not a finding..

[Audio] The idea. One template, every gig. Look at the two messages we sent. Same words, different artist, different dates. Mastercard brings the access. Nedbank brings the cardholders. The template does the typing. Only a few things change each time: the act and the venue, the dates and times, and the artwork Mastercard sends us. Everything else stays put. And we didn't buy anything to do it. The template lives in Adobe Journey Optimizer, on the Adobe MarTech platform Nedbank already owns. We built it once, so we edit it instead of rebuilding it. That saves people's hours, and it saves money, every single time we repeat it..

[Audio] The scrappy build, and the real hero of this story: speed to market. Done the normal way, a campaign like this takes at least 14 days. That's our team's estimate, and we've labelled it that way. Limp Bizkit took us nine. Riverdance took three. That's eleven days saved against the normal route, about 79 percent off the timeline, and it was all done in-house. How? Three things. First, we built the campaign as a template in our MarTech platform, so we edit it instead of rebuilding it. Second, we set up a WhatsApp chat for approvals, instead of email or Jira, so nothing sat in a queue. Third, we stopped treating every presale as a brand new campaign. That saves people's hours, and it saves money, every time we repeat it. (Note to self before recording: add the hours saved, and the evidence behind the 14-day baseline.).

[Audio] Now the twist. For the second show we added a channel: an in-app overlay. Limp Bizkit had email and social. Riverdance had email, social and the app. You'd expect more work. It was less. Nine days became three. The template soaked up the extra channel. Did the overlay drive the spend? We can't prove that, and we won't pretend. What we can say is what happened. The overlay reached 37,396 people, 19,999 saw it in full, and 2,133 interacted. Email link interactions more than doubled, from 183 to 374. That's the honest version of optimisation. Add something, then measure it properly..

[Audio] Here's the actual work. No mock-ups. The in-app overlay for Riverdance. The email for Limp Bizkit. Same words, same layout, same green button. Different artist, different dates. Look at how little changed between them. That's the point of the template. Each new one is an edit, not a rebuild. (Note to self before recording: swap the two placeholders for the Riverdance email and the social posts.).

[Audio] Speed was the hero of the build. Now, the till. Banks like receipts. In the three days of the presale, Nedbank Mastercard spend in the measured window reached one point four three nine million rand. The three days before: three hundred and seventy-six thousand. That's nearly four times as much, in 72 hours, from a campaign that went live in three days on zero new budget. Transactions went from 169 to 390. The average transaction went from R2,224 to R3,691. So bigger baskets, not just busier ones. One honest stamp. This is association, not proof. We'll show you why in a minute..

[Audio] The receipts. Three equal windows: before, during, after. Three hundred and seventy-six thousand rand, then one point four three nine million, then two hundred and forty-eight thousand. Yes, spend dipped after the presale, below where it started. A presale pulls demand forward, and we'd rather show you that than hide it. So we added the in-window and post-window together: one point six eight seven million, against seven hundred and fifty-two thousand if both had matched the window before. Still nine hundred and thirty-five thousand ahead. That's calculated from the report's figures, and it assumes the window before is a fair baseline. (Note to self before recording: confirm the exact window dates. If the post window is 8 to 10 August, it was the Women's Day long weekend, and we should say so.).

[Audio] Outputs and outcomes, kept apart. Outputs are who saw it and what they did: the app overlay, the email, social. Outcomes are what happened at the till: one point four three nine million rand of spend, 390 transactions, and 1,130 tickets, 963 presale and 167 preferred. One outcome is still pending, and we've labelled it: who actually turns up in April. And a careful word on Limp Bizkit. It spent more: two point five one seven million across 589 transactions. Different act, different crowd. We're not saying Riverdance beat it. We're saying the machine worked twice..

[Audio] So, why does this win Small Budget, Big Impact? Speed. A campaign that normally takes at least 14 days went live in three. Eleven days saved. Commercial. In the three presale days, Nedbank Mastercard spend was R1.439 million, against R376 thousand in the three days before. Up 283 percent. Association, not proof, and we've said so. Budget. No new money, no agency, and technology Nedbank already owned. Repeatable. One template, built in Adobe, that we edit for every gig. Time saved and money saved, every time. And here's the chain. A template and a WhatsApp chat get us live in three days. Rachel hears first. She buys on her Nedbank card, not another bank's. That's share of wallet. That's primacy. That's brand love. Still to come, the April shows, and the attendance data that goes with them. We'll tell you how it goes. Zero budget. Three days. One point four three nine million. Thank you..

[Audio] Before the finale, the people who did it. Jenna De Bruin, who owned it. Simangele Mtimkulu, Neo Mokubung and Fhatuwani Rampfumedzi, who built the journeys. Teboho Ntleru in the studio. Jessica Singh on social. Sinoxolo Immaculate Khowane on measurement. Chevaughn Reddy on brand. Our stakeholders, Buli Ndlovu and Maude Korte. And our partners, Mastercard and Live Nation. A WhatsApp chat, a template and a very good squad. That's the whole secret..

SOURCES.. Every number, where it came from, and what we still owe..