Samkelisiwe Ngcobo

Samukelisiwe “Samke” Ngcobo is currently a Senior Lead: Brand and Sponsorship at Liberty Group. Samke is a well-rounded marketer, and highly knowledgeable professional with comprehensive experience in brand and sponsorship management.

Brand Sponsorship and Event Management

• Drafting of sponsorship contracts - including rights metrics to ensure the brand is able to deliver on set KPIs • 

Developing, implementing and monitoring all brand and sponsorship strategies across the group
• Conceptualizing media plans with the agency in support of sponsorship implementation to ensure correct messaging is carried through
• Build relationships with partners on behalf of the IMC team for integration
• Driving integration through internal teams (PR, Digital, and Internal Communications) on all internal and external brand and sponsorship campaigns
• Providing quarterly brand plans that include execution strategy, budgets, project plans, and measurement metrics
• Providing guidance on internal and external brand experiences (bespoke events, client experiences), with the use of sponsorship to deliver on set KPIs.
• Conduct site visits for upcoming events and also create consumer journeys for events 

• Provide and drive trend analysis and competitive analysis
• Provide creative events solutions for business needs
• Providing input on governance across various areas of the business (PPR, Sponsorships,

External Agency and Finance)
• Providing guidance on the measurement of the Brand Health Tracker process
• Participating in quarterly reporting to group management (ROMCI)
• Participate and play a leading role in the weekly brand collaboration council to support all

Business Units
• Proving brand approval on all creative brand work with In-house Studio Team

Agency and Stakeholder Management

Building and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders (CSI | Trade Marketing |FA’S) to create tangible touch points to our customers and clients

Briefing agencies on creative messaging, on how the sponsorship will demonstrate the brand’s promise

Partnering with external partner agencies to deliver all relevant brand deliverables

Leading in agency briefing sessions on new brand sponsorship events

Monitoring agency on set KPIs

Challenge the agency to think and propose creative solutions

Working with Human Capital in ensuring team culture is upheld

Budget Management

Budget management – ensuring budgets are well managed, monitored, and reconciled post each campaign executed

Ensuring budgets are utilized wisely for reinvestment towards more effective executions on brand deliverables (Media spend, PR, Digital and Internal Communications)

Drafting and managing SLAs with different stakeholders

National Diploma: Sports Management - Durban University of Technology (2009 – 2011) Short Course: Advanced Marketing – University of the Witwatersrand (2019)
Honours: Marketing Management – MANCOSA (2022)
Master Business Administration: MANCOSA (Current)