When recently posed with a panel question on how she gives herself praise but still remains humble following her years of industry success, Khensani’s reply came straight from the heart and without pause. “Humble in whose books? Who said we have to be humble? There’s this construct that women can’t put out what they are good at because then your ego must be big. I have a really great creative brain in terms of being able to judge great creativity produced by others and being able to lead agencies and those I work with to great creativity.” This has been her key to success.
Khensani Nobanda’s journey to being asked the question is a tale of random events and her gearing towards saying “yes” to opportunity. Having studied a BCOM degree majoring in Information Systems on the advice of her parents, Kensi realised pretty quickly while studying that this wasn’t the course that she’d build a career in. “In my second year, I had a chance conversation with someone at my residential accommodation and they recommended that I take up Marketing as an elective and I didn’t know what it was. Thinking it was advertising, my initial response was ‘I don’t think I’m creative enough to do marketing.’”
However, she took the elective as there weren’t many other elective choices and immediately realised that this was the field she was looking to get into. “After completing my BCom majoring in Marketing and Information Systems, all the job offers coming my way were for work in IT and I received just one job offer from Unilever which was for a Marketing position. However, my relationship with the company had begun prior to my graduation. A friend of mine had been applying for a course at Unilever and I had been walking him to submit his application when I queried what this submission was for, and he explained what the company was as well as what the course was.” Needless to say, this second chance conversation led to Kensi applying for the course, getting in and performing well enough for Unilever to offer her a position as Assistant Brand Manager on Rama Margarine in 2000.
After a few years within the company, Kensi met the Smirnoff Brand Manager at Diageo and having gotten the opportunity to speak to him, he put her name forward for her role when he resigned. “I walked into that interview and told the Hiring Manager: ‘You should really stop interviewing people and give me the job because this is clearly my job.’” At the time Smirnoff South Africa was the leading Smirnoff market in the world for Diageo. “My time at Smirnoff involved me in global strategy projects which impacted and grew me. I then became Marketing Manager for the Ready–to–Drink category, and it was around this time that Unilever called me to offer me a position as a Category Director, which was the role I took up at 25 years old.” And the rest is history, as they say.
With a career spanning over 16 years within the industry, Kensi joined Nedbank as the Executive Head of Group Marketing in 2017, and within months she was appointed Group Executive of Group Marketing and Corporate Affairs along with joining the Group EXCO. “When I joined Nedbank, I was clear that I wanted the bank to stand out, not just in banking but across all South African brands and I challenged my team on this creatively. When we won the Loeries Grand Prix for Nedbank “Secrets” in 2020, I felt as though we were finally on the right path creatively. My job is to share the narrative of the brand, even now Nedbank is still the only bank to have ever received that prize.” Looking at her career and how timing has contributed to it, Kensi parts with her thoughts on this. “There was luck, but I was always ready both mentally and with experience.”
