Senior Manager: Brand & Corporate Identity

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

Job Summary

Lead the strategic definition, governance, and continuous evolution of Absa’s corporate identity and integrated brand design system, ensuring a distinctive, future-fit brand that strengthens competitive positioning and drives enterprise value. Act as custodian of brand integrity, driving consistency, coherence, and impact across all markets, platforms, and touchpoints. Champion design excellence and innovation by embedding scalable frameworks, governance models, and capabilities that enable organisation-wide adoption and high-quality brand execution. Leverage insight, emerging trends, and best-in-class design practices to enhance customer perception and support sustained growth in a dynamic, pan-African context.

Job Description

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:

Build, maintain and evolve the corporate identity for Absa Group Limited through guidelines, toolkits and training through our brand masterclasses platform:

• Define, evolve, and govern Absa’s corporate identity, visual language, and integrated design systems through robust guidelines, toolkits, and frameworks.
• Monitor market, cultural, and design trends across Africa and the competitive landscape, translating relevant insights into continuous brand refinement and innovation.
• Develop scalable, user-friendly assets and processes that enable consistent and locally relevant brand expression across diverse markets.
• Drive the development and rollout of specialised brand systems, including sonic branding, music curation frameworks, and podcast guidelines to expand and strengthen multi-sensory brand expression.
• Deliver structured internal communication and content plans to support effective rollout, socialisation, and adoption of brand tools and frameworks.
• Lead and provide creative direction and brand design leadership across key brand strategic projects, ensuring consistency, innovation, and alignment with Group strategy.

Faces of Absa programme enhancement, training and rollout:

• Lead the implementation and scaling of the “Faces of Absa” programme as a centralised platform for brand ambassadors across the organisation.
• Underpinning this, implement a structured training and enablement programme for Faces of Absa participants to ensure they are equipped with the skills, confidence, and brand understanding required to perform effectively in these roles, enhancing the overall user experience and ensuring seamless, high-quality execution.
• Once the systems, guidelines and toolkits are finalised, a well-structured internal marketing plan which includes the content plan should be developed to effectively support communication. This plan should also drive awareness and understanding of the rollout, ensuring that all messaging is strategically distributed and amplified across relevant internal marketing channels to maximise reach, engagement, and adoption.
• Establish governance, processes, and tools to enable seamless identification and deployment of talent across campaigns, events, and content platforms.
• Design and implement training and enablement programmes to ensure participants are equipped to represent the brand consistently and effectively.
• Drive internal awareness, adoption, and engagement through structured communication and marketing plans.
• Track programme performance, including adoption metrics, efficiency gains, and cost savings, to demonstrate business value and impact

Provide technical advisory services to stakeholders on best practice relating to brand application:

• Support stakeholders with brand asset implementation, including problem-solving, continuous improvement, and solution development as brand needs evolve.
• Provide guidance on brand architecture, naming conventions, domain strategy, trademarks, and overall visual identity to ensure consistency and competitive differentiation. Guide stakeholders on creative execution and design quality, ensuring all outputs meet brand and aesthetic standards across channels, including digital environments.
• Represent Group Brand – GMCA in Group Functions and Business Unit marketing, communications, and creative review forums to ensure alignment and governance.
• Work with Head of Brand Management and Marketing Academy to build capability and development in Corporate Identity and Brand Design for Absa Colleagues and Agency Partners
• Agency Partner Management.

Increase awareness through training sessions to increase the understanding of the Absa brand across the Group via the Brand masterclasses:

• Develop and implement a comprehensive, continent-wide brand socialisation strategy to drive understanding and adoption of corporate identity and visual language.
• Design, build, and manage a holistic brand training and capability-building programme for stakeholders across business units and geographies.

Protect the Absa brand, intellectual property, and reputation:

• Collaborate with Group IP Legal to manage the Absa trademark portfolio, including searches, filings, renewals, and infringement management.
• Ensure all brand assets (including sonic assets, curated music, and podcast content) comply with intellectual property, licensing, and governance requirements.
• Represent Group Brand – GMCA in all IP-related decisions impacting the Absa brand and provide strategic input to safeguard brand equity.
• Risk & Reputation Management.

Qualification & Design Packages:

• Bachelor’s Degree or Advanced Diploma (NQF7)
• Postgraduate Diploma or Master’s in Brand Strategy; Design Management Marketing or Business Administration (Preferred)
• Specialised certifications (strong differentiators):
  • Design Thinking (e.g., IDEO, Stanford, Hyper Island)
  • UX/UI Design (for digital integration)
  • Brand Strategy / Brand Management certifications
  • Motion Design or Digital Product Design courses

• Design / Creative Suites: Adobe Creative Cloud (expert level):
  • Adobe Illustrator (vector, identity systems); Adobe InDesign (brand guidelines, toolkits)
  • Adobe Photoshop (image editing, compositing)

• Figma (essential for design systems and collaboration)
• Adobe XD or Sketch (secondary but useful
• In-Design; Canva; AI Visual and Copy Platforms such as ChapGPT, CoPilot, Discord, Claude, Gemini

Knowledge:

• Excellent knowledge of application of applying visual identity guidelines as well as identifying complex situations to resolve in such a complex corporate.

Skills:

• Excellent attention to detail.
• Have a very good understanding of design packages
• Creative and Design Thinking
• Excellent collaboration skills to deal with different levels of stakeholders with ease
• Brand Governance & Compliance
• Design Systems Thinking; Digital Product & UX Alignment
• Stakeholder Influence at Executive Level
• Cultural Intelligence (Pan-African context)
• Innovation & Emerging Tech Awareness
• Agency Experience highly beneficial, however not mandatory

Experience:

• 5-8 years as Brand and Marketing creative specialist, strategist and designer

Education

Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Marketing (Required)

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised