Career trajectory · Est. 1991
Thirty-five years moving between corporate marketing, hands-on venture building and digital strategy — currently running UpClose Consulting from Johannesburg.
Bradley's career runs in two overlapping tracks: corporate strategist and independent builder. Seven years inside Old Mutual plc took him from finance and administration through to senior marketing consultant and executive communications — the grounding in structure and budgets that still shows up in how he scopes work today. That grounding is backed by an MBA and deep commercial experience spanning finance, marketing and venture leadership.
Alongside that, he has started and run ventures on his own account since the late 1990s — a vernacular-language greeting card range, one of South Africa's early property marketing portals, a range of formulated health juices — before moving into agency and corporate marketing leadership at Tinderbox Interactive, Osiris Trading, Club Leisure Group and the Durban Chamber of Commerce.
Since 2014 that combination has been formalised as UpClose Consulting: a solo, strategy-first marketing and advisory practice, alongside ongoing work in international skills development and business development for a mining equipment manufacturer across the SADC region.
"I lead a team of talented designers, developers, digital marketers, event specialists and media experts to develop world-class strategies, brands and campaigns that connect, engage and retain customers for our clients."
The practice: strategy and delivery under his own name, plus two current outside engagements.
UpClose Consulting · Johannesburg · Remote
Leads a multi-discipline team building strategy, brand and campaigns for UpClose's client portfolio.
Novamine · SADC region · Hybrid
Drives mining-sector growth across the SADC region as Novamine's brand ambassador.
Senior Expert Service (SES) · Remote
Matches South African organisations with volunteer German experts for hands-on skills transfer.
Corporate marketing leadership, with a health-juice venture running alongside it.
Durban Chamber of Commerce · KwaZulu-Natal
Led marketing and networking strategy for KwaZulu-Natal's business community.
Club Leisure Group · Pinetown, Durban
Ran marketing across 9 brands for 200,000+ members and built the group's first digital KPI framework.
ATO Communications · Johannesburg
Independent marketing and branding consultancy, trading as Acorn to Oak.
Science Juices · Melrose Arch, Jhb
Formulated and distributed a functional vegetable and fruit juice range.
Direct-response and early digital marketing, plus one of Cape Town's first property portals.
Direct Marketing Mgr → Affiliate Mgr · Johannesburg
Grew direct-response and affiliate marketing channels over five years.
Dimension Data
AliveAd Media Services · Cape Town
Built one of South Africa's first property marketing portals.
Where it started: seven years inside a listed insurer, plus two ventures on the side.
Tinderbox Interactive · Digital Ad Agency
Amaizing Concepts · Cape Town
Launched a first-of-its-kind vernacular-language greeting card range (English, Xhosa, Sotho).
Finance Head → Sr. Marketing → Strategic Comms · Cape Town
Seven years from finance leadership to executive communications inside a listed insurer.
The consultancy has grown into a technical practice, not just a strategic one — self-contained applications, business dashboards and automation sit alongside the campaigns and brand work, backed by a tech stack chosen deliberately rather than defaulted to.
Self-contained single- and multi-page applications — deployable straight to Netlify — with database integration and exposure into live dashboards, plus WhatsApp-based outreach tools built on Meta's Cloud API with custom broadcast and webhook handling, AI-integrated tools proxied through Google Apps Script, and white-label platforms built for reseller go-to-market.
Live KPI, pipeline and reporting dashboards built on top of the Sheets/Apps Script stack — clients see the numbers without a database layer to maintain.
Google Sheets and Apps Script as core data and workflow infrastructure.
Supabase, Cloudflare Access, Netlify and Vercel-style hosting — a tech stack sized to the problem, not oversold.
Weighs Bubble, Webflow, Glide, AppSheet, Power Apps, Softr and Noloco against a custom build, so each client gets the platform the business case actually supports.
Cloudflare Access-gated video and knowledge portals for country managers, technicians, clients and their technical teams — training workflows with measurable progress records and quizzes, secure client access to reports, and automated expiry and renewal nudges by email and WhatsApp.
Thirty-five years taught me one thing: strategy without execution is just an opinion.Bradley Waltman