How Bigger Than Me Is Turning Creativity Into Opportunity And Impact For South Africa
MOJO Journalism for on the ground updates on Augmented Reality social impact project | Bigger Than Me
Advertising veteran Greg Viljoen founded Bigger Than Me in Cape Town, South Africa, after years in the agency world convinced him that creativity could do far more than build brands. In a country where youth unemployment remains one of the most urgent challenges facing the next generation, he built the agency to focus not on purpose as performance, but on impact that can actually change people’s lives.
“Bigger Than Me is a creative social change agency,” he explained. “We’re based in Cape Town, South Africa, and we’ve been running for 12 years now. I come from a long line of ad agencies, and I’ve loved the ad game. But for a really long time, I’ve thought the communication space has missed an opportunity to really create impact in the world and social change in the world beyond pro bono work.”
That frustration became the agency’s starting point. Viljoen wanted to move away from cause marketing that looks good in a case study and toward work that does something useful in the real world.
In South Africa, that means keeping one eye firmly on the country’s youth unemployment crisis. “Unemployment in this country, in South Africa in particular, for youth unemployment is like 56% or something,” he noted. “Kids are coming out of school, there’s no opportunities.”
So when Viljoen talks about social impact, he is not talking about sentiment. He is talking about practical outcomes — skills, jobs, entrepreneurship, better education, and pathways out of poverty.
“For me, it’s very much about how are we impacting on the ground,” he said. “Beyond a fantastic-looking campaign and an excellent concept, it always comes down to how is this going to impact the person on the ground and the benefactor on the ground.”
That mindset shapes the kinds of clients and campaigns Bigger Than Me takes on.
Changing how tourists respond to homelessness
One of the clearest examples is the agency’s work for the Camps Bay Community Development Forum. Camps Bay is one of Cape Town’s best-known tourist destinations, but it is also a place where visitors regularly encounter homelessness. The problem, Viljoen said, is not a lack of goodwill. It is that tourists often respond in ways that feel generous in the moment but do little to support longer-term change.
“It’s about providing information to tourists when they arrive in Camps Bay about the homeless issue and that there are actually better ways to donate, as opposed to just giving a handout of cash,” he explained.
Bigger Than Me helped build a campaign designed to shift that behavior. Instead of encouraging ad hoc giving, it directs tourists toward support for Ignisive and Camps Bay CID, an organization that provides people living on the streets with skills development and pathways into work.
The execution was practical and targeted. The agency created video stories to raise funds for the program, used geolocated WhatsApp messaging to reach Italian, French and German-speaking tourists as they arrived in Camps Bay, and supported the campaign with digital ads and on-the-ground activations.
The result is a good example of Viljoen’s broader philosophy. Do not just raise awareness of a problem. Give people a better way to help solve it.
Greg Viljoen, CEO & Founder during Bigger Than Me film shoot for impact documentary | Bigger Than Me
Where business steps in
Viljoen is also quick to point out that in South Africa, nonprofits cannot carry this work alone. He sees corporate partnerships as essential, especially where education and entrepreneurship are concerned.
“A lot of corporates have really good incubator programs to empower the youth to create businesses, to become entrepreneurs, to build the job sector, so that there are more opportunities out there,” he pointed out.
Education is another major focus. Viljoen described work with nonprofits that support teachers working in under-resourced schools and mentorship programs that help students stay in the system and prepare for employment.
“Corporates are jumping in and partnering with non-profits to a large degree because they have to,” he added. “They want good candidates to be able to come out of the educational system so that they can be employed.”
It is a grounded view of social impact. Not charity for charity’s sake, but collaboration around a real shared need. Young people need access and opportunity. Employers need talent. The most useful creative work, in Viljoen’s view, helps connect those dots.
Telling stories from the ground up
If Bigger Than Me has a distinct strength, it is storytelling — but not the polished, over-produced kind that dominates brand work. Viljoen is far more interested in stories that feel immediate and truthful.
“Storytelling is a huge buzzword,” he said. “But for me, the most important thing is making sure that that story is as real and as authentic as possible, that there’s no fluff, there’s no greenwashing. It’s just basic human connection that we push for as hard as possible.”
That belief led the agency to develop what he calls Mojo Journalism, training storytellers across South Africa and the wider continent to film and edit their own stories. Bigger Than Me then curates and directs that material.
“Those have had a massive impact,” he emphasized. “They’re a little bit more raw, a little bit more guerrilla style than maybe your cinematic kind of docky style stuff. But I think empowering those storytellers who are actually at the coalface of that impact and to be able to receive and tell their story is hugely important.”
That approach does two things at once. It gives organizations content that feels more human and less manufactured. And it shifts authorship closer to the people living the story, not just the people packaging it.
A campaign that beat its own target
Asked what piece of work stands out most, Viljoen pointed to a campaign Bigger Than Me created for Operation Smile.
The brief was built around the nonprofit’s 35th anniversary. The goal was simple and memorable — fund 35 cleft lip and palate surgeries in 35 days.
“The goal was to raise 35 Smiles in 35 days, and we managed to raise enough funds for 63 operations in 35 days,” he recalled.
The campaign combined influencer support, events on the ground, and storytelling across South Africa, Madagascar and Mozambique. More importantly, it turned a neat campaign line into a measurable result. The original target was 35 surgeries. The final number was 63.
That kind of outcome matters because it cuts through the fog that often surrounds purpose work. A campaign can sound inspiring. But in the end, what matters is whether more people were helped because it existed.
What Bigger Than Me is really building
Viljoen believes this work is evolving. He sees the creater economy opening up new possibilities for nonprofits and social impact organizations, especially as they think beyond short-term fundraising and toward building audiences around their stories.
“I think there’s an aspect of the creater economy within the social impact space where clients are going to be able to shift away from a fundraising model to a monetization model of their storytelling,” he said. “I think that’s hugely exciting.”
Even so, the core idea behind Bigger Than Me is already clear. In a country facing deep structural challenges, creativity has to earn its place. It has to do more than create attention. It has to help create opportunity.
And that is what makes Viljoen’s agency worth watching. Not because it talks about impact more elegantly than others, but because it is trying to make that word mean something tangible — a training program, a job pathway, a funded surgery, a better way to give, a story told by the people closest to it.
At Conspiracy of Love, we help changemakers tell their most powerful stories — stories that inspire action, build movements, and create lasting impact.
Find out more about our Values-Driven Storytelling and GPS to Purpose workshops, and how we can help you scale your impact.
