About Assay House
We give your brand a clear reason to be chosen.
Assay House is a South African brand strategy and creative agency: the branding agency built for South Africa's ambitious businesses, working as one team from the Foundation to the work in the market.
What we believe
We work with businesses that have a good product. Something useful, considered and worth putting in front of people.
A good product is the beginning. It is not enough on its own. People need a clear reason to choose it, remember it and come back to it when the alternatives are close enough to confuse.
That is our job.
When your market looks and sounds the same, more marketing only makes more noise. The Commercial Foundation finds the reason customers should choose you - one that is true and that they value - and gives the business a clear direction before the creative work begins. The connected work that follows gives that direction a visible, credible and consistent life across the brand, the campaigns, the growth activity and the things people use.
What we do
What we bring together
We start with the commercial direction, then bring in the disciplines that make it real. This is the full list a branding agency South Africa's ambitious businesses keep should cover: each can stand alone when the brief calls for it, and each works best from one Foundation.
- Brand strategy
- Positioning
- Customer research
- Messaging
- Go-to-market strategy
- Brand identity
- Brand story
- Naming direction
- Creative direction
- Creative campaigns
- Product launches
- SEO and GEO
- Content and copywriting
- Social media
- PR and media relations
- Google Ads
- Paid social advertising
- Email and CRM
- Analytics and reporting
- Website design and development
- Web and mobile apps
- SaaS product development
- Prototypes and MVPs
- Interface design
The people behind the work
Different disciplines. One direction.
A founder-led team of specialists and partners, brought together by the Commercial Foundation so every discipline works towards the same commercial outcome.
Creative Director
Tarryn de Jager
With 22 years of experience and a track record of growing brands to eight-figure turnover, Tarryn brings commercial clarity to creative direction. She leads a dynamic team of designers and developers who turn that thinking into brands, websites and products people understand, connect with and choose.
tarryn@assayhouse.co.za
Head of PR
Gillian Bentley
Three decades in PR, with directorships at Southern Sun Hotels, British Airways and Cape Tourism. A Master's in English and Communications, author of Managing Perceptions and founder of Wordzmiths, she pitches your story to the journalists your buyers read, and leads the copy that tells it everywhere else.
gillian@assayhouse.co.za
Client Account Manager
Megan McLuckie
Years in corporate account management with leading brands, and a record as a top-performing account manager. She is the first person our clients meet: she learns the business and the story behind it, gathers everything the team needs, and remains your point of contact from the first meeting to the work in market.
megan@assayhouse.co.za
Head of Social Media
Amber Maye
Runs our clients' social channels day to day: plans the calendar, prepares and schedules every post, and keeps each account on brand, on time and answered. With a natural eye for what looks good, she also works alongside the design team.
amber@assayhouse.co.za
Research and Insight
Kaylin Tennant
Leads the research behind every Commercial Foundation: customer interviews, market and competitor research, and the evidence of why buyers choose, hesitate or walk away. What she finds is what the positioning, the message and the creative are built on. Every finding comes from real customers, not assumption.
kaylin@assayhouse.co.za
Software Engineering
Trevor
Trevor and his team take on the heavy technical builds: application architecture, back-end systems, integrations and the code behind complex web and mobile apps. Working from the product design and brief we set, they build with reviewed, tested code and keep it simple, so the software stays reliable and affordable to maintain as it grows.
trevor@assayhouse.co.za
Working together
Close enough to understand the business. Independent enough to challenge it.
Good work needs access to the real objective, not just the requested deliverable. That means asking questions, and occasionally difficult ones.
If a website is not the problem, we will say so. If a campaign is sending traffic to the wrong place, we will fix the destination before we spend more on the traffic. If the positioning needs work before the marketing starts, that is where we start.
Four things worth settling before you hire anyone
None of these are controversial inside the industry, and all four are worth having straight before you sign anything, with us or with someone else.
Does a lower price mean a lighter version of the same thing?
Ask which part got cheaper. A price can fall because production got faster, which costs you nothing, or because the thinking was removed, which costs you everything and takes about six months to notice. Anyone quoting you should be able to answer that question in one sentence.
Does a bigger team mean more attention on my account?
What predicts attention is how few steps sit between the person who heard what you wanted and the thing that gets made. We keep that number at one. Headcount predicts capacity, which is a different problem and rarely the one holding you back.
Who should own the accounts, the data and the code?
You should, outright. Your ad accounts, your analytics, your domain, your audience data, and the repository the software lives in, with us holding access on your property rather than the other way round. We set every engagement up that way in the first week, including the ones we inherit.
What am I actually paying for?
The decision about which twelve things to make out of the hundred you could have made. That judgement is worth more than all twelve put together, and it is what the Commercial Foundation exists to settle. The deliverables are the receipt.
The company
- Registered name
- Kamb Trading (Pty) Ltd
- Registration number
- 2022/846711/07
- Trading as
- Assay House
- Address
- 3 Varing Avenue, Windsor Park, George, 6529, Western Cape
- Serving
- Businesses across South Africa, remotely
Based in George, and open to businesses anywhere in South Africa: Assay House as a marketing agency in George.
What could your brand become?
Tell us about your business, where you are now and what you want to achieve. We will discuss whether Assay House is the right partner and what a useful first step could look like.