AFRICAN SPEAKER BUREAU | CURATED FOR DIS-CHEM
From Customer Data to Customer Trust
In April, Khaya Dlanga told Dis-Chem's leaders that branding is the art of giving a balance sheet a soul. He returns to the question he opened at that Leadership Summit: how customer knowledge becomes a reason to trust the brand, at the counter, in the clinic and in the app.
At the Dis-Chem Leadership Summit on 21 and 22 April 2026, Khaya argued that a brand creates value by giving people a reason to choose, trust and recommend a business when competitors sell similar products. As every organisation gains access to similar data and increasingly similar AI tools, distinctiveness comes from what people notice, understand and do with that information. His line from that day was: **branding is the art of giving a balance sheet a soul.** The question now is: How does Dis-Chem turn customer knowledge into customer trust? Better Rewards knows more about what customers buy and how they behave. The Health Hub brings more of the healthcare journey together. Digital channels create more points of contact. But more information does not automatically create one customer experience. The commercial opportunity sits in the handovers: between data and judgement, marketing and service, the app and the counter, the clinic and the pharmacy. That is where a customer either experiences one Dis-Chem relationship or a collection of separate transactions. Khaya has made those decisions inside major brands. At Coca-Cola he worked on the South African development of Share a Coke, which travelled to more than ninety markets. As Chief Marketing Officer of rain, he helped build a challenger brand in a market dominated by much larger incumbents. In 2025 he took the wider human argument to the TED main stage in Vancouver: something essential gets lost when conversations become transactions. The recommended next step is therefore a follow up keynote, followed by a working session with Dis-Chem’s marketing and customer leaders, using live Dis-Chem questions to separate what the data shows from what the customer actually needs, values and trusts.
About this collection
Dis-Chem is changing what a pharmacy means in South Africa. The group closed its financial year to February 2026 with R42.8 billion in revenue. Better Rewards passed eight million members within five months of launch. The first Health Hub at Melrose Arch brings the pharmacy, a nurse-led clinic, virtual doctor consultations and health cover into one space, and it sets the blueprint for new stores. Rui Morais describes the ambition in one line: Dis-Chem as the front door to healthcare in South Africa. Every part of that ambition produces information: - The loyalty programme shows what people buy and how often they return. - The clinic shows what they worry about. That information has real value, and competitors are building similar systems with similar tools. The difference sits in what Dis-Chem's people do with that knowledge when a mother walks in with a feverish child, or a pensioner asks whether the cheaper generic will work as well. Those moments decide whether eight million members experience an ecosystem or a relationship. Dis-Chem's marketing leadership has said publicly that the customer should be seen as one person on one healthcare journey, and that pharmacy, clinic, rewards and insurance should stop meeting that person as separate transactions. Khaya has spent twenty years helping organisations make that shift, and Dis-Chem's leaders have already heard him make the case once.
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