Back on the panel: judging digital innovation at the V&A Waterfront

Say the words digital innovation and most people picture somewhere else. Silicon Valley, the unicorn startups, the billion-dollar ventures, whatever flashy piece of technology is having its moment this quarter. It is a hard association to shake, and it quietly tells everyone outside those places that the real work is happening somewhere they are not.

Innovation is not only happening in those distant lands. It is alive and well right here at home in Cape Town, in the way local businesses use digital tools to connect with people in creative and genuinely unexpected ways, and I get a concentrated look at it once a year because the V&A Waterfront asks me to help judge it.

What the Neighbourhood Awards are

The Waterfront launched the Neighbourhood Awards in 2024 to celebrate excellence among its tenants, across categories running from sustainability and staff talent to retail excellence and a people's choice award. The intent is to spotlight the stores, restaurants and experiences that go beyond business as usual and set new standards for creativity, business ethics and inventive customer service. Having judged the digital category last year, I was honoured to be asked back to the panel this year.

The category I judge recognises a tenant that has gone well past ordinary promotions and traditional marketing. To stand out, a tenant has to have delivered something exceptional that connects deeply with the people who come to the Waterfront, and that can take almost any shape: a unique campaign, a website relaunch, an ecommerce pivot, a piece of digital storytelling. The distinction that matters is not whether a business uses its digital platforms. It is whether it uses them well, in ways that drive real impact for the business and for its customers.

What this year's entries looked like

This year's entries reminded me why judging this category is such a pleasure. I read campaigns built on fresh, bold strategic thinking: bespoke experiential marketing, unusual collaborations, omni-channel campaigns run with real discipline, and website features that would hold their own against work from anywhere in the world. They felt strategic and they felt impactful, which is a harder combination than it sounds. The best of them respected the people they were aimed at, met those people where they already were, and created something worth remembering and coming back to.

Reading a stack of entries side by side also makes one thing unmistakable, and it is worth passing on to anyone who will enter next year. Creativity was not the scarce ingredient. Almost every entry had a genuine idea in it. What separated the field was evidence: whether an entry could show what actually changed when the work went live, in numbers its own team could stand behind, or whether it could only assert that the response had been great. Entries are scored against criteria that explicitly include effectiveness, and that criterion is where the distance between a good submission and an outstanding one opened up.

Creativity got entries onto the list. Evidence decided the order.

The other pattern worth naming is that budget did not decide quality. Some of the most sophisticated thinking came from small local operators, and some of the most disciplined execution came from global brands adapting a worldwide campaign to one precinct in Cape Town. Both can be excellent, and reading them against each other is the most instructive part of the job.

Why this matters to me

Digital innovation is more than a buzzword, whatever the last decade has done to the phrase. It is the creative spark, the lightbulb moment that leads to genuinely impactful digital solutions: new technology, a new approach, or an improvement significant enough to change how people experience the world around them. Celebrating that spark matters because it is what drives competitiveness, efficiency and better customer experiences, which are the outcomes we chase at Touchfoundry every time we partner with an ambitious brand.

It is also the thinking that made me start the studio in the first place. Fifteen years as a technology executive and more than fifty digital products in, what I have learned is that the magic happens in the spaces where strategy, design, technology and marketing meet, which is the same argument our Digital Asset Value Model makes with a scorecard attached. We thrive in those intersections, building products that do not merely function but genuinely delight the people using them. So judging this award is not really about reviewing campaigns. It is about celebrating the kind of creativity and execution that inspires the work we do every day.

The bigger picture

Whether it is a global retailer, a beloved local brand or one of the Waterfront's own experiences, the tenants competing in this category prove that innovation does not belong to any one type of business. It belongs to the people willing to experiment, take a risk, and blend creativity with technology in a way nobody has quite tried before. Those are our people, and being part of these awards is a reminder that this city is full of them.

Congratulations to every tenant who entered this year, and to the V&A Waterfront team for once again creating the occasion to celebrate and showcase what their neighbourhood is capable of. I am looking forward to seeing who takes it home.