Gidyon Lankers is a man on a mission. He’s an entrepreneur with a burning passion and a fierce determination to disrupt and innovate the marketing landscape.
Lankers is a graduate of Vega, the famed creative school in South Africa. He studied BCom Digital Marketing at the Durban campus, and it was there that he developed the skills and knowledge he needed to launch his own marketing agency, DISRUPT.
“As a testing ground for ideas and a place to observe how talented people collaborate within an agency, Vega was ideal. The access to world-class lecturers with real-life business acumen allowed me to develop a clear vision for my future” says Lankers.
Gidyon Lankers at Vega School in Durban
After graduating in 2019, Gidyon moved to Johannesburg, the economic powerhouse of South Africa, and quickly established himself as a marketing talent.
He worked with some of the country’s top entrepreneurs, including Marnus Broodryk, Mike Stopforth, Warren Ingram, John Sanei, and Erik Kruger, and developed content campaigns and partnerships with major brands including Investec, Sasfin Bank, OUTsurance, Old Mutual, and The Glenlivet.
But Lankers wasn’t content to rest on his laurels. He knew he had a bigger mission to accomplish, and he was determined to do it.
In February 2023, he publicly launched DISRUPT, his digital marketing agency, with a core philosophy that is simple yet powerful: businesses need attention and trust if they want to scale and be successful.
So, how does DISRUPT help businesses get the attention and trust they need to succeed? According to Lankers, it all comes down to creating valuable content and building a powerful online presence.
His philosophy is simple:
In the past, businesses could buy attention by paying for advertising on TV, radio, and other traditional media outlets. But today, everyone spends their time on social media, and buyers care more about their favorite YouTube channel or TikTok creator than they do about advertisements being shown on TV.
This is where DISRUPT comes in. DISRUPT helps businesses create their own media assets such as podcasts, video interview series, daily email newsletters, and thriving online communities (to name a few).
By creating valuable content that their audience will truly benefit from, businesses can build their own content platforms and communities, which in turn, results in massive word of mouth marketing.
But attention is only one part of the equation. Without trust, closing sales is almost impossible. That’s where DISRUPT’s trust-building strategy comes in.
By using social media and a digital presence to build “synthetic” word of mouth marketing online, Lankers and the team help younger businesses acquire the trust they need to succeed.
SO, what makes DISRUPT different from other agencies?
According to Lankers, most agencies don’t operate as true partners to your business. They’re great at selling time, but they’re not actually incentivised to truly grow your business over the long-term. DISRUPT takes a different approach.
They almost never take on “once-off” projects. They prefer to partner with business (and entrepreneurs) who they know they can be with for 5+ years. When they sign with a client, they effectively take on the role of marketing their business as if it were their own.
They know that in order for a client to stay with them for a really long time, they need to keep innovating and refining their strategy. They need to spend time every week thinking about what the smartest possible thing they can do is to push their client’s brand that much further.
Lankers is a man who’s passionate about his work. He’s determined to help businesses succeed, and he’s not stopping until he’s disrupted the marketing world. With DISRUPT, he’s well on his way to achieving that goal.
If you want to find out more about DISRUPT you can visit their website here, or connect with the founder, Gidyon Lankers, on LinkedIn here.
