After a decade developing traditional media products, Pieter Groenewald saw a new kind of opportunity emerging around 2010, rooted in social media’s power to amplify word of mouth. Having left accounting for the unpredictability of media, he found an industry that never felt static. 

“It’s the only one I didn’t find boring,” he says. “Every day you learn about new clients and businesses.”

That realization led him to found theSALT, now part of Nfinity Influencer, a South African influencer marketing group. “Real word of mouth comes with high levels of trust and authenticity,” he says. “We wanted to amplify everyday voices.” At a time when most marketers were chasing celebrities, Pieter built a model centered on ordinary consumers whose opinions carried genuine credibility. “The name comes from something you don’t see in the dish, but can’t live without,” he explains.

The platform he created, now operating alongside sister company Webfluential, connects more than 600,000 opt-in participants with brands across fast-moving consumer goods, financial services, and retail. From Johannesburg, Nfinity Influencer is expanding theSALT’s data approach across 11 African markets, helping brands tap the continent’s most trusted voices at scale.

Turning Word-of-Mouth Into a Platform

theSALT’s engine is a proprietary matching and campaign-management system that profiles participants not by follower count, but by consumer data. “When you sign up, we ask questions like where you bank, what car you drive, what network you’re on,” Pieter explains. “That data makes you marketable.”

Each campaign begins with a targeted quiz rather than a blunt survey. For example, to identify mothers in their first trimester for prenatal care, the team administered a series of lifestyle questions about family planning and morning routines. “We can pinpoint 500 profiles within two days,” he says.

Once a brand approves participants, creators receive briefs, produce content, and get paid instantly through in-platform wallets. “You never leave our ecosystem,” Pieter notes. “The client signs off the content, it goes live, and the creator is paid immediately.”

Scale is central to the model. Because each participant reaches hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands, campaigns rely on volume and precision: as many as 1,500 content pieces in under two weeks. theSALT charges brands a flat per-campaign fee, with oversupply ensuring efficient costs. “If someone feels the rate isn’t good enough, they opt out and the next person steps in,” Pieter says.

That efficiency depends on one crucial behavior: referral. As Pieter shares, around 82% of new members join because an existing user invited them, a self-replicating proof of the word-of-mouth effect the company commercializes.

Data as the Differentiator

For Pieter, data sits at the center of credibility and performance. “Our data lets us find people who are already fans of the brands we promote,” he notes. “That gives you authenticity and trust.” The approach contrasts with conventional influencer casting, which often emphasizes reach over relevance.

Matching algorithms ensure demographic alignment between creators and a client’s target audience. Then, after campaigns go live, the system identifies top-performing posts for paid amplification, a hybrid model that blends organic content with media-buying precision.

“Your nano-influencers become very powerful because you’ve got cost-effective content with aggressive distribution budgets,” Pieter says. “That outperforms most traditional micro- and macro-influencer campaigns nine times out of ten.”

Performance metrics are tied directly to brand outcomes. In one recent project promoting a safety-alert app, 100 participants received two-week trials and shared testimonials online. Their user-generated posts drove app downloads at a lower cost per install than the client’s paid-media benchmark. “Every campaign has predetermined benchmarks,” Pieter adds. “If we don’t beat the client’s number, we haven’t succeeded.”

Training and Controlled Frequency

Instead of emailing briefs and waiting for uploads, theSALT requires participants to complete brand-led training sessions. “The brand is normally present,” Pieter says. “It’s amazing for customers to understand more about the culture of the business beyond just using the product.”

The company also enforces an eight-week “cool-off” period between campaigns for each user. “We don’t want people constantly talking about different brands,” Pieter explains. “It keeps conversations authentic.”

The model, he says, creates both economic and social dividends. “I thought it was all about the money we put in people’s pockets,” Pieter admits. “But surveys show many rate the pride of representing a brand higher than the payment.” WhatsApp screenshots from users show private “dark-social” conversations where friends ask whether a featured product is genuinely good. “Only 9% engage publicly,” he says, “but many more message privately. That’s real influence.”

Africa’s Creator Economy Advantage

While theSALT originated in Johannesburg, Nfinity Influencer has pushed into the rest of the continent. “We want a footprint across Africa,” Pieter says. The company now has partners in 11 territories and operates a small-scale rollout in Argentina.

Cultural context, he argues, makes Africa fertile ground for the creator economy. “The continent is all about storytelling,” he says. “People love sharing stories, and that’s perfect for this space.”

Pieter highlights three factors underpinning growth: storytelling heritage, high unemployment (which gives people more time to create), and mobile-first media habits. “We spend more time on our phones than anywhere else in the world,” he notes. “Marketers know that’s where to reach us.”

Africa’s linguistic and cultural diversity also strengthens the case for creator-driven communication. South Africa alone has 15 official languages. “A brand can’t put out 15 different campaigns,” he says. “Creators belonging to those cultures help you penetrate them authentically.”

From Nano Voices to Creator Factories

Pieter sees the next frontier as the rise of the “creator era,” where craft and storytelling outvalue pure reach. “People will be amazing content creators competing with AI,” he predicts. “AI will be overused; human content will become more precious.”

He expects brands to treat creators less as ad placements and more as creative production partners. “You have to decide, ‘Do I build this content factory in-house, or do I outsource it to people who are more creative than my internal team?’” he asks.

In South Africa, that shift has already reclassified influencer marketing from a PR experiment to a line-item in media budgets. Elsewhere on the continent, adoption is accelerating. Yet Pieter warns of growing pains: many media agencies “were late to treat influencer marketing as a channel,” pushing brands to manage creators directly. 

“That’s fine in the early stages,” he says, “but when you scale, you should outsource to specialists. Otherwise, your resources get stretched away from your core business.”

Expanding the Ecosystem: Sports and Scale

Within Nfinity Influencer, two new initiatives are shaping the group’s expansion. Webfluential handles micro- and macro-influencer campaigns, while Icon X360 focuses on helping athletes monetize their social presence.

“The continent is mad about sport, but players were under-indexing in monetization,” Pieter says. “Agents focused on player contracts, not social media.” Icon X360 now represents about 200 top South African athletes, extending Nfinity’s creator portfolio beyond lifestyle and consumer segments.

Pieter describes the group’s goal as straightforward: “to dominate the continent.” Teams now spend months on the road developing client relationships and onboarding partners across Africa’s young, mobile-first markets. “It’s actually very exciting,” he adds. “It’s a young continent, and that’s where this type of channel works exceptionally well.”

What’s Next?

After a quarter-century in media, Pieter still describes his work with the enthusiasm of a startup founder. “All of us in this space are extremely blessed,” he says. “You’ve got technology, people, and brands. I don’t think there’s a more exciting place to operate.”

He predicts that creator entrepreneurship will deepen as individuals learn to monetize their communities beyond brand collaborations. “We’ll see a layer of very clever entrepreneurs in this space,” he says. “They’ll use their communities better and forge closer relationships that create real value on both sides.”

For Pieter, the underlying formula hasn’t changed since theSALT began. “You offer a client a creative agency and distribution through one person,” he says. “We can solve most brand problems that way.”

Checkout Our Latest Podcast