21+
Years in the industry
Andreas Smit's personal industry experience.
Strategy · Execution · Commercial reality
Strategy should survivecontact with reality.
Andreas Smit is a marketing, sales and growth specialist with deep BTL experience. FIELDS™ is his framework for testing whether an idea can move a decision and hold when it reaches the real world.
Andreas Smit
Marketing · Sales · Growth · BTL strategy
The decision starts below
Introduction
Meet Andreas.
Built in the field.
Strategy, execution and commercial reality
The point of view
Most strategy is designed too far from the decision.
A Conversion Surface is the specific place where a consumer, buyer or stakeholder is already making a decision.
The strongest BTL interventions do not sit next to that decision and hope to influence it later. They operate inside it. The product, pack, service, sponsorship or cultural moment becomes part of the mechanism that moves behaviour.
01Competitor perimeter
02Decision artefact
03Adjacent commerce environment
04Shelf or pack
05Service trigger
06Sponsorship asset
07Cultural moment
Genuine proof
Experience built at Tradeway
Built in the field.
Proven at national scale.
Andreas's perspective is shaped by more than 21 years in the industry and by his work at Tradeway, where strategy is tested against the people, infrastructure and operational reach required to deliver across South Africa.
250+
Permanent employees
15,000
Brand ambassadors nationwide
180,000+
Activations delivered annually
100%
National coverage
Four regional head offices, with staffing across all nine provinces
7,500m²
Warehousing
Westridge headquarters supported by regional facilities
4,500m²
Owned fabrication
POSM and engineering facility in Alberton
Level 1
B-BBEE
75% women, with transformation embedded in the business
Strategy matters. The ability to deliver it at scale is what makes it commercially real.
Organisational and operational figures relate to Tradeway. They are presented to show the scale and context in which Andreas's experience has been developed. The logo links to Tradeway's official website.
Introducing FIELDS™
Six dimensions.
One connected system.
FIELDS interrogates whether an idea starts from something real, creates a meaningful mechanic, moves a defined decision and can survive execution in the field.
F
Friction
Entry point
Where does this start?
I
Insight
Human truth
Why is it stuck?
E
Execution
Mechanic
What do people do, see or trigger?
L
Leverage
Compounding value
How does the idea travel?
D
Decision
Behaviour change
What changes because this exists?
S
System
Operational truth
Can it hold in the real world?
Understand · Diagnose · Apply
The framework is public.
The judgement is earned.
Understanding what to examine is not the same as diagnosing a weak brief or applying the system under real commercial and operational pressure.
01 · Understand
The FIELDS Framework™
Completely open. Learn what each Field means, why it matters, how the six Fields connect, the questions each one asks and what good looks like.
Explore FIELDS02 · Diagnose
FIELDS Diagnostic™
Put your business through a focused assessment. Identify strengths, surface gaps, compare the six Fields and discover where deeper investigation may be needed.
Discover Your FIELDS Score03 · Apply
FIELDS Applied™
Turn diagnosis into decisions through interpretation, strategic prioritisation, workshops, implementation planning and commercial application.
Apply FIELDS to Your BusinessThe framework tells you what to examine. The methodology shows you how to examine it. Experience tells you what actually matters.
Evidence, not acronym
Built by pressure-testing
what effective BTL has in common.
FIELDS was refined against 23 awarded global and South African BTL cases from 2015 to 2025. The strongest work consistently connected a real decision surface to a mechanic, a measurable behaviour and a system capable of delivering it.
Competitor perimeter
Burger King · Whopper Detour
27:1 documented ROI
A competitor's footprint became the activation network. The mechanic lived at the exact category decision.
Decision artefact
Spotify · Spreadbeats
17:1 documented ROI
The spreadsheet used to make the media decision became the message and the mechanic.
Shelf or pack
Carling Black Label · Be The Coach
10.5 million mobile votes
The bottle cap became the ballot. Product, participation and decision were structurally connected.
Effectiveness examples are researched reference cases. No claim of campaign authorship is made.
Selected application
Show the thinking.
Not only the output.
FIELDS changes the quality of the questions before it changes the shape of the execution. Work is framed around the problem, the decision, the strategic response and the reality it must survive.
Problem
The brief is asking for activity before the decision is clear.
Interrogate the commercial objective and define the behaviour that must move.
A sharper problem and a brief the work can answer.
Decision
The activation sits near the audience but outside the decision.
Locate the Conversion Surface and redesign the mechanic inside it.
A strategic response connected to real behaviour.
Reality
The idea works in the deck but the operating system is exposed.
Pressure-test fulfilment, repeatability, scale, measurement and field truth.
A concept that can be defended when execution begins.
Speaking & Media
Ideas built for
the real world.
Andreas speaks on strategy, BTL marketing, brand growth, and commercial execution. He's available for keynotes, panel discussions, podcast appearances, and media contributions.
The conversations worth having are the ones that change how someone thinks about their brand, their campaigns, or their growth strategy.
Speaking Topics
Strategy before tactics01
What makes BTL marketing work02
How experiential drives growth03
Shopper marketing in the real world04
Brand to commercial outcomes05
Better decisions for marketers06
Let's talk
Have a brief that needs
a harder question?
Bring the decision, the constraint and the commercial consequence. We can start there.