Carlo Murison Reflects on Two Tone Global’s 25-Year Journey to Nearly 50 People

For most founders, that might have been the end of the story. For Murrison, it became the turning point for the next chapter.

"It put us into a fight position to stay afloat, no matter what," he says.

“That don’t-die mindset saw us, three years later, back to almost 50 people in the agency.” By 2023, Two Tone had not only rebuilt its team but was also taking what Murison calls “brave leaps” — reopening in Kenya alongside Gil Kemami, a veteran of the advertising industry in East and West Africa.

The one-man operation in Nairobi has since grown to nearly 50 people, winning regional and global accounts that typically go to the industry's biggest players. This year, the agency also retained its Telkom retail account after it went out to pitch — proof, Murison says, of what that crisis-forged resilience was built for.

Now, 25 years on, Two Tone Global is celebrating a milestone that seemed far from certain during the pandemic, and doing so from a position of renewed strength.

Where it started

Long before Two Tone Global existed, Murison was doing odd jobs — signage work for Coca-Cola among them — and learning, almost by accident, what creativity could do. "Art was a way I could express myself and the lens with which I saw the world," he says. "I learnt that art and creativity have the potential to touch people's lives."

He carried that lesson into a job at a creative agency studio, but it was his father's voice that eventually pushed him out on his own. "Invest in yourself rather than another's business," Murison remembers being told. "What are you doing to bring the change our country needs?" South Africa was in flux, business was in flux, and Murison — then just 24 — decided he wanted to be part of that change rather than watch it from inside someone else's company.

He didn't build it alone. His business partner, Natalie Murison, brought the corporate discipline his art-first instincts lacked. "She helped elevate the vision into a sustainable mission," Murison says — turning a young creative's ambition into what would become a commercially viable, global agency, one where individuality could still exist inside a collective.

People's Bank

Every agency has an origin story client, the one that proves the model works. For Two Tone, it was People's Bank, and its youth product needed more than an ad campaign.

"They were brave — they took a chance on Two Tone, and their mission aligned with our vision," Murison says. The brief became an integrated creative campaign built around a simple idea: the work wasn't just output; it was a way for South African youth to see themselves reflected in a country still finding its footing. "Our changing world," as Murison puts it. That shared belief turned into a three-year relationship, and an early lesson in what Two Tone's work was actually for — brands that build businesses, and businesses that connect with the people buying into them.

What the industry gets wrong about AI

Twenty-five years in the business gives you a front-row seat to every shift the industry claims will change everything. Murison's read on the current one is not the one most people expect.

"There have been some great shifts, but the most significant, surprisingly enough, is not AI — it's client-agency relationships," he says. "A fundamental gap has been created between client and agency relationships." His concern isn't the technology itself; it's what happens when clients lean on it to cut corners rather than build brands. "AI does not replace human intelligence, the love of the art, and the mission to bring African creativity to grow brands and businesses. Clients relying on AI to cut costs dilute their brands and do not connect with consumers."

Two Tone Global, he says, will chase commercial growth with its clients, but never at the cost of the work itself. "AI is more than a cost-cutting tool; it must have human intelligence to connect with consumers and grow brands and businesses."

What hasn't changed

Underneath the growth, the crisis, and the expansion, Murison points to something that has stayed constant since he was 24: the refusal to accept the status quo.

"The agency was started by a young 24-year-old creative with a vision, in tune with culture, wanting to be the change they wanted to see in the world," he says. That same determination to question and challenge things, he believes, is what carried Two Tone through its hardest year and into its current one. The mission now, as he describes it, is less about him and more about everyone the agency touches — clients, partners, employees — staying true to their own individuality while working toward one shared, global vision.

What's next

For Murison, the next chapter is an extension of the appetite that started it all. “To continue bringing consumer human truths that spark culture, to connect, grow brands, and grow our clients' businesses,” is how he puts it. The ambition hasn't shrunk with scale. Two Tone Global wants to be part of a wider mission for African creativity to be a force for change in the world, while holding on to the individuality that has shaped the agency from the beginning.