By Adam Wakefield
Speaking on the first day of DISCOP Johannesburg on Wednesday, 2 November, Twala noted that when you assess the African market, it is diverse, especially where Viacom are concerned, as their reach is across the continent.
“We've got a presence across the continent and our view is Pan-African. The world around us is changing all the time, especially among young Africans. If you look at what young Africans are doing today, they are constantly on social media,” Twala said.
“They want instant gratification, which is a challenge for us as content people and broadcasters on the continent.”
What this means is Viacom’s brands need to change and move all the time. The company has also had to change how it communicates, its content offering, how it positions itself, and its brands.
“Gone are the days where broadcasters would dictate to African audiences, ‘we give them the content’. These days, we have to be a lot more specific. These are some of the properties we have in our brands,” Twala explained.
Young people are dictating what they want to watch, and as a content producer, Viacom must make sure it meets those needs. It has noticed significant moves in the active citizenry space, and the audience they seek to reach is highly opinionated.
To keep in step with youth sentiment, a 360-degree approach is required, from content production and running content on your platforms to engagement across social media.
“More and more of our audiences want to see themselves and localisation across the brands. Young people want authentic content. They want to celebrate Africa; they want to celebrate being multi-cultural,” Twala said.
“There is a new African cool and a new African swag that is quite exciting for us in this space.”
Using a 360-degree approach means broadcasters have to be flexible, and deliver content that is relevant to
young Africans, content that inspires and helps them to redefine their space.
How do they do this and stay on the pulse of what is important to a young African audience? By taking their brand to the streets.
“We want to position the
Base brand and
MTV Base brand as brands that can reflect the sentiment on the ground,” Twala said.“It’s going to take the local production sector and partners on the ground to amplify that movement and that focus.”
Young Africans are consuming content everywhere, and according to Twala, the market is cluttered because of the number of channels and platforms available for consumption.
“What we try to do is exploit and make sure our content is everywhere. We have quite an extensive reach in terms of our digital platforms,” he said.
The importance of mobile cannot be separated from the way Africa’s youth are consuming content, with East Africa being an example of where mobile accessibility and accessible broadband have made for potent consumption trends.
“I spoke about strong growth in terms of youth activism. We have to tap into that youth activism. Young people don’t want entertainment. I don’t think there is any young person on the continent who wants to just escape,” Twala said.
“I think young Africans want to watch television but they want to walk away with something, they want edutainment. They want some kind of solution. They are a lot more concerned in the way the continent is going.”
Viacom does not just adopt one type of business model to produce content for Africa’s youth. They pre-license content, enter into co-productions, and explore all models that are available depending on the kind of budget available. Linked to that, are the production values being dealt with, which are becoming increasingly important.
“Gone are the days where broadcasters can actually afford to commission producers. They are gone. It’s economic issues, advertising, sponsorship and the challenges around that,” Twala said.
Today, return of investment is the byword by which broadcasters make business decisions, especially for an audience as vibrant and diverse as Africa’s youth.
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