Channel O is Africa’s first and only homegrown music television channel – but over the years they have lost viewers to global music TV giants. The brief from the client was to celebrate African music. Our solution was to create an ad that showed that most forms of popular and contemporary music originated in Africa. It was both a history lesson, a musical story, and a call for pride in African heritage.

The key objective for this promo was to build affiliation to the brand and entrench the idea that Channel O, unlike the global competitors, was truly in tune with an African point of view. The objectives were to reverse a 5 year decline in AR’s. It was both a history lesson, a musical story, and a call for pride in African heritage. The design of the promo took inspiration from naive African hand-rendered typography and told the story of the evolution of music through the metaphor of a seed that grows into a tree.

The promo was part of an Afrocentric campaign that saw a 50% increase in AR’s – and a reversal of a 5 year decline in viewership. It captured the zeitgeist of the African Renaissance – and was awarded several awards at both the local advertising and promo design awards.

To show how influential Africa was on contemporary and popular music, we wanted to use a device that felt African. A tree is a powerful symbol of growth and family – and through it we were able to create a complex description of how the African diaspora charged the progress of music. We used a hand-rendered technique that embodied an Afrocentric design ethos, and told a seamless story - beginning with the seed of African rhythm and growing into the most cutting edge musical styles. The music also told a seamless story, linking contemporary African music to its African roots.