Africa’s Next
Role: Creative Director
THE BRIEF: As the sound of Afrobeats was intently infiltrating the pop charts, Pandora’s multicultural marketing and music curation teams saw an opportunity to capture the attention of the genre’s niche audience that was rapidly expanding into a mainstream global phenomenon. Their aim was to create an extension of the on platform streaming radio experience that would attract established fans of Afro-Pop as well as its newer converts and they came to the Content Lab to bring their vision to life.
THE PROBLEM: Afro-pop was living a double life, selling out arenas while still gaining traction in popular culture. Securely established with its dedicated fanbase amongst the African diaspora while attracting new Top-40 listeners. Our mission was to create a digital video series that appealed to both existing fans entrenched in the Afrobeats culture as well as new ones just discovering this vibrant musical movement. As an added challenge curation was intent on distributing this series via YouTube while marketing was adamant about driving traffic back to the platform.
THE INSIGHT: We discovered the expansive growth of Afro-pop was not balanced by its coverage in media. Despite being one of the most popular genres in streaming, services were generating very little content to attract and drive listeners to this new sound, something Afrobeats artist were well aware of. Here we found an opportunity for Pandora to establish itself in being an authority on Afro-pop music and become a champion of the musicians at the forefront of the sound.
THE WORK: Pandora presents Africa’s Next is a multi-channel initiative that focuses on elevating trending hitmakers as well as rising stars within Afro-pop through a set of interviews, performances and curated listening experiences from a diverse selection of voices important to this cultural musical movement. Guest artists join our African Content Curator Juan Gomez to discuss their careers, and perform an exclusive stripped down performance of some of their biggest hits as a tease to the on platform experience where audiences are directed to visit to engage deeper with their catalog.
Our creative is inspired by the story of the Afro-pop movement founded on the continent of Africa and it’s journey to global recognition. Taking cues from elements of travel documents we created textured static and animated assets that brought into full view the origin stories of each individual artist and their ambitions to bring their sound across globe via the Pandora platform.
