We crunched the numbers at the end of last year, and we were amazed: we had reached 242,452,741 people in 2015.
240 Million People, Wow!
You see, 2015 was a fantastic year for us at RED.
We crowned 10 years in the media and development spaces with the brief to run the winning campaign communication for the Presidency of Africa’s largest economy. We delivered across the field for governance candidates in Nigeria and Ghana, and achieved our goals in client acquisition for four of Nigeria’s top blue chips, as well as two foreign governments.
The Future Awards Africa consolidated its position as Africa’s leading event brand for youth audiences, our online brands achieved YOY growth goals, growing by over 40 percent on the average, and we were very excited to launch West Africa’s biggest omni-media summit, The RED Summit, with speakers from across North America, Europe, as well as West, East and Southern Africa. All of this as we celebrated our 10th anniversary.
And of course, even as we are a social enterprise at heart, we are still a business focused on maximizing value, and on that score, we are also glad.
But that’s not where our pride lies. It lies in the impact we have made in that one year. In 2015, we reached, and inspired, a verifiable audience of 242,452,109 – across our TV, radio and online products, working with our clients and partners and reaching our target audiences directly through
our action projects – from Chibok to Banjul.
We have funded businesses, trained and built the capacity of students, entrepreneurs and young professionals; supported charities, scaled the work of community development and non-governmental organisations, worked with governments to ensure impact, and reached mass audiences through every expression of the media – all focused on young Africans.
Our excitement at this impact speaks to where our hearts lie at this company: building people, communities and nations. Transforming systems and societies.
We inspire Africa’s youth
While the media is our passion, our goal really lies in a different place. The media is for us the most important tool for our actual mission, which is social engineering: building the world we want to see, one community at a time.
Business is our platform, media is our tool, culture is our engine, inspiration is our message, Africa is our target.
All of this is founded on a simple, but 10-year-old premise: there is no force in the universe more powerful than an inspired, empowered human being.
The impact through the numbers of people whose lives we have changed this year, and over 10 years, convinced us that we were right all along, and we need to double down on what makes us special.
So now, we are clear, definite, bold about our mission: to inspire Africa’s youth, at scale.
To get to this point, we began 2015 by questioning our assumptions and conclusions about everything we know: who we are, the character of our audiences, the future of our key demographic, where we should go, what industries we should play in, what kind of company we should build, what the central questions are that the world needs to answer, and our place in that world – at a strategy session we called The Stupid Meeting.
With the hashtag #NoLessonsLost, this kicked off a 9-month process carrying out a top-to-bottom review of our operations, to align the value chain firmly with our mission and vision, and to get ready for the future.
A year of burrowing through the data, testing and experimenting led us through a straight line into our purpose: inspiring Africa’s youth.
We are now laser-focused on this, and streamlined for the next ten years.
With the unrivaled experience and insight, unmatchable track record and endless networks we have built – boots on the ground – across the 36 states of Nigeria, and 26 countries in Africa, no one knows Nigerian and Africa’s youth as well as we do – across trend-lines in music, movies, development, television, schools, fashion, technology, politics and
lifestyle. Online and offline.
We are RED
Therefore, we have restructured our brand architecture and our structure to reflect this identity.
In summary, our group of brands and products committed to this imperative will now be known only as RED.
Simply RED.
What is RED?
It’s our parent brand split into three companies:
Generation Y!: This is our media content company for our television and online products as well as multimedia production for a string of clients. Our products are the TV shows Rubbin’ Minds (Channels TV), eXploring! (ONTV) and In Conversation (soon on EbonyLife TV), the online magazines YNaija.com, TheSeptemberStandard.com and TechAfri.ca and the radio show The FrontPage (Radio Continental). Its events include The Black Ball and The RED Summit. Generation Y! focusing on tellinginspired stories to African audiences.
Red Media Africa: Our communication agency has a simple mandate: designing and executing strategy that give joy to clients; everyone from churches and corporates to governments. Our campaigns engage, convince and convert customers/audiences for our clients by inspiring rather than manipulating them; by creating a movement powered by love and admiration. Its specialised arms are StateCraft (governance), Nucleus (digital) and CC (church). Red Media Africa is the communication agency to reach and inspire the largest number of Africans at any time.
The Future Project Africa: Our development firm is founded on the central equation of all our work: jobs + active citizens = transformed societies. Its enterprise and citizenship projects include The Future Awards Africa, The Future Enterprise Support Scheme, the African Citizenship School, HowCanIGetInvolved.com and the employability portal Aiki.ng, founded and run in conjunction with Microsoft.
The culture driving this performance rests on a simple tripod: Team over self, people above things, the community before the individual.
To do this with my co- founder, Adebola Williams and I, is an inspired team led by my comrades including Remi, Bukonla, Isime, Biodun, Sola, Emilia, Seun, Kolapo, Ada, Ifeoma, Sanmi, Tracy and others.
We remain as excited today about the limitless possibilities of the media and the endless potential of Africa’s youth as we were when we started this journey 10 years ago.
We are fully prepared to take on a definite future of infinite promise.
Ladies and gentlemen, #REDisReady.
Chude Jideonwo | 11/01/2016
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, RED
www.redafrica.xyz
