The creation of Nation: Africa’s #1 independent media brand

Challenge

As one of the biggest media houses in Africa, Nation Media Group (NMG) had come to the realisation that, in order to still be relevant to their audiences, they had to totally transform. In an extremely fast paced, technologically savvy world, audiences were moving into more and more digital spaces, with or without them. It was time for NMG to become future-proof and so they came to us. The initial scope of the project was to help them cater to a younger, broader audience that now predominantly accesses their mediums through laptops, tablets and smartphones. Alongside that, they now also required help to learn how to monetise work in the digital universe.

Solution

After doing extensive background research we got straight to it and started mapping out the brand strategy. However, we very quickly discovered that NMG was positively vibrating with potential. Bigger than just reaching a younger audience, they were deeply motivated (and capable) to do good for all of Africa, to report Africa to Africa. This is why, together, we decided to build a new branded house simply called ‘Nation’. It’s ambition? To become the #1 media brand for the entire continent. Beating at the centre of it all is their website, nation.africa.

A nation is a unification of people, a spectrum of nuanced differences brought together under one banner. Similarly, the branded house and visual concept tie individual elements of the spectrum together. This way there is a future where we can create Nation Kenya, Nation Sports, Nation News or even Nation Youth. Moving over to the visual identity, this concept is translated through a range of colours, fonts, grid elements and graphic shapes that can be used to ensure clear communication whilst also visualising different “Nations”. All choices are guided by our Nation design matrix.

Result

After we defined the strategy, we started implementing this plan. We did this in close collaboration with the team at NMG, as well as our revered tech partner, Q42. What followed in quick succession was the design of the Nation brand book which then led to the creation and launch of Nation.africa. As we approached the launch, momentum continued to swell, resulting in us overseeing the national marketing campaign and rolling out a truly awesome “Together we are Nation” TV commercial.

We kicked off this partnership with the aim of bringing a longstanding media house into the future. And now that’s done? Well, it turns out that was just the start of the journey.

Nation. Empower Africa.