#AfricaMonth: Tracing brand success across Africa and beyond

I found out more about the brand from CEO Olivier Laouchez to gauge the way the brand does business in Africa, and what the future holds for TRACE.

Olivier Laouchez

How did TRACE start out?

Laouchez: I launched TRACE in 2003 following the acquisition of the eponym print magazine published in New York and London. It took me four years to raise the money that I needed to make my vision come true. Eventually the US bank, Goldman Sachs, gave me a loan and put the necessary equity to start the company.

From day one, I positioned TRACE as an urban media brand. At TRACE, we are committed and passionate to serving our urban youth audiences around the world. It is what we are good at, and it is what we will continue to achieve. We are proud to say that TRACE has been a driver in the evolution of youth cultural behaviour across the world towards a massive adoption of urban culture and celebrities.

Our initial core business is Pay-TV: we have spawned five formats of urban music channels (Hip-Hop/R&B, Africa, Tropical, Gospel, Afro-Luso) and a unique sport celebrity channel, allowing us to cater to the needs of both music and sport celebrity fans. We have plans to introduce more channels moving forward to cater to the needs of localised audiences with quality music programming and urban entertainment content focused on millennials.

TRACE also has a strong presence in the digital world with over four million fans across our various social media pages. We recognised very early on the shift to digital viewership by our young audiences and the importance of on-demand video content.

All our initiatives converged to make TRACE the premier urban entertainment multimedia brand for multicultural youth communities and afro-descendants.
As of today, we have 59 million paid subscribers to our TV channels, over 150 million fans that engage with our brand and media. Most of them are millennials. These millennials represent 50% of the African population.

In South Africa, our TRACE Urban channel has won the Sunday Times Generation Next awards as the coolest music channel for the South African youth, for the last seven years in a row!

What challenges did you face doing business in Africa?

Laouchez:

• Africa is not an integrated continent as far as business is concerned whereas culture, music and sport travel faster than ever from Dakar to Johannesburg, from Lagos to Luanda.
• To deploy our brand and engage with our audiences, we have to deal with multiple regulations, travel limitation, different currencies, languages, etc.
• The market size of most African markets is limited and in many African markets you have a monopolistic situation that prevents the dynamic of competitive environments.
• Limited penetration and expensive price of broadband connectivity is also a major challenges including in countries like South Africa.
• Obtaining funding in Africa can be a daunting task, the interest rates are higher here than in most places in the world.

This is what we are modestly trying to do and the positive response of our fans has been phenomenal so far.

What is TRACE’s mission statement?

Laouchez: Entertain, Engage, Empower Urban Youth.

What new developments are happening at TRACE?

Laouchez: TRACE does much more than TV. We make our brand and content available to an entire ecosystem related to our fans. Wherever they go, whenever they want, we continue our conversation with them through FM and digital radios, events, song contests, original content, mobile services, etc.

This year, we have three major initiatives in Africa:

1) TRACE recently launched in South Africa, a product of our partnership with leading mobile provider Cell-C: TRACE Mobile. TRACE Mobile already has 300,000 South African subscribers, mainly youth, who have subscribed to this service that offers TRACE branding and unique social media and entertainment features.

2) In partnership with several content providers in Africa, Europe, USA, Caribbean and Brazil, we are about to launch a SVOD offering called “TRACE Play”. I can summarise TRACE Play as a “Black Netflix with the addition of great music”. It is an exciting and unique project that will mix on-demand urban content and selected linear channels.

TRACE Play will offer our fans a platform filled with the films, series, documentaries, animation and music content they love. This premium content is curated from an Afro-urban perspective by TRACE teams in multiple countries with strong urban/black entertainment production. TRACE Play will be launched in Q3 2016 in the USA, UK, France, Belgium, Sub Saharan Africa, Caribbean and Indian Ocean.

3) TRACE will launch three new localised music channels for Africa this year.

How important is having a strong content strategy for TRACE?

Laouchez: Original premium programming is a must to differentiate and attract viewers in a very competitive environment. This year we will witness the fruition of our content partnerships and the development of our in-house TRACE Studios that is in charge of original production, acquisition and co-production of content for all TRACE platforms.

To start with, TRACE Sport Stars still remains a channel that boasts no direct competition, across the world. We have further strengthened our positioning by partnering with Australian production company Inverleigh Media Holdings. Our collaboration has spawned two exciting new shows, such as The Truth About… and Clubland. We are also able to bring back fan favourites, with new seasons of Sport Stars Uncovered and Football Stars. A selection of the best content of TRACE Sport Stars will be available to all our SVOD fans on TRACE Play platform.

To ensure our content is relevant for the target audience, we have people “on the ground” in key territories such as South Africa, France, Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, Caribbean, USA, UK to name a few. They bring new and fresh artists and content to the attention of audiences early on, especially across Africa where the TRACE brand is dominant.

For example, our hip hop and R&B channel “TRACE Urban” is available in a staggering 47 African countries and is the #1 rated music channel across the entire African continent.

Our strong push for rapid international expansion is an absolute necessity, we have to get the sufficient scale to amortize the costs of development of new TV formats, launch new digital platforms and invest in premium original production that our diverse audience loves.

What advice do you have for startups looking to do business in Africa?

Laouchez: Start small and work your way to the top, perseverance is key. It is paramount to study your surroundings and work with locals, people on the ground that know what is hip and happening in the country. Invest in the youth. At TRACE we have the TRACE Dream Team, a group of young dynamic teenagers that share their opinions with us.

Work with people that share your passion. This is the type of profile that we love at TRACE: multiple skills, passionate, committed.

What does the future hold for TRACE?

Laouchez: Right now, we are focused on:

(i) The launch of our three new localised African music channels.

(ii) The launch of TRACE Play in the UK, US, France and Africa. These territories are key for us, with Brazil following shortly after.

(iii) Expanding our African network of local partners

Our primary focus is still to provide the best urban entertaining content on a global scale.

With that in mind, YouTube is in our midst. The TRACE Multi-channel network project is something that has begun its early stages of development. We will work with talented content creators online and give them an outlet to showcase their skills and abilities as well as exposing them to markets that they cannot reach through YouTube.

Our strategy around mobile and music is also an exciting proposition. TRACE Music Star is a product we will be expanding globally. We have high hopes for the introduction of our mobile song contest in the USA in 2017. We will release in the coming days a great song and music video “Don’t go Away” that we made with Mayunga, a young singer from Tanzania, who won TRACE Music Star Africa 2015. We developed this project with Akon and with a team of producers of Nigerian and Caribbean origins based in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Paris. It is a cover of the award-winning South African song “Wimoweh“. The result is just amazing.

Pay-TV is and will remain an important feature of TRACE. So expanding our TV networks and continuously infusing content and technical innovation is still an important goal for us. Recent distribution deals in Africa, Ukraine, USA, Jamaica, and Italy are testament to the global power of our TRACE brand.