What’s up with Morebranches?
It’s feels great to be doing this again. I mean publishing a medium post that has to do with our digital publication — morebranches dot com.
If we (MB) got a dollar for every time someone asked me or my partners about Morebranches’ in the last year, we’d have become a million dollar company by now. For most of 2019, our content creation arm was on hiatus. I’ve never really given a detailed statement of why we needed to take a year off, mostly because we still haven’t figured a large chunk of what we intend to achieve but the truth is that we have grown so much as a media network dedicated to reaching young Africans since then.
When we started this journey in 2018, we had big dreams but we just didn’t know we were going to grow so ‘fast’ and make so much impact. In all honesty, we just wanted a blog to drive some traffic; but we ended up doing great and authoritative editorials, podcasts, offline events and a major Music and Arts festival. There have been competitors since inception, but people enjoyed the idea of what we positioned ourselves as — a digital publication that gave zero fucks. Say it as it is, Talk the talk and walk the walk. For two years, I’ve resisted the notion that Morebranches is or could be the VICE of Africa; as much as it sounds appealing (won’t lie I love it), I’m trying to not fall into the trap of boxing what we can be.
Months into running a media company, we saw our numbers go up across all content formats. A few brands came knocking, we connected more with people in the industry and got some mentoring from experienced folks. Many people still felt like we weren’t doing enough, it was however hard to explain that as much as they could see the vision of the brand that we invested so much in to shape, it was still a daunting task for a group of early twenties in a place like Lagos, with no funding or concrete support to have executed the ideal Morebranches growth plan in months. We’ve sat down in meetings that ended up feeling insulting, because clearly a lot of vultures trying to take advantage and make you feel like they are doing you a favour. We’ve also sat in meetings with people we never dreamed about where we thought our lives were going to change in an instance but still ended up being a major L.
Thank God for last year, we somehow needed to figure out a way to make money so the business can be sustainable. There’s a limit to bootstrapping when there’s no trust fund, and parents money don’t cut it, especially when there’s not a lot of it. So we dived deeper into events, marketing communications for brands and consultancy, which kinda worked. We got a better understanding of the ecosystem, the revenue streams that could work and why we need to keep doing what we are doing. Personally, I found myself getting gigs I thought would take years to come by, same thing with drawing connections with bigwigs. It felt great and energy level was back up.
January 2020, we came back to the scenes with a refined purpose and strategy. To introduce the new and next, to challenge the statuesquo, to be radical and provocative but not in an insensitive way, to champion the narrative of a New Age of Africa and touch on diverse issues that concern young people living in and out of Africa. What even makes the game more exciting than the early years is the increased participation of other digital pubs who understand the culture and are at the pulse of it. The guys are Zikoko, The Republic, Culture Custodian, The Native, Eat Drink Lagos, Stears (Morebranches too) are redefining what new media can be in this part of the world and as much as we had to deal with clash of ideologies at the beginning, it’s great to see the growth and camaraderie that has been established so far.
This year we still maintain the pledge to not be basic. To be a voice for a diverse and emerging generations, to put the lens of Africa’s LGBTQ+ communities, work to reshape the belief that weed is bad and just for junkies, while exposing the potentials of the multi billion dollar cannabis market, show the world the burgeoning non-conformist movements breeding in Lagos, Abuja, Accra, Nairobi and the diaspora, explore Africa’s growing technology sector, report and curate meaningful and impactful pop culture, do more editorials, push disruptive campaigns for brands while putting our audience first, pivot to videos and podcasts, live shows and events, offline communities especially across university campuses, and as our name implies, just do More!
Since September 2019, Morebranches became a part of a newly formed company, More Labs Africa, our agency that now oversees publications, campaigns, events and manage partnerships with businesses. One month in, it’s great to see that our audience is still in tact and more people are interested in the what we are building — high quality niche content. This January, we reached most of our KPIs on zero marketing, started a More Branches Creative Circle which includes writers, illustrators, digital marketers, strategists, editors and event coordinators, up to 30 of us. We still racked in tens of thousands of views, launched an improved website and other developments that we will be announcing later in the quarter.
We promise to keep pushing the culture until the take over. We’ve also had great additions to our advisory and executive boards that we hope will guide us to make the best decisions. Brick by brick, that’s how we will keep building until we become the most definitive voice for Young Africans globally.
If you’re planning to do business or make bigger moves with us. Connect with me 📩 richard@morebranches.com.
