CASE STUDY:
Take Back the Mic
The Mic: Africa
The Founder and CEO of AMP Global Technologies, Derrick N. Ashong, “DNA,” recently established a revolutionary digital platform. Take Back The Mic (TBTM) is behind the launch of the first music competition format beginning in Africa and shared across the world. Derrick Ashong’s two-time Emmy finalist, “The World Cup of Hip Hop,” has evolved beyond a digital series. It’s now a multi-platform TV format based in Africa and accessible from around the world. The Mic: Africa is a music competition and docu-series highlighting African music, arts and culture.
At a time when a global pandemic has created new barriers to travel and cultural exchange, while renewing focus on systemic injustices facing people of color, The Mic: Africa brings communities together to celebrate the global impact of Hip Hop culture.
The show first began airing in early December and will have a finale on January 3, 2021. One of the unique aspects of this production is that fan engagement has played an important role. Individuals have used the Take Back the Mic app to vote for 18 semi-finalists among talented artists from Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, and Mauritius. The novel new platform provides a whole new generation with internet access by allowing them to earn mobile data through engaging with the content, all while discovering talent and sharing their findings with new audiences, regardless of their locations.
Mic Africa is redefining content creation as we know it. Now, people have the opportunity to be more engaged on a digital platform than ever before. The platform brings together communities to dialogue with each other, all while enjoying a shared experience and love of hip hop music.
DPBell & Associates partnered with AMP Global Technologies to bring Take Back The Mic to life. DPBell & Associates was hired to lead strategic communications efforts for this global brand and groundbreaking platform. Garnering nearly a billion media impressions; 250 media features including in Black Enterprise, Yahoo News, For(bes) The Culture, Africa.com, and Modern Ghana, to name a few; secured three prime Billboard features in New York City’s Times Square; Executive Produced an Interactive Festival featuring which included speakers and panelists from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S, who shared a global perspective on everything from Fashion, Activism, and Technology to Sports and Entertainment. DPBell & Associates successfully created a Global brand for The Mic: Africa.
“Desiree Peterkin Bell served as Executive Producer of the first annual TBTM Interactive Festival — a 3-day virtual global event — with the utmost professionalism, organization, tenacity and imagination. She helped ideate and drive the overall concept of the festival, Connecting the Continents, Connecting the Culture, along with the three sub-themes of Where is the Future From?, Untapped Resources, and Who Speaks for You? For months, she and her team helped us plan, organize, execute and promote the festival to an international audience above and beyond our already high expectations. She helped recruit media partners like For(bes) the Culture, Invest Africa and the GSMA, brought on additional allies in the form of the We Are Family Foundation, PCI Media and LinkedIn, and invited high-profile panelists across Music, Media, Tech, Impact, Fashion, and more. She organized and sat on every panel, even moderating our Fashion & Activism panel. She secured us two exquisite and highly visible Times Square Billboards, one digital and one static, that ignited a flurry of registrations, and she also boosted our media impressions with effective press releases, interviews, and op-eds. She devised our overall communications strategy, including social media, our website and our Eventbrite, reviewed our scripts, and proof-read our promotional materials, and helped test our technology to ensure the festival was truly interactive. Desiree liaised with our celebrity guests around production and promotion, ensuring the most impactful rollout possible. She kept the event on budget and on time. We knew when we asked one of the organizers of the 2016 Democratic National Convention to produce our festival that we were getting the best, but we got even more than we bargained for. Desiree made our inaugural TBTM Interactive Festival not just possible, but great!”