Important lessons I learnt from Zee World!

Before you click away, I promise this isn’t what you think it is. I’m not going to talk about my favorite shows or the singing and the dancing but rather the important lessons you can learn as a creative from the Zee World Empire.

Last night I was invited to the first content showcase from ZeeWorld in Zimbabwe and despite the great food the night came along with some great lessons when it comes to building an Entertainment Empire of your own.

1. Do your research!

Did you know that there are over 80 Zee World Channels around the world? Yes beyond just that one channel you have seen there are 80 more in different languages and Zee World African and Pacific Asia CEO contributes their success to doing their research when developing their strategy for every country.

2. What works in one audience won’t work for the next

When it comes to broadcasting what we see here in Zimbabwe isn’t the same feed that’s being broadcasted in Nigeria and why is that?  Because Zee World has seen what other companies are yet to master.

How we relate to content is different from region to region, even though we are all African our cultures and the way we relate still differ. 

So although we all get to watch the same series or show. The feed is edited to fit directly into the audience they are showing it too and you too should keep your audience in mind when you are creating your piece of content.

3. Content is King

Video is taking over the world and that’s exactly how they have managed to take over the world, with over 100 hours hours of fresh content being created everyday! 

We’ve all watched DSTV and scrolled and couldn’t find anything new to watch and this is something that this Indian Company has taken into account being the first to bring 5 hours of fresh content on their channel 7 days a week

Which is a something we can all learn it can and should be done, keep on creating!

4. Africa is the land of opportunity

As the CEO rightly put and as Akon also said a few years back, Africa is the ripe with opportunities 

There’s is a huge content gap on our continent that only we can fill up and although South Africa and Nigeria have been creating and building in recent years as Zimbabwe we are still far behind. 

Zee World being proud of their culture they have been able to take the Indian story and the Indian cultures all over the world bridging the gap between religion, tradition and cultures still being able to still be relatable and entertaining and that is a step that we as content creators need to take.

As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned in her speech of the dangers of the dangers of only having one single story, it is up to us to tell our story.

5. You can’t be what you can not see

Just as Bollywood has taken their culture to the world showing that no matter your ethnicity and where you’re from you too can achieve your dreams. They have even taken it a step further launching a Bollywood show featuring African actors, we too need to reflect the same for our youth so that they can see that they too can achieve whatever they want to achieve and we need to show our youth different reflections of who they are and most importantly who they can be.

6. Team work makes the dream work

There’s a saying that Rome wasn’t built in a day but the point I would like to highlight even more is that Rome wasn’t built one person either.

As much as we all have dreams remember that an industry isn’t built one entity and that we all need to work together to get where we want to be.

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