Content Development Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy for Film Production, Acquisition and Distribution for Nollywood
There is no film production without preproduction of which the most important components are research and development of the film project, script development and recce.
For example, I spent four years on the location for the script development of "Naked Beauty". I have completed the research and development during the recce on Bonny Island in Rivers State before the accomplished multiple awards winning Nollywood filmmaker and film studies scholar, Dr. Chika Christian Onu came to visit me where I was staying in the Residential Area 1 of the Nigeria LNG Limited. And we coauthored the screenplay which I published the book as a case study for screenwriting for film production in Nigeria. It was printed in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America.
The content development included development of the principal characters in the drama based on the people in Agaja village on Bonny Island.
Naked Beauty is available on
Research and development of the screenplay comes first in preproduction of a film for television or the cinema.
What is Content Development Strategy?
Research on the kind of content you want to produce; the genre and the target audience.
Whether it is a movie, documentary or music video.
What kind of content will attract your target audience.
Your target audience should decide the kind of content you want to produce.
Do surveys for the needs assessment of your target audience.
What kind of entertainment they want.
Your content must connect with the target audience.
You cannot communicate with someone you cannot connect to or with.
There is no communication without connection.
You have to speak to the target audience in their own means of communication; in their most common language.
This is when you have to use content localization for the best interests of your target audience wherever they are located.
The details of the rest are common knowledge of the culture and haute couture of the target audience.
Beware of tribal and religious taboos.
Appreciate and respect the peculiarities of the personalities of the target audience.
Don't provoke them with what you have written in the screenplay as shown on the screen.
Common sense is enough to know that you don't show people eating pork with relish to Muslims.
Avoid heresy.
You have to produce what appeals to them.
Your story and the characters must have characteristics they are familiar with; people they can relate with in their society.
Your content must resonate with them on their lives and lifestyles in the events and incidents in the story.
A good filmmaker should be a good storyteller.
The success of storytelling depends on planning.
You must have a plan.
What's the subject on?
What is the purpose?
The conclusion and resolution of conflict in your story.
Planning is like weaving in cloth making.
You must know how to spin your yarn so that you don't spin your wheels in the long run.
Content Marketing Strategy
You must have a content marketing strategy.
The most successful filmmaker in Nollywood, Funke Akindele is the best case study in both content development strategy and content marketing strategy in the Nigerian film industry.
Funke Akindele
Funke's comic character of "Jenifa" was based on research and development of the personality of the semi literate Yoruba village girl who speaks her own peculiar form of Pidgin English in both coherent and incoherent speech. She is an impressionable and vulnerable naive young woman who is desperate to improve her life no matter the odds against her in the boisterous city of Lagos in order to get a proper education to fulfill her ambition in the highly competitive Nigerian society.
From the making of the iconic comic character of "Jenifa" for the cinema to the TV series of "Jenifa's Diary" and to the making of her Nollywood Blockbuster, "A Tribe Called Judah" (partly based on the true life experiences of her mother), Funke Akindele has shown the successful route of content development strategy and content marketing strategy.
She is currently the highest grossing filmmaker in the Nigerian film industry with a total Gross of over ₦2.9 billion from the box office.
I told my younger sister who is one of the millions of her fans, that I can commission Funke Akindele to produce my proposed romantic comedy, "Omo Naija in London" and be rest assured of the box office success.
- By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,
The Publisher/Editor,
NOLLYWOOD MIRROR® Series,
The first book series on Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry.
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