- Client
- TBWA\Concept
- Services
- Video Production · Treatment
- Deliverables
- Director's treatment · Episode structure
A five-episode series on MTN Nigeria's advertising legacy.
The Brief
When MTN Nigeria launched, a mobile line was a privilege, and what the brand built with TBWA\Concept over the next five years became part of the country's own story. African brand history is rarely told at that level. The treatment had to win a five-episode series and convince people it was never just a story about ads.
The Idea
Tell it as the story of a belief, one era per episode. Five eras, from "A New Dawn" to "Total Dominance", each with its own look, sound and register, and the archive of old ads, press, SIM cards and billboards treated as a character rather than filler.
How We Made It
The deliverable is the director's treatment and the episode structure. It opens on "The Making of a Brand" in MTN yellow over a black-and-white team leaning across a planning table, then lays out the arc era by era, each episode a self-contained world. The camera is planned as carefully as the story: slow, deliberate pushes, shallow depth of field, archive with its own film grain per era, and interviews in real rooms, agency war rooms and Lagos skylines, never plain backdrops. A yellow mood strip and a full-yellow "Why this matters" page keep the brand present without turning the deck into an ad.
The Result
