22Jul Online Artist Promotions- for the arts
For the last five or so years I have done a lot of online promotion work for the arts and entertainment industries. From Urban Groovers to the National Arts Gallery. Through websites such as the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) site, the amazingly successful itsbho.com (once upon a time), the Zimbabwe International Film Festival website, the National Arts Council website and the Miss Zimbabwe website, among others.
It has been my pleasure to interact with and photograph artists and other celebrities in venues around Zimbabwe. Oliver Mtukudzi, Tongai Moyo, Alick Macheso, Sandra Ndebele, Dudu Manhenga, Audius Mtawarira, Bonnie Deuschle, Pastor G, Steve Makoni, Suluman Chimbetu, Baba na Mai Charamba, Roki, M’afiq, ExQ, Betty Makhaya, Sani Makhalima, Take Five, Tererai Mugwadi, Sam Mtukudzi, Stunner, Dave Guzha, Eunice Tava, Kudzai Sevenzo, Malaika, Brickz, Mahendere Brothers, Tino Katsande, Ben Mahaka, Afrika Revenge, Chirikure Chirikure, Ignatius Mabasa, Shimmer Chinodya and others.
I’ve often been awed by the standard of their work and wondered why it was not more proliferated. This is something that I thought about for a long time and then one day it hit me.
The thing that makes stars is not just talent. It’s a lot of things and a major component is marketing. Someone has to build the hype. The Spice Girls were average in terms of talent- but they had this huge marketing and promotional machine behind them- and that made all the difference. True, that once a certain critical mass of people is reached that hype can be self perpetuating.
But it has to start somewhere.
Looking through the local papers and other local media I realised that there is no platform to create this hype and excitement about our local artists. Very little space is given to the promotion of entertainers and the arts.
When Venekera Works ran itsbho.com it’s amazing how so many people came to rely on the website. Some entertainment journalists at the Herald confessed to us once that they got their weekly diaries from the site and went to it to check on what was happening in the industry.
Newspapers, websites and magazines from The Herald, Trends Magazine, The Standard, NewZimbabwe.com 
and others made use of stories and photographs from itsbho.com for their own publications. Artists referred fans to it for profiles, lyrics and pictures. We even got a slot on Aurthur Marime’s weekly radio show “Simbi” to talk about Urban Grooves.
I realised that this was something that needed to happen at a larger scale than we could muster. I am still hoping that other publications take up the cause and start pushing local artists to new heights.
As for Aripano, today we launched the Online Artist Promotions website which will help us to continue a lot of the work that was started during the days of Venekera Works with artists and entertainers. We plan to work with selected artists and promote their work online.
We are also working on a new entertainment portal scheduled for launch in November this year- four years after the launch of itsbho.com which ran its first stories in December 2004.
Here’s to a generation of superstars from Zimbabwe and a to legacy of artistic excellence for our progenies to stand on.
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