Black & Abroad: Go Back to Africa

American travel brand Black & Abroad wanted to get members of the Black community to consider visiting African destinations. But first, it needed to break down misconceptions of the continent and address the lack of representation of Black people in commercial travel imagery.

With the help of FCB/SIX, the brand transformed a racialized expression into a call to action, while celebrating the continent’s beauty and cultural diversity and encouraging black travellers to “Go Back to Africa.” An AI-powered content platform was created containing a vast repository of curated travel imagery, showing members of the Black community travelling in Africa. Then, social posts containing the derogatory “Go back to Africa” expression were captured, stripped of their racial context, and repurposed into hyper-targeted ads promoting Africa’s 54 countries. The campaign led to a 315% increase in brand visibility and a 60% boost in booking interest for the company’s African tours.

About Black & Abroad
It is a multi-platform travel & lifestyle company. Since 2015, our digital outlets, international events and travel experiences have redefined experiences for the modern Black traveler. We pride ourselves on curating international, culturally conscious luxury & adventure travel moments for Black travelers while providing a crowd-sourced information hub for urban explorers. Seeing a need to elevate the community through world exploration, our collective of influencers have come together to share their travel experiences to assist us in showing familiar faces in unfamiliar places and expose the world to nuanced, diverse, narratives within the travel community.

Credits
Client: Black & Abroad, LLC.
Co-Founder, Client: Eric Martin
Co-Founder, Client: Kent Johnson
Chief Creative Officer: Ian Mackenzie
Associate Creative Director: Frederick Nduna
Associate Creative Director: Andrew Bernardi
Designer: Ramon Charles
Copywriter: Curtis Chapman
Account Director: Fraser Jackson
Integrated Producer: Gillian Morrison
Junior Producer: Kristine Lippett
EVP, Strategy: Anna Percy-Dove
Director, Strategy: Paul Hanlon
Strategist: Simran Kaur
Senior Manager, Data Analytics: Andrew Yang
Data Analyst: Abdul Dau
SVP, Head of Data and Technology: Jacob Ciesielski
Product & Technology Solutions: John Sime
Front-End Developer: Heung Lee
President: Andrea Cook
SVP, Director of Global Communications & PR: Melanie Mitchem

Post Production House: Rooster Post Production
Editor, Post-Production: Colin Murdock,
Editor, Post-Production: Jeff Poremba
Assistant Editor, Post-Production: Shane Preston
Executive Producer, Post-Production: Yumi Suyama

Media Agency: Initiative Media

Public Relations: Shannon Stephaniuk – Glossy PR

Music/Sound: Grayson Matthews Audio Design
Music Producer: Mark Domitric
Sound Engineer: Vlad Nikolic
Media Producer: Nicholas Shaw