Black Ballad hits a decade: 'Our priority will always be our community'

Credit: Tobi Oredein, co-founder of Black Ballad

Tobi Oredein was 24 when she launched Black Ballad while living with her mother. It was a free-to-access blog which simply aspired to give a space to black women to write and feel heard.

She was an ambitious lifestyle writer who was struggling to find the right opportunities in a competitive industry with little diversity. So she created the opportunity for herself.

Ten years later, Black Ballad is a healthy, lifestyle media business. It has multiple lines of revenue including 1,500 paying members, regular lucrative partnerships with global brands, a first-party data collection strategy and approximately 15 events a year up and down the country.

It celebrates hitting double digits next month with its first ever Weekender event on 23 - 24 August 2024. It symbolises so much of its growth; a curation of its editorial vision, a wide showcase of 50 black-owned businesses and talks with 100 high profile black speakers. The event is expecting to attract some 2,000 attendees.

"I honestly don’t think we've had anything like this for black women in Britain, ever," says Oredein, who runs the company with her husband Bola Awoniyi.

"This is the next step of what a media company can look like. Media has historically been so chained to words, screens and paper. To be a cutting edge media company in this day and age, this is what is going to be required of us."

She knows this full well. Black Ballad started similarly bound just to words. Next came more formal editorial strategies and guidelines, like requiring every piece of content to have a source who is black.

Then the membership launched in 2016, which was the biggest and most important decision to date, says Oredein. The publication did this by crowdfunding £10.5k in 2016, acquiring 1k subscribers in the process. It was the first of two crowdfunders, the second raising £335k in equity funding.

It is generating recurring revenue every month through membership, 'ending the terrible cycle of not paying people' which limited opportunities for people like Oredein. But it is also a "proof point" to brands that black women have cash to spend and are undervalued in marketing terms.

The membership has also opened many doors for commercial opportunities. Partnerships with LinkedIn, and more recently Google - in the form of the face of the modern British workforce campaign - started with members who worked for these companies. This campaign was billboarded around London and shared widely across social media.

"I want to work with the everyday brands," says Oredein. She only works with the brands she would personally use - Just Eat for the Weekender event, Maltesers were the first six-figure deal she did, Garnier is a make-up product she has used for years and she's endorsed to her members. She says she has turned down a lot that did not meet her criteria.

Her members are constantly telling her they want more from a membership than just content. Oredein is working hard on 'experiences'. A hair braiding sessions last December is a good example, and this often converts lots of readers too.

"I remember we did two classes and I remember seeing lots of people I didn’t recognise," she continues. Events have become an expected discoverability tool.

"The temptation for black businesses is to expand beyond the core audience base - [which in our case is] black women - to scale faster or bigger. We’ve never done that - some might say to our financial detriment - but to me, our priority will always be our community."

Oredein credits Black Ballad's longevity - in a stint that has seen both legacy publishers and other independents topple over - to two things: her faith and staying true to her audience. The membership retention rate is 95 per cent. Few people leave Black Ballad once they are through the door.

It has not always been smooth sailing, though. There have been big changes, which have always been communicated transparently to the members. There have been personal sacrifices, like being unable to take maternity leave properly. There have been hard decisions, like letting people go when they are not a right fit.

The latter is one of the hardest because Oredein knows rejection well. It is what started her journey in the first place.

"What I learned as an employer, which I never saw as an employee, is that employees are either investments or unfortunately drains."

This is more true for an independent company without vast funds. Conversely, first hires are crucial. She credits editor-in-chief Jendella Benson and her former personal assistant Wendy Hunter as worth every single penny.

"When you find people who are not just on board with your vision, but have ideas to make them better, that's when you find the best team."

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