Fifty-five per cent more active users in a month on channels we wrote in two languages inside MTN's super-app.
Ayoba was MTN's messaging and content app for Africa, with tens of millions of monthly users. Cush ran a set of its Arabic and English content channels. In June 2024, after months of decline, the channels turned.
Period: June 2024, one month inside a retainer. Every figure is taken from the client report and labelled with its source. No figure has been rounded upward.
The client
Ayoba was MTN Group's messaging super-app, launched in 2019 and reaching about 35 million monthly users at its peak. Cush moderated and produced content for a portfolio of its channels in Arabic and English, from football transfer gossip and African folktales to Arabic poetry, faith content, news and music. MTN closed the app in March 2026, so this is past work.
Where they started
Months of declining engagement across the managed channels. Content that had stopped matching what the audience opened, and no fast way to know which posts had gone live.
What was wrong
In an app where every channel competes for the same attention, content that was right last year is wrong now. The fix was not more posts; it was finding out what this audience responded to and producing that, in both languages, on time.
What we did
A structured test of content styles, topics, hooks and designs to find what resonated, then design and copy improved to match.
A tracking system so every post was confirmed live and could be adjusted in real time.
Editors in other territories encouraged to share the English channels on their explore pages, which drove a step change in reach.
Thirty-five GIFs and twelve videos of themed in-app design, refreshed music playlists including Music World Day, "Strengthen Your Faith" translated and designed into English, and enquiry handling through Zendesk.
What changed
Total active users up 55.2 per cent, followers up 12.2 per cent, channel views up 59.6 per cent and card likes up 72 per cent, month on month. Individual channels moved hardest: African legends and folktales (Arabic) active users up 1,128 per cent; Arabic poetry and literature (Arabic) card views up 1,058 per cent; Ayoba News Arabic card likes up 1,693 per cent. The English football channel, the largest, held its audience while smaller channels grew around it.
The evidence
Every number on this page carries one of three labels, and the period it covers is stated above the figures.
Find out what they open. Make that. In their language.
The sector was consumer apps. The move was systematic content testing across two languages and a distribution trick nobody else used. The lesson holds for any brand publishing to an audience it has stopped listening to.
Read the next case, or find out which pattern your marketing fits.
Hurria Street: Forty times the audience in thirty-one days. Then the first sale the store ever made.