Behind Their Genius - Aproko Doctor
Stellar Creative Process and Storytelling
Hello You,
Hope you’re doing great.
In this second edition of #BehindTheirGenius, I am pleased to present to you the creative process of Dr. Chinonso Egemba aka Aproko Doctor.
If you are not aware, Aproko simply means gossip or someone who pokes their nose into other people’s affairs. So what do you call a doctor who pokes their nose into other people’s affairs? Exactly!
With over 1.6million followers on Instagram, 2.3million on X and 128,000 subscribers on YouTube, Aproko Doctor is helping the average African make healthier choices through storytelling. He is arguably the most famous doctor in Africa.
In 2015, he started educating people on social media using graphic design flyers.
He would go on to discover storytelling using videos.
My jaw hit the floor the first time I heard Aproko Doctor speak in an interview. It turns out many people have similar experience because he is known for his “Nkechi and Emeka” videos. Well, you can say he created the Aproko Doctor persona.
Aproko Doctor speaks pidgin, the language of an average Nigerian. This is very intentional, such that his standard medical practice delivery sounds different from his social media content delivery. It is no wonder people say they hear him anytime they are about to open their refrigerators to snack at night, or any time they are about to do something Aproko Doctor disapproves of.
Here is Dr Chinonso’s Creative process…
He received pushbacks when he started experimenting with storytelling in 2017.
How dare he combine creativity with Medicine! The concern was that people would not take him seriously, but he wanted to educate the average African about their health.
Therefore, he needed to figure out how to communicate and connect with his target audience on social media.
As a young creative, he started with his “polished medical doctor English'', writing and speaking passionately about health benefits and safety measures while throwing in some medical jargon here and there. He later realized that his target audience was not interested in grammar, which brings us to the first nugget of his creative process:
Understand Your Audience
Your audience will tune in when they see you are like them and you share similar experiences with them. The idea is to become their everyday friend. Coming from a humble background, Aproko Doctor is familiar with an average Nigerian’s struggles and the pidgin language. This made a huge difference in receptivity.
More about understanding the audience…
In Africa, a great number of people struggle everyday to make ends meet, and that is why many successful African content creators are comedians or entertainers. We use humor as coping mechanism for our realities. Hence, to reach an average African/Nigerian, he realized he needed to inject humor into his content, while being careful not to come off as insensitive.
Also, the concept of using familiar names (Nkechi and Emeka) to resonate with the audience is simply brilliant because we love stories in Africa. By using indigenous names, the information is received with enthusiasm and the audience easily sees themselves in his content.
Embrace Your Story
By leaning into his personal stories and experience, he gained the trust of his audience. In a recent live event, he mentioned that a great part of connecting with your audience is to own your story and your background.
Experiment
Aproko Doctor experimented with different ideas. The witch doctor approach was used at some point; they discovered people no longer paid as much attention to witch doctors. His creative process involves testing ideas, trashing what doesn’t work and refining what resonates with the audience..
Learn to take Feedback
Some months ago, his team published a content about contraceptives and they were dragged by their collar bone on X.
Aproko Doctor in response to that event said,
it is important to learn to separate criticism of your work from criticism of your person. Learn to take feedback beyond the noise.
By paying attention and reading through comments on that post, the team realized that the issue wasn’t the message but neglecting the side effects of contraceptives on women. That was a feedback.
You can always gain insights about your audience’s concerns or pain points by reading comments on your posts or related posts.
Continuous Learning
Study other people’s works so you can bring a fresh perspective to your work. This will help you generate new ideas and refine already existing ideas of other creators.
One of his favorite books about creativity is Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Such a great book!
Team Management
Clearly, his team has been pivotal to his success. This means he had to hire people at some point to help achieve his goals. While we see Aproko Doctor on the screen, his creative team makes consistency possible.
According to him, they always strive to do better than their previous published content so they push themselves to be better everyday. He mentioned he sends reels/information to his team members whenever he comes across valuable content that can help them grow.
That’s all for today. Hope you picked a thing or two to help you in your creative journey.
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Until next week,
Tobby Rhodes