In its Sound On series, MTV News invites influential voices in pop culture and social media to the table for a no-holds-barred discussion on the nuances of identity, intersectionality, and turning your lived experience into a blueprint for your best and most authentic life. Our goal was to take the traditional "celebrity roundtable" concept and use it to create meaningful conversations about topics that are often avoided or ignored. We wanted to bring these conversations, which often happen on social media, to life in a way that makes anyone feel like they have a seat at the table.
Mental Health in the Black Community features a moderator, YouTuber Kat Blaque, and four panelists – writer Clarkisha Kent, former NFL athlete Rashad Jennings, actor Kendrick Sampson, and rapper Kodie Shane. We worked hard to ensure that each participant was able to represent a different perspective on the topic – to underline that although people may identify similarly in one way, each layer and intersection of our struggles and triumphs are important and worth discussing. We encouraged healthy dialogue and asked pointed questions that allowed each panelist to share their point of view, making way for genuine and authentic conversations. In the full-length 41-minute video, their conversation around mental health – and specifically how it impacts young, black Americans – intersected with sexuality, religion, substance abuse, masculinity, social media and all the realms that influence how we see and treat ourselves.
When it came time to release the video, we wanted to diversify the format and meet our audience where they are with content that was native to each platform. For the full-length video, YouTube met our audience's need. Smaller segments for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Instagram Stories were produced completely native to their platforms. By breaking out key moments in social-first segments, we met our viewers in their own feeds and in digestible features.
Rollout spanned the course of several weeks to create time for each individual clip to make space for the nuances of each conversation. In addition to the full-length video, there were 35 individual social media posts, as well as individual photos of each panelist, and one editorial story on MTVNews.com to support.
To date, MTV News Sound On – Mental Health in the Black Community has received over 500,000 plays across all platforms.
