How did your group form the name Xploit Comedy and what is its relevance to your brand?
We actually picked the name, Xploit from the Bible a few years ago when we were part of a drama team in the church. We picked the name Xploit from the book of Daniel 11:32, which says that those that know their God shall be strong and do exploits. So we took the name exploit from that verse. We only decided to spell it in a more ‘funky’ manner.
Does it mean that your group began acting in church?
We all started from the church; the drama group department and from there, we gained admission into the Imo State University. In school, we continued with our drama in the church we joined and that was where we formed the Xploit drama group.
The group is made up of four young men. How did you meet one another?
Yes. The group comprises Chizzy, Lankz, Lenzi and myself; Brizy. Lankz and I grew up together and we started acting together. Eventually, when we gained admission into the school, we met Lenzi and Chizzy.
At what point did your group decide to open an Instagram page for your craft?
We started with Facebook and that is the platform that has our highest number of fans. Even though we had always had the Instagram account, we did not start focusing on it until about a year ago so it was dormant. We did not really show interest in it because we were busy building our brands through Facebook and YouTube. It was recently that we began to invest our time and energy on our Instagram page and it is yielding a positive result because our skits are travelling really fast. Right now, we have about 285,000 followers on Instagram; on our Facebook page, we have over 400,000 followers while our YouTube page boasts of about 90,000 subscribers.
What influenced the groups’ idea to post skits on social media pages?
The idea was sold to us by our fans. Basically, when our performances became quite popular in church and people saw how hilarious we were, some of our fans began to approach us and advised us to start a drama group and post our skits on Facebook and Instagram. The idea came from the fans.
When you started your skits on Facebook, was it a smooth ride?
No, it was not a smooth ride; to be honest, it was not really easy because we had a lot of negative comments that could have weighed us down but we used them to motivate ourselves. We were very determined to succeed and the negative comments fuelled us to put in more work and we are glad about the results today. There weren’t any challenges apart from the negative comments we got.
When the group was transiting from doing drama in church to posting skits online, did you ever believe that you would become this popular?
We all had this dream of becoming popular; we knew that one day, the world would definitely notice us because we were very hard working people and we were fuelled by our desire and determination to succeed.
Although you started your drama group from the church, some of your comedy skits have sexual contents, why is that?
If you check some of our old skits, they were more decent but in the world we live in today, sexual contents are what the world really wants to hear. However, it does not mean that our skits define who we are as individuals. It is what the fans want to watch and for the success of our brand, we have to give the fans what they want; we have to satisfy them. We notice that whenever we do skits like that, they go viral. The fans prefer when contents contain elements of sex because most people on the social media are youths and they find many of these posts funny. Since most of these posts border on relationships, most of the youths can easily relate to them and they find them attractive. That is why we tilted towards posting some skits with sexual innuendos.
Which has higher number of views – decent contents or skits laced with sexual hints?
It is very normal that the skits that have sexually related contents will always have higher number of views.
Can you remember the exact skit that launched you to social media stardom?
Yes.
What skit was it?
The skit that boosted our followership was the scanning bucket skit. The whole idea of the skit was that anybody who wanted to get married would be put inside a bucket and the bucket would tell how many partners the person had had; this would help the intended spouse know how much to pay for bride price. The skit went viral.
[b]How were you able to build your followers on Instagram within a short time or did you buy followers?
[/b]No, we never bought followers. What helped us was the fact that a lot of people who found our skits very funny reposted most of our skits and by doing that, we garnered a lot of fan base. We had a lot of popular Instagram pages repost our skits like KRAKS TV, Funny African Page, Rillimillz, and Yabaleft. Aside from that, we also had popular celebrities like Don Jazzy, Olamide, and AY, repost some of our works and that helped boost our fan base because we tapped from their fan base as they reposted our works. That particular skit went viral in several African countries like Tanzania and Uganda. In fact, one of the biggest Instagram pages in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya uploaded the skits on their pages and that expanded our fan base.
Now we have a fan base in several countries around the world. For instance, on Instagram, our largest fan base is still Nigeria, but on our Facebook page, we have a diverse fan base. We have fans from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Italy, Germany, Dubai and USA.
Has your social media celebrity status made you meet some celebrities in person?
Yes, it has and the feedback we got has been very positive. It is a beautiful thing for these celebrities to tell us that they love what we do and that we should keep it up. We have met celebrities like AY, Frank Donga, Toyin Abraham, Klint Da Drunk, among many others.
What are some of the naughty private messages your group gets from women?
To be honest, we do not get nude pictures from ladies but we get encouraging messages. Most of the times, the ladies tell us they like what we are doing and they encourage us to keep up the good work. They neither send us Unclad pictures nor ask us out on dates.
What can tear your group apart?
We do not think there is anything that can tear us apart.
In what ways has your social media celebrity status opened doors for your group?
It has opened doors in so many, for instance, it has helped us meet so many influential people who have helped us with favours.
Have you started making money from your social media accounts?
Yes, we have been making money. We have a lot of advertisements that come our way courtesy of our social media presence and that is how we make money.
How does your group get inspiration for skits?
Most of our skits are on the happenings of our everyday life. We also tax our imagination sometimes and it works out well. These are some of the ways we draw our inspiration. We do not depend on drinking alcohol or smoking any substance to draw inspiration.
Each of your group members is known for a crazy slang whenever an expression needs to be made. In fact, Olamide used one of your slangs in his recent song. How does your group come up with these slangs?
To be honest, all those slangs come as we shoot skits; it is not something we can explain but they just come to each of us and we stick to them. We just go with the flow.
Do your parents watch your skits?
Yes, they do and the feedback we get is very encouraging. They tell us that we are a very funny and crazy bunch. They always encourage us to continue doing the best we can but that we should be careful.
What are some of the reactions you get when you meet your fans in public?
They scream whenever they see us and the next thing is to ask for selfies. However, a few of them tell us that they never knew they could ever meet us in real life.
In what ways does your group feel your skits have helped people’s lives?
We have got a lot of feedbacks but there is a message we got recently that touched our hearts. A fan sent us a message explaining to us how his mother had been depressed for a long time but that when she watched our skits, she got out of her depressed state and became normal. Since then, she has become a very big fan.
How much does it cost your group to make a skit?
There are times it does not cost us any money; we just have to tax ourselves mentally and on any day we have to spend money, we do not spend above N30,000.
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