Yep!
Rebranding the ecosystem of innovative entrepreneurship
Hogwarts for startup wizards or Umbrella Academy for super-founders? How to find yourself without a sorting hat? ‘Yep!’ is a network of academic startup incubators, that approached us with the problem of determining effective positioning.
Here's what we did:
About the project
Yep! is an ecosystem of innovative entrepreneurship. Incubation and acceleration program, mentoring and grants for early-stage startups. Since 2016, 500+ startups have been boosted. In addition, the Yep! team also develops entrepreneurial education in 95 universities across the country, teaching 3000+ students each academic season.
The main task was to change the perception of Yep! as a program ‘exclusively for early-stage startups’. After all, this is only one of the many areas of the client’s work. Therefore, when developing the strategy, we took this desire into account.
Communication strategy
Given the strategic changes, it became clear that we needed to communicate with different segments of the audience in different ways. Students need to be inspired to start their entrepreneurial journey. And startups need to be explained what the pitfalls and options for developing their product are, depending on the stage they are at.
We have developed a comprehensive approach that includes not only rethinking the brand, but also creating an effective communication strategy with a focus on the zoomer generation. This strategy involves a shift from the perception of Yep! as a platform for beginners to a platform for the development of “serious” innovative projects.
Understanding the interests of the audience and the importance of creating a community, we developed an interesting communication tool – a chatbot game in Telegram. It is based on the popular table game ‘Evolution’, where each player starts as a founder of a startup and gradually develops it, or makes bad decisions and the startup is closed. This game will not only help unite the audience from different segments, but will also help you learn a lot and have fun.
The result
The implementation of our new brand strategy is already showing the first results. 15 YEP! startups have won competitions at USF, TechStars, WebSummit, Slush, and IT Arena. In total, YEP! graduate startups have raised more than $1 million in grants and investments.
And this is just the beginning of a long journey!
Project team
Creative CEO – Vadym Gordeev
Creative direction – Oleh Svyshch
Head of Strategy – Roman Zotov
Strategy – Oleksandra Yanchenko
Creative Copywrite – Volodymyr Oleshchenko
Design – Benjamin Kryzhanivskyi
