Entries

Name

Brand media Y MAGAZIN: from Yota, with love, to Gen Z

Advertised product

Yota

idea

The mobile market has long been divided, and almost all paying users are already connected — the penetration rate has exceeded 180%. This means that operators can no longer count on meaningful growth at the expense of new subscribers and have to compete for existing subscribers. Yota entered the market 15 years later than some of the big four players (MegaFon, MTS, beeline, T2), so it is more difficult for it to compete for users' attention. As part of the new strategy, Yota focused on a narrow but promising segment of 14–20-year-old subscribers — the zoomers, who can already choose an operator themselves instead of the one connected by their parents when they were children. No operator had previously targeted this segment in a structured and personalized way. This means that zoomers had no emotional attachment and were the most mobile of all segments. Yota challenged the market and was the first among telecom operators and big brands to launch brand media for zoomers — Y JOURNAL. A place where they look for motivation, inspiration and come to discuss news from the world of creativity and pop culture, while the brand talks about its products in an organic and humorous way that does not irritate even such a demanding and critical audience. The brand media is based in the natural habitat of zoomers — social networks. And to overcome skepticism toward branded content, we made it so relatable that a third of it was created by the subscribers themselves. Any user could send their author's works — illustrations, photos, music — and we could publish them in our communities with an audience of 700+ thousand people. And we also regularly launched creative open calls, encouraging the audience to engage. If we saw a great audience response to such a publication, we invited the author to create a post with brand integration. They always agreed; for young authors, it's an honor to realize their potential through collaborations with big brands. While other operators buy media coverage, Yota decided to turn its users into co-authors and ambassadors, increasing their engagement and brand loyalty, which influences their choice of operator. All these tools ensure high engagement, turning the Y JOURNAL community into a part of youth culture, not just another community of a mobile operator. As a result, we gathered over 770k followers, over 1 million reactions in one year, and an ER of 0.42%. Spontaneous awareness of Yota's activities on social media increased by 33% (KPI: +25%) compared to 2023 (2.56% of respondents at the end of 2022, 3.26% at the end of 2023, and 4.35% at the end of 2024). According to the prompted polls, Yota's special projects within Y JOURNAL were mentioned with the same frequency as MTS' special projects targeting a younger audience. As the main result: we received an increase in orders from social networks by 62%.