Yandex Go for Business: media, not a corporate channel

On paper the brief read: "relaunch the Telegram channel for Yandex Go's corporate arm." In practice — build a standalone media outlet inside the corporation: an editorial team, a grid of regular sections, and a voice where the services reveal themselves through real business scenarios rather than tariff sheets.

Context and task

By the relaunch the channel already existed. Alive on paper — not yet a media outlet in practice. So we rebuilt it not as a shop window for services but as an environment people trust: if an entrepreneur reads a brand's channel without inner resistance, they're ready to hear the product story too. Three challenges everything was built around:

• Relaunch the channel so it stops speaking in corporate language
• Explain complex services through real use cases, not tariff descriptions
• Build trust with small and mid-sized business

Strategy first: positioning, tone of voice, media planning, and a long-term model for growing the audience. Then the editorial system. I assembled a core of authors, built a grid of sections around them, and set up a system of themes — entrepreneurs' stories, practical advice, breakdowns of real work situations, and industry news told as light narrative sketches.

Then production: visual and video content, formats adapted to how people actually read Telegram, and a strict publishing rhythm. In brand media, regularity beats creative spikes. Product goals were folded in through soft storytelling — a service reveals itself inside a real business scenario, not in an ad slot. We stripped out the corporate tone and kept the business substance, and the content started to read as something useful rather than brand communication.

A corporate channel gets read out of duty. A media outlet — because it's useful. The only difference between the two is an editorial system.

Zaurych: a character, not a press office

A separate special project was Zaurych — the brand's digital guide and a symbol of informal talk. Through him we commented on events, explained service scenarios, and created the feeling of a conversation rather than a broadcast. The character shortened the distance between the corporation and the entrepreneur and gave the channel a recognisable voice — a rare luxury for corporate Telegram, where the voice is usually run by guidelines.