Yelp! Briefing
Yelp! is a free app that makes its money from selling ad space that was founded in 2004 with a mission of connecting people with great local businesses. In 2009, Google tried to buy Yelp! for $500 million and Yahoo tried to buy it for $1 billion, but neither were successful. Yelp! had steady growth over the next several years, but Covid-19 hit yelp hard, decrease in revenue of over $200 million from 2019 to 2020.
Objective
Return to originial goal of helping people and small businesses become acquainted
Problem
Yelp has a reputation for being unreliable
Target
Adventure-Seeking
Ubanites
Insight
People's days start and end with an overwhelming amount of choices
Strategy
Make people’s choices easier by making Yelp! more like a dating app than a review app
Hackathon, branding and marketing for the hackathon, post-hackathon YouTube mini documentary
Deliverables
Controversy of yelp!
In the 2019 documentary "Billion Dollar Bully" Yelp! was accused of highlighting negative reviews and shadow banning positive reviews in an effort to strong arm small businesses into paying for ad space.
They were found Found not guilty in a court of law but has left a bad taste in people's mouths.
Clearly, this controversy is more than a "PR crisis", which leads us to our objective.
Objective
Return to original goal of helping people and small businesses become acquainted
Public Perception on Yelp
Is Yelp dead?
Why do people hate Yelp?
"Yelp! allows people to defame, post inaccurate information either intentionally, out of ignorance or out of indifference and review without expertise"
Dallas Bligh (Quora)
Reddit (r/yelp)
Problem
Yelp has a reputation for being unreliable
Yelp User Demographics
Pretty Even Gender Split
On Yelp, 53% of users are female and 47% are male.
Used in Both Rural and Urban Areas
Yelp is being used evenly by people living in rural and urban areas (50% each).
Has a Younger but Mature Audience
People aged 25-34 are the largest segment of users by age range (29%) of the user base followed by people aged 35-34 (28%)
Most Are Well Off Financially
48% of Yelp users have high household income. Around 34% have incomes classified in the middle range.
Statista (2021)
Target
Adventure
seeking
urbanites
Customer Profile
meet Lisa
32 years old - San Diego - Nurse
Lives with her boyfriend and her puppy
Loves: trying new restaurants, day trips around CA, reading romance novels, taking her dog to San Diego's dog beach, and staying active.
Values: equality, giving back to her community, kindness, and spontenaity.
Former Yelp user, but now uses Google Reviews out of convenience.
Who is Yelp's Competition?
Which review sites do you check before visiting a business?
Review Trackers
What the heck is Trip Advisor doing there? Yelp is a food review app, right?
Wrong. Yelp offers a vast number of review services. From sushi to ceilings, you can review just about anything on Yelp.
What does this mean?
Similar Review apps like google and Facebook are just the tip of the ice berg.
Because Yelp is so versatile, it has a lot of competition. Therefor, consumers need to make the active choice to use yelp.
Lisa wants to get lunch, let's walk through her decision process
CHOOSE
TO GO
OUT FOR
LUNCH
CHOOSE
TO TRY SOMETHING
NEW
CHOOSE
A REVIEW SITE/APP
CHOOSE
A TYPE OF CUISINE
CHOOSE
TO LEAVE A REVIEW
CHOOSE
HOW MUCH
TO TIP THE WAITER
CHOOSE
FOOD AND DRINK AT RESTAURANT
CHOOSE
A RESTAURANT
This is ignoring the other many other choices she must make on the way like what to wear, where to get gas, and whether to take the scenic route or highway.
Insight
People's days start and end with an overwhelming amount of choices
What are other platforms doing to make People's choices easier?
Provides both professional and amateur reviews.
Allows students to reviews many different facets of a classroom environment.
Allows users to construct a detailed profile about their interests, opinions, and habits.
Strategy
Make people’s choices easier by making Yelp! more like a dating app than a review app
But how?
A hackathon.
What is that?
How will it work?
"Hackathons are all-night coding sessions where engineers get amped up on caffeine, brainstorm ideas, and build anything they want."
Business Insider
Invite college students to participate from across the nation
Prompt: Make Yelp! more like Hinge
Incentive: Resume experience, prizes, and bragging rights
How do I know it will work?
Because it has in the past. Here are just some of the the various discoveries from Facebook Hackathons:
FB chat, the like button, video uploading capability, type-ahead capability, and an early version of the timeline.
Although these are beginning stage concepts, they were once innovative.
Deliverables
hackathon, branding and marketing for hackathon, and post-hackathon YouTube documentary
Inspiration
How will it help Yelp?
If we create incentive for small business shoppers to come back to yelp small businesses will follow.
Then, Yelp can successfully move from the business of advocacy to the business of matchmaking.