POETRY ALL AROUND

TitlePOETRY ALL AROUND
BrandYANDEX
Product/ServiceYANDEX SEARCH APP
Category A01. Innovative Technology
Entrant YANDEX.MUSIC Moscow, RUSSIA
Idea Creation YANDEX Moscow, RUSSIA
Media Placement YANDEX Moscow, RUSSIA
PR YANDEX Moscow, RUSSIA
Production YANDEX Moscow, RUSSIA
Post Production YANDEX Moscow, RUSSIA
Credits
Name Company Position
Alexandra Novokhatskaya Yandex Creative Director
Inna Omelchenko Yandex Producer
Nikolay Nikitin Yandex Art Director
Valentina Ekimian Yandex Copywriter
Daniil Kolesnikov Yandex Head of Marketing of Voice Assistant Alice
Daria Zhdan Yandex Marketing Manager
Petr Abroskin Yandex Director of Marketing Operations
Elena Bondar Project manager at Computer Vision Service Project manager at Computer Vision Service
Konstantin Lakhman Yandex Developer at Computer Vision Department
Vladimir Lopatka Yandex Group Head (Group of texts)
Ilya Lebedev Yandex Editor

Why is this work relevant for Innovation?

“Poetry All Around” is a new feature in Yandex smart camera that finds poetry of Russian famous poets in everything around you. And it’s not just a simple search that puts together the image and its definition – it is the first Poetic Augmented Reality in the world! Our unique technology defines not only material objects but also meanings – it knows how to find unexpected matches of pictures and poems and how to demonstrate multiple layers of poetic canvas.

Background

Yandex is one of the largest local brands and its search engine indexes Russian language content each second. Yandex gives a lot of time and effort to preserve the Russian language. We faced one of the most challenging barriers – we wanted to make people use our visual search via Smart Camera more and more. And we also wanted to bring poetry back to their lives. To solve this problem we came up with a very poetic idea.

Describe the idea

Now poetry is all around you. “Poetry All Around” is a new feature in Yandex smart camera that finds poetry of Russian famous poets in everything around you. And it’s not just a simple search that puts together the image and its definition – it is the first Poetic Augmented Reality in the world!

What were the key dates in the development process?

6th of June 2021 – the project got launched The feature is still successfully functioning and is available in our smart camera in Yandex Search App.

Describe the innovation / technology

Our unique technology defines not only material objects but also meanings – it knows how to find unexpected matches of pictures and poems and how to demonstrate multiple layers of poetic canvas. For example, you take a photo of your beloved dog and you get Akhmatova’s poem about love. Or take a photo of the cat in the cat carrying case and the feature associates it with “the feeling of being a prisoner” and finds the verse on point. The algorithm is designed to look for poems of different Russian poets: from the classic ones by Lermontov or Tsvetaeva to the very modern verses by famous rapper Oxxxymiron or legendary lyricist Boris Grebenshikov.

Describe the expectations / outcome

Everyone in Russia was forced to read too much poetry at school and therefore everyone hates it. But we, as a local brand, strive to develop and popularize the Russian language, as it is our DNA. So through play and interest, we made people read poetry. We also managed to help them form a new habit – people started searching via smart camera more and more. Thanks to our new poetic feature we have managed to gain 10М+ reach, 100К+ daily users, 2k+ posts shared per day And we won the hearts of TikTokers by going viral on the platform.