Ugami was founded by two finance executives with a mutual love of gaming. They realized that the gaming ecosystem could be quite pricey and the industry lacked a thorough rewards programs for gamers to enjoy. The company was launching out of stealth and into a buzzy and crowded fintech market. They needed to nail their ‘hello world’ launch moment with key tech and business press to showcase excitement leading up to product availability (their debit and credit cards) in the months to follow.
WHAT WE DID
Praytell supported Ugami’s launch as part of our contribution to the Diversity Marketing Consortium. Through a competitive audit, messaging development, and a formal press announcement, we helped establish Ugami as a fintech company to watch. Praytell conducted a story mining session, crafted key messages, created press materials for the announcement, led media outreach efforts, and created media relationships for Ugami to leverage for its second product-focused announcement. They had an eager waitlist of 265,000 gamers so the launch out of stealth was poised to be an exciting one for the larger gaming community.
RESULTS
The launch out of stealth resulted in a breadth of coverage within key target audiences including TechCrunch, Axios, VentureBeat, Refresh Miami, GamesBeat, This Week in FinTech, FinSMEs, and more. We were also able to create interest and inroads for future interviews with TechCrunch, Forbes and Cheddar timed to their product news. Following the announcement Ugami saw a 6x growth from previous weeks across website traffic, social media channel impressions, and engagement.
IMPACT
“Ugami, a Miami-based, self-described “Latine” startup offering a financial rewards solution for gamers, announced that it closed a $4.8 million seed round co-led by Harlem Capital and ULU Ventures. In conjunction with the financing round announcement, the startup launched a closed beta for its inaugural Ugami Debit Card and app. A reported 265,000 gamers are on the waitlist, according to Refresh Miami.” - TechCrunch, Mary Ann Azevedo