InstaDeep

Brands2Life US approached Red Ribbon Communications to assist their born-in-Africa client, InstaDeep, with creating brand awareness of its capabilities in applying AI to solve tough problems in real-life amongst the tech and start-up communities in South Africa. Red Ribbon is a member of Brands2Life Global, a network of entrepreneurial communications agencies across the globe.

The startup, which made international headlines after it co-developed an AI-powered early warning system for high-risk Covid variants with BioNTech, was founded in 2014 in North Africa. Using AI to tackle the world’s toughest problems is in InstaDeep’s DNA and the company's South African team is busy working on new ways to advance AI so it can help solve challenges in areas such as health, transportation and resource management.

Today, it is a leader in decision-making AI products, with a headquarters in London and AI research and engineering teams in Tunis, Paris, Lagos, Dubai and Cape Town.

While the funding angle was newsworthy, it already started getting international attention before we started the local media relations project. We focused on the local relevancy of the news by localising the article and push the Africa rising narrative.

We highlighted how InstaDeep is tackling real world problems with AI in the transport and agricultural fields in South Africa, we raised the profile of Arnu Pretorius, AI Research Scientist who leads InstaDeep’s South Africa team, as local spokesperson and we also positioned Cape Town as an academic centre for Multi-Agent Reinforcement learning (MARL) research.

The InstaDeep campaign ultimately secured coverage in tier 1 publications such as Ventureburn, CNBC Africa, Tech Smart, IT Online, Engineer IT, Engineering News, IOL, Business Live, Business Day, Brainstorm and Saturday Star.