Good to see a focus on this. Why would you not consider engaging an young HUNGRY established company on a contract basis. A team that has some track record and a small portfolio of success in the areas you target in the HR job profile. This may IMO be a far better option as it allows you to focus on running core aspects. When you sub the work to one company, you employ a number of individuals with special skillsets.
I second this. There are some really amazing marketing companies out there. I grant that youâve built up a lot of material in-house and perhaps there have been some bad experiences with trying to contract out of house. But there are many companies out there and perhaps there is one that would be very excited to support the goals of the Safe Network ⌠I hope that this possibility will be considered and that a good look around the space will be done before opting to hire.
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What is the role of this âMarketing Strategistâ? I havenât looked it up, but could they be the Maidsafe point of contact for talking to marketing companies etc amongst other duties? Or have I got that wrong?
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We have discussed the inhouse v external option for this role @BIGbtc @TylerAbeoJordan - never say never but our strong preference is to have someone on the ground embedded in the team given the nature of the work thatâs planned. Having someone full-time in HQ would be more valuable - theyâd be at the heart of the discussions on a daily basis as opposed to feeding in remotely via video / IM (which does work but, for this particular role (as opposed to others) may be slightly less effective. @neo the role will have a pretty broad remit (description) but the simplified summary is to add more firepower to the team 
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All well and good - you guys know what you need better than any of us bystanders ⌠still I hope you find someone with some heavy experience in any case.
Thanks for the response.
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Sorry I donât buy it. All respect intended @dugcampbell and I know you are ALL trying your best.
Maidsafe is trying to do too many things and one thing Maidsafe is NOT, is a marketing company. The missteps made by trying to do everything are becoming more apparent.
Leadership needs to acknowledge where the strengths are and focus on them. This is not happening and really needs to happen.
Focus on building your technology and engage a competent marketing team to ensure all your years of efforts pay off.
You will not be able to do this in-house. No one on your leadership team has the skills to hire the right person to do this.
I hope you enforce the ânever-say-neverâ clause.
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Could you name (out of interest) the competent 3rd party marketing teams that we should look at? I would happily do so, but previously we engaged one of the largest in the world and I can tell you for many hundreds of thousands of pounds you get lies, misrepresentation and something that is so far removed from your vision that it is just not funny. So perhaps look to Tesla, Ethereum (marketing genius at times, or mass follower groups), IOTA, XRP (very commercial so perhaps?) and so on. We did hire a marketing company during the crowdsale which was also less than helpful. If we sold tobacco though I would not hesitate.
My own opinion is that to market something as large new and complex (apparently) as SAFE then that team need to understand the vision, technology and current roadmap and do so with precision. Abdication of that responsibility, like an abdication of any responsibility, can be harmful, note I do not say âalwaysâ.
However 3rd part relationships and partnerships are great. Our PR, for instance, is handled by a partner company and they are very good, although limited to the current roadmap. So this is all a balance.
I do disagree with
As I donât know all of the leadership team to the level I could state they individually have a deficiency to carry out any task or indeed learn any task. I would say nobody does. I can spot as can anyone on the team can, where we can improve. It is a problem with public forums at times, just imagine all the âknowledgeâ and âteachingsâ such stances and people could take on âschoolingâ Microsoft, Google, Tesla, Apple etc. âleadership teamsâ. I think people love the input, but react and take it in a bit better when not addressed as an absolute. Nobody should ever be so absolute in a negative interpretation of a feeling or theory and pass it off as a law 
It reflects back to the commentator as more of a lack in their understanding than being taken as a helpful suggestion.
An example of the false aspect of your statement is that our team are heavily influenced to hire better than themselves and do so a lot. Using recruitment consultants (which we do) helps. Given the correct spec, and enough cash any reasonably experienced c level exec should be able to hire for any position. It is super important but is not rocket science (I can say with certainty 
)
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I had similar thoughts to David while reading your pronouncements @BIGbtc. Your points are worth hearing, but IMO mostly ill founded for the reasons David has explained.
The âskillâ and incentives within âprofessionalâ marketing companies will tend to be out of tune or even directly contrary to the values of this project in ways which are counter productive.
It then occured to me that there may be companies which specialise in the cryptocurrency ICO or similar areas, but Iâd be surprised - given that wherever these companies find their clients - marketing is so geared towards enrichment, and particularly where thereâs so much venture capital Iâm not surprised to find they turn out unable to get their heads around this project and to market according to its needs. âHonest, decent and truthfulâ is I think the slogan of the UK advertising body which seems to illustrate the point with unintentional irony.
If you take anything from this @BIGbtc I urge you to look at Davidâs feedback here because absolutism comes across in a lot of your posts and for me it can obscure the value in them:
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Well if you gonna hire someone new. Make sure it is a real badass MF 
, and not someone who fits the team bla bla. There are already too much nice/polite people working there (what I can see). Sometimes you need someone who can create bold statements and isnât afraid doing so.
âŚor get a famous person supporting the project. Helps even more.
I would be excited to spend time reviewing options for an external team of young talented hungry thinking-outside-the-box marketing guns, and just so you know, it wouldnât be the biggest, and it wouldnât be the oldest, it would be the one that suggest I, âTell us how youâre going to change the internet, the world, humanity, and we will make sure the world knows.â
Its unfortunate Maidsafe felt comfortable engaging one of the biggest marketing teams and then felt they were lied to and misrepresented.
Its also unfortunate Maidsafe felt comfortable with the marketing firm that did the crowd fund with which they also had a bad experience.
Whatâs most unfortunate however is that there doesnât seem to be any acknowledgement that Maidsafe may have played a role in these failures.
You rationalize your decision to bring the marketing in-house by suggesting
This kinda might explain your failed relationships with marketing companies. It seems to me you maybe hired a marketing pro and then sat them down to teach them Rust, or PARSEC. Maybe the marketing guys donât care about Rust, or APIs, SAFE Client LIBs, or maybe they donât have the capacity to learn the technology. Or maybe that wasnât part of the agreement?
What was the spec for the website firm? Or the crowd sale firm? Maybe you wrote the wrong spec? The C suite canât hire a marketing firm but have the skill to hire a marketing person? Whatâs the difference?
You will be far better off spending time with your team brainstorming and finding a succinct and simplified explanation - not like your recent attempt at the SF event - of the Safenet and hand that to an external TEAM of marketing pros to effectively propogate across the planet.
Or maybe you donât need a marketing team? Maybe itâs going to be far too complex for the masses to comprehend youâd be better off just pointing to GitHub.
Forgive me for the absolutes David, I think it wasnât worth you spending too much time on that aspect of my message. 
Only the least significant part of my message to David seems to be the focus here. Which concerns me b/c the message is really much bigger.
Dont be distracted by this @happybeing Please dig deeper to see the value
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Your posts are valuable, I generally like em. But how is this not a forest/trees situation on your end?
Most early adopters if not all of them misunderstand what SAFE is and where itâs headed, thatâs why in a very very succinct nutshell your hitting an immovable wall on this one.
The arguments seem right to you because of the way you might be viewing as the ideal direction the ship should head in approaching launch and your opinion is shaped because of that.
By default everyone outside the Company is off the mark and needs to shift their approach/mindset to counter that.
Just prodding a bit here, thatâs all 
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Hardly, both David and I spent far more thought and words on the content of your message.
So your statement is obviously wrong, and to me appears to be a way of avoiding responding to or paying attention to this aspect. Thatâs your perogative.
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Interesting - Seems like you think the same way I think.
Im hoping to shape a feeling here. Again, the message is clear.
It is. 
More deflection, making a false comparison. Iâm not sure how you measure âfocusâ but it doesnât seem objective to me.
I am certainly (example ) prone to a bit of absolutism myself. It isnât always wrong either, but when I get sincere feedback I find itâs helpful to accept it gracefully and reflect on it.
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Amazing where this goes because I dont kowtow. Of course I appreciate the feedback. Graceful is not part of my DNA and you are smart enough to see that. I dont need to reflect on your post because I could have written it myself. I know exactly what you expect from members and I dont fit your perfect paradigm.
Sorry if I obscure the value in my posts.
The exec is 100% responsible for all the companies actions, this is not something that needs to be continually explained.
Nope
It was pretty large and the tender process was also substantial.
This spec was not as comprehensive as we moved at speed there and based our decision on recommendations Like Kraken did with the same company, we halted the relationship (month rolling contract) in a few weeks.
Cash, time, responsibility. There is a lot more really including the person in many meetings to find out what we are doing rather than one of us doing the meetings and summarising for a 3rd party company. If we had millions then we could get in-house people from external companies as well, but here we are discussing how to run a company. If you are suggesting one way and that way is the only way I am very sure you will be wrong.
That is also incorrect, we have done so several times in the past, in fact one of a previous marketing relationships directors is currently our COO
Why not have 3rd party developers, designers, HR, office managers and so on. The answer is that itâs all possible for a myriad of reasons at certain points in a companies timeline. Many have in-house teams then supplement these with outside help on tap, itâs not a flowchart or spreadsheet you can tick off. Running a business cannot be done from the sidelines and with near zero knowledge of the internal meetings and decisions of that company, barring what is made public.
Well, our recent hires, videos, blogs, editorials, conferences, talks and previous marketing contracts would already show this is incorrect and not in line with the reality of our business. This seems like a harsh knee-jerk thing to say @BIGbtc so no point dwelling on it.
No worries, it was not the absolutes, but the opinions that were directed as a sermon really. It is great to have differing opinions and discuss them, but to talk at people loses a lot of the possibilities of successfully sharing a wealth of information.
For instance, I did a few years as a business consultant to help companies pull through periods of a downward trend, or adapt to changes in their structure or indeed the market. I never once âtoldâ these companies what to do and certainly never lectured them and that was successful. I also never took a penny payment and did follow up to make sure everything was working out fine and it generally was. That is how I do things and I know not everyone does work like that,m but I find sermons very inefficient really, but I love the debate and the interaction of equals.
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Even do I dont know how competent the third party marketing company was, one important thing is to make sure that the ones selected allways have read Principles of marketing by Philip Kotler (The god father of marketing). "You dont know marketing until you read âPrinciples of marketingâ This quote was told by a marketing teacher I studied for who former had top marketing positions in top US companies with anual turnovers around 20-60 billion dollars. The quote holds some truth even though there might be exceptions, I think it is quite important especially for a market strategy position along with experience and talent.
If someone wants some good Sunday entertainment I would recomend this clip of Kotler which opens up the exciting world of marketing.
I allways have had a dream of working with strategic marketing because it seems very exciting even though thoose positions are very hard to reach, Iâam alittle tempted to write something about strategic marketing and present to the forum, maybe I give that a try and see if it can be usefull in any way.
I think it is very good that Maidsafe opens for strategic marketing position, I think that a comprehensive document about all aspects of marketing strategy would give alot of value to Maidsafe and the forum, a documentation that includes strategic audit (internal/external), and so on, of course there is alot of other important functions of a marketing strategic position that should also be included.
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There is a big space between âaccept gracefullyâ and âkowtowâ which is hard to see through absolutist (one thing or the other) tinted spectacles.
Well you fooled me. Good to hear.
Iâm smart enough to know that we can change anything about ourselves just by paying it quality attention. It takes time, but the more we do it the better we get at it in my experience.
I donât think you âneedâ to either, but I think it would help you get your message across if you did, and I believe that is what you are trying to do.
Ouch. I do have a perfectionist streak and I do expect a lot from people here, too much sometimes - but for the most part people here exceed my expectations and I learn from everyone (whether they like it or not ). But yes you have a point there.
Cool. Iâd like you to try and make it easier for me to get that value so I hope my comments here can help you to do that, and that the interaction weâve had over this will help me be less affected by your manner so I can see that value more easily.
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Disecting my response dilutes its message.
Questions were rhetorical and made to illustrate a point.
Câmon David, a little tongue-in-cheek gets you riled? Totally taken the wrong way and that should not happen.
You have a tough job and Im still not convinced you are on the right track with your approach to marketing. Your efforts to demonstrate you are fall short. IMHO