You guys make great points.
What is crazy is all the shit coins above MAID that only have marketing and never will have a product. Of course many of these projects are conning people and I’m not suggesting we do that.
We should be able to strike a balance here. We have a real network with amazing attributes that is being birthed. It should be possible to create excitement around this alone considering the shit coins do it knowing full well they will never deliver.
MaidSafe will deliver. Their sheer will is exciting.
It’s a heroic story. Filled with the highs and lows. We are getting to the climax of the first episode in a long series to come.
IMO the balance would be for a marketing brainstorming thread to be created with the goal of having, at least, a list of excellent ideas ready to adapt to the reality of the product at the exact moment that:
Obviously it would be ideal if @Sotros25 was willing to spearhead that topic and develop a plan that could be proposed and potentially funded by the wider community.
Maybe the team and the project itself is a thing that could be marketed? Yes, of course there is also the aim where they are heading - and needs to be - but at the moment the team and the story itself is something that could draw people in? At least it is really big part of the reason why I am keeping my bet in. Also the economical potential of course, but I just want to support people doing their thing with such an integrity and honesty. I feel that I’m making a world better place just supporting that kind of boogie. (I also drew my money out of IOTA once it looked like their leader didn’t seem so decent.)
The network is so much more problematic to market, because it is not here yet, and we don’t know what kind of changes are ahead. If it marketed as a one thing, but at some point becomes slightly other thing, that is a problem.
I have been “against marketing” all along. But I do think @piluso is right. It could well be that I don’t even really know what marketing means. When I think of marketing, I think of telemarketers, and that’s clearly not what is meant by e.g. @Sotros25. I do believe in the importance of expertise, so …
On the other hand, I’m not sure a “product” is actually being “sold” here. A platform is being created, but that’s not necessarily the same thing.
And I think even “spreading the word” about a project may be in some cases do more harm than good, as long as there is little to demonstrate.
Ok, if I’m reading this correctly it’s less about having the funds (although still crucial) and more about having the plan against which to allocate the funds. That’s understandable, and something I’d be keen to help think through.
Happy to help
See below:
As already indicated, my experience includes:
Media planning for a $3B beverage company
Strategic planning for a $60B insurer, $12B tech company, and not for profit clients
Marketing, operations & sales for a $2B industrial goods supplier
Management & strategy consulting w/ Bain where I worked with clients across multiple industries and capabilities including growth strategy, organizational design, R&D strategy, marketing, procurement strategy, etc.
Currently lead a cross-functional innovation and product dev team for a $45B insurer
Hold a BA & MBA from the University of Chicago as well
I’ll pause there, but that should help paint the picture.
Precisely. Different skill sets. Both needed.
Appreciated, but what matters most to me is getting results.
I would like to think that I’m thinking…
The time to lay the groundwork and start building the foundation is now, thus paving the way for incremental growth.
In addition to goals, I also strongly believe metrics and KPIs are absolutely necessary. Exchange listings are a priority target, and I will revisit the earlier Marketing Initiatives proposal I already shared to see what else may be relevant/how we can evolve from there.
Thank you!!! I once had a client—executive brand manager (for that $12B tech company) laugh when I asked whether she was sharing marker research data with R&D. She said “we don’t do that here.” I shook my head and thought, “and you wonder why you can’t sell your products…” No brand platform or messaging strategy can fix a product that doesn’t stem from consumer-centric design. This is why involving marketing in the developmental process is so key. Spoiler: things have not gone well for that tech company b/c they refused to prioritize marketing and integrate consumer-centric design.
Yet another reason why marketing is necessary. If marketing had been central earlier on there would be much less difficulty around articulating Safe’s positioning.
Exactly. Products are important, but clearly not what moves the market in the short to mid term. If one leans on strategies and tactics optimized for the long term only, then one will not make it to the longterm.
That’s been done several times. Now is the time for action. At the end of they day someone has to do something instead of just talking about it and endlessly pontificating.
Reframe “Marketing” to “Intelligence” and you will get a more accurate depiction of what they actually do. In both cases, they gather data and process it into actionable information for the decision makers.
Broadly speaking it is about asking the right questions: Where are we, who are they, what they want, what do we have, where can they get it, how do they like it?, how can we use all this to increase adoption?
What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Who is a threat to you? Are the threats external or internal? What opportunities are we missing that are out there?
What can we do to prepare against them or strengthen our position?
It is about getting total awareness to know where you are standing and making informed decisions that matters and it is executed efficiently to get where you want to get.
This is applicable to everything in life, it doesn’t matter if it is for a for-profit company, or a non-profit, your personal life or a military operation.
This all makes a lot of sense to me. You and piluso have very eloquently laid out why marketing/sales is so important throughout product development. My background is engineering management at an aerospace company so I understand your points from personal experience. And it could get distracting for the development team. But maybe there are ways to mitigate that concern and still get going sooner rather than later given the significant potential benefits.
What about laying out a roadmap/outline that illustrates what you would want to do from a marketing perspective and when?
Don’t want to throw @JimCollinson under the proverbial bus but he works in tandem with the team to provide what @Sotros25 is talking about with the front end so that the backend features match what the UI/UX end goals need for consumers. So maybe @Sotros25 and @JimCollinson being in communication would be best to not distract the engineering? Just a thought. Jim is very plugged in so the perfect individual to correspond with, IMO.
Anyone can help with marketing without anyone’s permission.
Do you like the ideas behind the Safe Network? What stops you from telling the world? Write your thoughts on Safe in an article. Post an ad on Facebook/Twitter.
If you can’t write, get one of MaidSafe’s old articles. Post an ad on Facebook/Twitter.
You have an idea for an article, write to me and we will do it together. Post an ad on Facebook/Twitter.
Only 20k addresses have MAID. This is 0.00025% of humanity. I very much doubt that only 0.00025% are able to understand why Safe is the future. It is much more likely that other people do not know what we are working on here…
This sums it up. No plan just statements. I have been in HR for 30 years. I dont go around telling David how he should hire the best engineers to complete this project. And if i had a solution i’d present a plan and a final outcome that is tied to that plan. Else its hot air. Seen it many times in the many industries i have been in. Fyi…i am a legend for recruiting top candidates in the organization’s i have worked in.
Yes, a cohesive marketing plan should be able to convey the answers to these questions to your target market. Unfortunately, I believe right now the most fervent, knowledgeable supporter of Safe Network could only answer about half with certainty, much less convey the answers to the public.
Laying the ground work now, tossing some ideas around, coming up with some marketing approaches- all good and sound ideas but the marketing campaign itself should not be launched until the project becomes more delineated and at least the Beta, if not the actual network launch, is imminent.
And this marketing campaign, imo, should be blessed and coordinated by an appropriate representative of Maidsafe.
I also would expect to see a plan, and have said as much. However, I think “hot air” is unfairly dismissive. I don’t say that to nitpick you or ingratiate myself to @Sotros25, but to ensure we don’t discourage potentially valuable contribution to Safe.
@Sotros25 has shown interest in spearheading marketing. Assuming development is not distracted whatsoever, I encourage her and am open to being persuaded that my belief that it would be premature is incorrect. Let’s see what she proposes concretely.
Someone asked me what i did. Just making a point. I have worked for the biggest brands in the world. No one ever came and said i need money to do a project. It was always here’s a plan and an outcome and ROI tied to that. If there was potential then it was funded and supported. Even then, many initiatives may not have achieved what they promised. But those companies could afford to take that risk. With Maid already dependent on funds from the community i do not think it cam afford such risks. Someone might argue the entire project is a risk. Well it is. Why increase that risk? U might then say lets have a go since we’re already in it deep. Them i’d say go ahead but if you’re that good then i am sure you can sell the dream to a few fund managers who would be willing to bet on the dream.
Where is the marketing department of Bitcoin? There are only individuals who spread their faith at their own expense. This idea that someone else has to do the job is wrong. Safe may never have a marketing department. We have to do the work ourselves. Bitcoin is 350 million% up in 11 years, I think we will do better
Again, you are defaulting back thinking about marketing as promotion.
Why do I even…
That would be ideal, and that is the whole reason for Sotros’s generous offer.
The fact is Maidsafe lacks a proper marketing director, and to be brutally honest, Maidsafe never had one. If she volunteers to be one until the company is on more solid grounds that is a gift from heaven that is very rare to see.
We could all collaborate, yes, but there has to be someone behind who is thinking about it holistically, organizing it, so there is a cohesiveness in the message, the style, to start developing a proper brand. A “theater of operations” of sorts.
Otherwise it is cacophony of disparate efforts and we will be wasting time debating among us on every step on basic subjects that has already been studied and solved for 60 years in this field.
Btw, it would be ideal if there are other trained marketing professionals out there to form some kind of a provisional taskforce of volunteers until Maidsafe can hire a permanent one.
Different animals, and a completely different context.
Bitcoin is not a company, Maidsafe is.
Bitcoin had a virtual monopoly for about six years and it had first move advantage, Safe Network is 14 years late.
Safe Tokens will be competing with thousands of projects and we will need a proper campaign to communicate how we differentiate from the rest of the crappy projects, and raising our signal above all the noise will not be a trivial task.
The fact that we had to change from safecoins to safe-whatever is exhibit A of how damaging it was already for the project for the lack of proper planning. These are rookie mistakes.
You can try doing anything without any planning, but do you know why those success stories sound fantastic? It is fantastic only because it is unusual.
Why is that a lottery winner gets the front page but the regular employee who gets his weekly salary doesn’t? Because it is unusual.
You shouldn’t want an unusual winning for your company or project.
We should want boring and reliable results, rather than spectacular long shots in the dark.
The questions you should ask is:
What is the likelihood of a growth company succeeding without any strategic planning?
How long did it take for them to be a real player in the industry?
What was their adoption metric month-to-month?
Are you really sure that the apparently casual word-of-mouth wasn’t carefully planned by a marketing professional?
And lastly, if we have a way to efficiently use resources to ensure rapid adoption and rapid growth, why on earth would you choose to leave it to random.
If you really care about your investments, you would never leave anything to chance or at least minimize chance as much as possible.
Usually this rule of thumb is true: Cheap is expensive.
We are not talking about the marketing of a company. The Safe network is much more like the Internet from the 90’s than a product to advertise. Everyone likes the Internet for different reasons. Therefore, many people explaining in different places what they like in the Internet will be more successful than trying to centrally control the efforts of many people…
Yes. I remember two years ago i helped sell 3million maidsafe coins. Many are still holding that. And i aint no marketing expert. So its not relevant what i do. Its more my passion for the work thats being done.
