How we think about Marketing SAFE, Part 1

Marketing
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It was great participating in today’s Safe Chat. It was basically about marketing, which is an interesting thing to be considering as we move inexorably (if also excruciatingly) toward launching the network.

@Sotros25 and @m3data did a great job of laying the context, and @Sotros25 especially brought some professional marketing experience to bear on the subject.

Here is what’s clear to me after the Chat:

– We don’t have a functioning network yet so, while we can name a number of categories of people who might/should/could be reached out to (e.g., users, developers, investors, etc.), it’s hard to know at this moment just how/what to tell them to get their interest/participation. A part of this is that figuring who would be best to target could influence the earliest form of the launch.

– The scope of what the network is intended to address and how it does it is so vast, and fundamentally different in structure, that it can be hard to make comparisons to what people are familiar with and bring an awareness of why they should be interested, especially when they can’t lay hands on it right now.

– When the network is ready, the user experience will need to be rather simple and intuitive so that approaching it is not itself a barrier that would give incentive to users to just stay in the familiar, if unsecure/unprivate, status quo.

– Thinking of those who are really onboard with Safe, it’s those who somehow or another got a glimpse of the vision, and that’s what has carried us along (patiently or not) to see that it’s done right and achieves its full potential.

– For many years @dirvine brought the project forward, necessarily getting really adept at sharing the vision. No doubt for years he often spent as much–or much more–time sharing the vision, and some of the underlying principles, than he did actually doing the technical work. He was able to build a team and community that are now onboard and allowing the project to move forward at speed, with him now freer to be deep in the code and conceptualization.

– Whether staff or community, we are not David and can’t hope to emulate him, but we are aboard because of that vision, that potentiality, more than anything. We believe, and have evidence that our hopes will be fulfilled.

– While it’s good to be able to describe some technical aspects, in order to grow the community we need to share the broader vision, one way or another, rather than trying to simply show how it will be marginally better than the familiar.

So it boils down to this: Sparking participation and support by inspiration.

Great!! How do we do that?! We’re not David Irvine. And as much as we love him, most would rather just be ourselves. ; )

Well, I have some ideas to knock around in Part 2.

Any of this strike a chord with anybody else?

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My personal opinion, which I have shared many times in the forum and will share again, is that people in the crypto are mainly interested in money. Everything else is just a magic story that tells why there will be money.

Personally, I don’t think it matters if people enter the Safe world for the right reasons (the idea) or the wrong ones (the money). I personally entered the Safe World 7 years ago for the money, but I’m here today for the idea. :jeremy:

What I’m trying to say is that the important thing is for people to get into Safe - for whatever reason. At the moment, most people are interested in money and I will personally focus my efforts there.

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Agreed.

All are attracted by their specific interest, but those who hang on are attracted by the promise of the whole structure being built.

Any individual points we approach communicating necessarily tie into the bigger vision, and the fact that it’s being done right, for the right reasons.

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It doesn’t matter why you are a network miner. The network doesn’t know if your reasons are good or bad. The network is designed to be indifferent. Even if people are in for the wrong reasons initially - the effect in the long run will be the same - Privacy, Security and Freedom for All :love:

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This is largely true. Definitely not a blanket truth but undeniable.

Here I disagree, the story is very important to all the people who are not crypto folk.
The world is huge and crypto folk should never be the sole target.
That is an epic fail.

All avenues and all roads to all segments of society need to be traversed, not only the crypto lane.

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If there was no token and we worked on the principle of Tor or Wikipedia, I would agree. But there is a token. We are crypto for the world. For 99% of the people on the planet, the crypto is a scam and a pyramid.

It will be very difficult to convince someone who is not in the crypto that the tokens have value. Yes, you and I say that you can buy storage on the network with them, but you understand that this must be proven, right? Because no one can know or guarantee that the network will be here tomorrow. Yes, we hope that the design is good and that there will be no bug that will erase the network. But we don’t know.

Therefore, ordinary people will rightly be skeptical and distrustful. See the crypto people are by default willing to take risks, there are even people giving hundreds of thousands of dollars for NFT … it’s crazy.