Marketing structure for the next cycle

@midhav I actually generally agree with your observations. I’m not sure who actually executes these but the overarching idea and process I think you are not wrong.

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Thought I’d give it some time before I replied

There are fair critiques and some that I’d want to respond to about myself, but the fact that I’m hardly inclined to is reason enough to not step up into the role of a manager in the aforementioned capacity
So with that out of the way…

I like what Tom is proposing at least in principle as it addresses what I intended by operating on a lean budget, but also by going a step further to make it an open source process that anyone can add to that also renders redundant the need for a specific team in charge. This is something that also needs to be done for other non-technical teams down the line, and I’ll prob make a post with my ideas around that
Pointers on what I (and others) would be voting for when it comes to different aspects of a proposal:

Strategy:
I think this should be decentralized in that if there’s anything to be discussed relating to rollouts, it can be done in the weekly marketing calls, with Heikki chiming in with his eagle’s eye view on the situation across the organization and his CMO insight on what exactly to execute
That is to say, any new proposal in the realm of marketing should not have its lead serve as a central authority who decides what needs to be executed - but a group discussion as has been the case so far can help determine that
By extension of this, a new proposal should be a discontinuation of the prior ones in returning both the USDC rollover as well as the tokens delegated to the university groups
For the latter - I would ask that the tokens be returned to the hot wallet, which the ecosystem team can later make requests to in the event of deciding to delegate to another university, due to this relationship being more so in its purview going forward. From my cursory glance, Oregon seems to be the only active uni (group) and so I’d think that they alone should be delegated to for the time being - that can be decided later

Community Management:
This should not come under the purview of a marketing proposal. A lot of the extra duties it had to take up in the prior cycle - AMAs, initiatives, translations, analytics - would have to be culled, especially in light of some of them being detrimental to the brand IMO. I’d want the person assigned such a role to be paid only in tokens (via a vested allocation). The comm mgmt role would simply handling an external mod agency like BUNCH by informing them in the light of any hiccups - I had this role earlier in handling 6 mods with each a 4 hour slot, and I’ve been helping a bit with BUNCH in this aspect - it’s mainly handled by Marcus rn. But the idea would be to make this reactive alone, as we had over a year to switch things up and strive towards an ideal such as the LINK community, but nothing has happened yet
I can see this role also being made obsolete over time. It can serve as the final say in deciding whom to kick out for the time being with others weighing in, but as we start to move more towards increasing usage of the public discord, almost every grant recipient can actively engage with newcomers and kick out the trolls; deciding among themselves what norms to follow on the latter regard

Analytics:
This can be useful but you need someone proficient for the role as there are nuances to it - some other team/skilled individual has to take up this role down the line, as it’d be useful for BD

Events:
I think hosting a large scale event has the same output as something like the Messari report if done right, and I think Denver was valuable for that - presence/putting our name out there. I suppose in the case of the report you can directly measure its impact though
Anyway, would be better for individual teams to allocate budget for its members to travel for a specific event, and for large event sponsorships to be separate proposals on their own

Socials:
Similarly to what was stated about branding/content and what I said about comm mgmt, while I think that this can be handled by this team in the coming cycle, a process can be made to hand over access of this to other teams after having set up a social media policy document that explains what the limitations would be for holding such a post, which all the teams should agree to. Each team can choose to appoint someone who can post via the social accounts on their behalf, if they want. To be clear, I’ve mainly been referring to Twitter when I’ve used the term socials, as I have access to almost everything else. But I think its ownership needs to be distributed and this is something that the guidelines could also go over. This would be useful as I’ve had to make announcements on behalf of the eco team in the past and also as I’ve just (while writing this) noticed that as of late the subreddit has had a fair bit of price talk in it

Content/Branding:
This is the crux of the proposal. I wouldn’t have any insight on the items it aims to solve or direct experience with the individuals involved in this regard. I’ve heard that there have been delays in getting graphics on time and noticed that WPRs (in general) are either not descriptive enough in detailing how the required number of hours was spent or seem to have elements of fluff in them.
Anyway, this is to say that my stance here is ambivalent, so my idea would be that for the remainder of this cycle, the team would have to work on these guidelines by touching base with Tamara from CTT/ChainAPI and Leandro from Entrecasa so as to draw clear distinctions from the style guide that has been built so far and to see if the work done is satisfactory - Tamara’s input would be enough to determine whether the deliverables are satisfactory enough for the proposal to be voted on

Rob’s Proposal:
I’d want to give this a spin if it aimed to solve the same objectives that Tom’s proposal has aimed to do - ofc, Bogota would be its testing ground and it needs show how it cuts costs in its operation, by also putting forward seemingly more capable individuals to take up these roles, and also how it aims to make marketing as a team obsolete down the road

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I would like to weigh in on the Community Moderation aspect of this conversation.
I’m hesitant to make any big promises as I am still searching for a new source of income, but in the interim at least, I have the capacity and willingness to help by offering my presence and the knowledge gained from my time as Account Manager to the discord in a more meaningful way. I’m also still receiving and coordinating a few inbound emails from some providers which will be essentially left in the dark as far as a POC with context once I’m gone at the end of this cycle.
As I have mentioned in Slack, I’m happy to negotiate doing one or both of these roles in order to keep my TA. Perhaps if things change, a salaried position can be discussed, but I won’t hold anyone to that as an expectation at this point.
If/when I find new work I would like to continue maintaining these responsibilities if granted, and if time/schedule allow, perhaps expanding them if possible, though If it seems that I can’t manage due to conflicting obligations then I would simply resign from these responsibilities.
-Best

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Midhav is essential infrastructure

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Hello all,

The API LatAm team is finishing up our cycle and Devcon missions. Unfortunately, the team did not execute the aspirations we had hoped for and will NOT be submitting a competing marketing proposal.

The LatAm team has and is learning from these experiences and insights gained at Devcon, and we look to apply these learning lessons in the coming cycle.

Therefore, we will submit a much slimmer LatAm proposal to show the DAO that we are a team that can learn from its mistakes and delivers impact-driven results.

Thank you,
R

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