[Approved] NDC V1 Application from Marketing DAO: NDC Budget Subcategory code HOM-004P-1-3 Marketing

Marketing DAO Marketing DAO
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Hi NEAR Community, we are excited to submit our application to the NDC for V1. It continues to be an exciting time to work with the NDC and wider NEAR community, and we are looking forward to many good things ahead as the community and ecosystem move into their next phase.

Near Digital Collective Application | Marketing DAO

Section 1 - DAO/Project Information

  • Organization Name: Marketing (Eco) DAO
  • Proposal Title: Grassroots DAO Funding Dec, Jan, Feb
  • DAO established in May 2021
  • DAO Category - Ecosystem/Marketing
  • Project Category - reviewing and processing marketing proposals from the NEAR community

Section 2. Previous Funding

  • Have you received funding for this project from any source? Yes
  • Any source of funding: NEAR Foundation and NDC Trustees

Section 3. DAO URLs

Section 4. Applicant Information

Section 5. Team Members

Marketing DAO Council:

Lorraine (@so608)

  • Long-time journalist (FastCo, SF Chronicle, Hearst) turned strategic communications pro
  • Owner of marketing and communications agency serving venture capital firms, startups and blockchain builders
  • Podcast host and course creator
  • Web3 enthusiast working to encourage diverse populations to learn and explore the space

Elliot (@dacha)

  • In real life, former head of regional purchasing and marketing at K-Rauta
  • Joined Near Community in Q3 of 2020; Since this time, I have spent my whole life here.
  • During this time helped with marketing support for over 100 dApps, including our top dApps such as Near. Social, Land2Empire, Zomland, MotoDex. Raised many new contributors who are now building the Community.
  • Active NDC contributor, involved in many ecosystem projects
  • Founder of many Grassroots DAOs

Carl (@cryptocredit)

  • Old school marketeer with over 30 years experience across all sectors
  • 7 years of Blockchain Experience
  • Brewery and Farm Owner IRL
  • Founder of Decentralized Brewing Co built on NEAR

NOTE: all council members have completed KYC

Section 6. Experience

What related qualifications, experience, or track record does your team bring to this initiative?

  • Short Summary of Your and Team’s Professional Experience

The Marketing DAO is a collective of active, highly committed community members that through critical thinking and ruthless execution are on a mission to grow the NEAR ecosystem. Each member brings their skills and experience (see team profiles above) to ensure that we provide the best value for funds disbursed, as well as marketing support and advice to all community projects.

We have been consistently evolving and adapting to reflect community feedback and serve the needs of the NEAR ecosystem.

  • List Web3 Projects You Have Completed
  • Live Links to Examples of Relevant Work
  • Relevant Data Points Showing Your Competencies

We are proud to support:

  • Over 150 NEAR Ecosystem dApps
  • Over 50 regional communities across the world
  • 1000+ AMA’s
  • 2000 + quizzes, competitions & workshops
  • 100+ events and hackathons
  • Over 20K new NEAR wallets
  • 100+ clevelopers building on NEAR
  • Top Ecosystem Projects :
    – ShardDog
    – Chill & Shill
    – Aurora DAO
    – Rogue Studios
    – SHE is NEAR
    – Degens
  • Regional communities including NEAR Turkey, Indonesia, China

Section 7. DAO/Project Charter/White or Litepaper and Goals

How can your DAO / Project achieve NDC priorities, goals, and KPIs?

NDC Social Media & MDAO social media strategy

The objective is to align NDC Social Media with NF Marketing, Ecosystem and MDAO goals.

MDAO vision

MDAO’s vision is aligned with NDC Core Values, as outlined by the CoA for V1.

I. Empowering the Ecosystem (for the people, by the people)

  1. Attraction of renowned influencers from outside the ecosystem.
  2. Collaboration with famous media outlets through PR agencies.
  3. Support for existing ecosystem influencers (NEKO Layer One, NEAR Insider).
  4. Implementation of NDC marketing strategy and content plan.
  5. Support for ECOsystem founders (form for NF ECO team).

II. Respected by the Ecosystem (fair, accountable, transparent, and reliable)

  1. Comprehensive support for ecosystem projects in marketing, including consultations (mentorship) and strategy development.
  2. Weekly/monthly workshops with marketing experts for ECOsystem partners (focused on building marketing strategies, etc.).

III. Dedicated to the Ideas of Decentralization (antifragile, scalable, with collective decision making)

  • Unification of marketing activities for grassroots recipients in different routes, including consultations and strategy development/mentorship.

IV. Efficient Operation (don’t be a burden, instead help the community to be more efficient)

  • Goal: Fast and efficient payments and resolutions.

V. Continuous Improvement via Weekly Iterations (plan ahead, measure results, and adjust continuously)

  • Creation of an NDC dashboard (MDAO part).

Metrics

Metrics are crucial for measuring progress and ensuring collective accountability. Common dashboards will be developed for transparency, tracking individual initiative performance, and overall NDC performance. All metrics must be attributable to the relevant project/initiative through on-chain activity and off-chain reporting, ensuring GDPR compliance and preserving privacy.

  1. Accounts retention after 1/2/4/8 weeks — the percentage of accounts that continue interacting on-chain over a given time period (higher is better).
  2. Account acquisition cost — budget divided by the number of accounts interacting through the funded initiative (lower is better).
  3. Median number of dApps used by P95 accounts retained for 1+ week (higher is better).
  4. Number of accounts retained for 1+ week using at least 3 dApps (higher is better).
  5. Social engagement score — a compound metric of the number of posts, likes, and followers/views in social media produced by users.

MDAO Scope

P-1: Widening Adoption of NEAR

P-1.1: Outreach to New Audiences

Continuous engagement with diverse audiences serves as a cornerstone for attracting new community members and fostering innovative ideas.

  1. Collaboration with Top Influencers:
  • Establishment of partnerships with influential figures to amplify outreach efforts.
  1. AMAs and Demonstrations:
  • Conducting engaging AMAs and Near demonstrations tailored for both blockchain and non-blockchain communities.
  • Topics encompass various domains such as Traditional Finance apps exploring exposure to DeFi yield, Traditional software companies aiming to leverage blockchain for enhanced security, AI/ML data provenance, and Social apps with stringent data privacy requirements and potential network effects.
  • Integration of Congress participation to enhance visibility.
  1. Engagement with Top Media Publications:
  • Strategic engagement with prominent media outlets to elevate the visibility of NDC initiatives.
  1. Referral Systems:
  • Implementation of robust referral systems in collaboration with ShareDog and other platforms to encourage ecosystem growth.
  1. Time-Bound Events:
  • Organizing themed events such as “NEARtober Fest” and “NEAR Advent Calendar” to create time-sensitive engagement opportunities.
  1. Bounties for Ecosystem Participation:
  • Introduction of bounty programs to incentivize and reward active participation within the ecosystem.

These initiatives collectively contribute to the Marketing DAO and NDC media strategy, fostering community growth and ensuring continuous engagement.

Calls to Actions

  1. MDAO’s contributors should be on the same page with NDC media strategy;

  2. MDAO’s contributors’ content should cover NDC content-plan

  3. Synchronize NDC and MDAO social media activities/content with NF, NDC (incl.Grassroots) and Ecosystem projects;

  4. Hire a PR agency to promote NDC, Eco and NDC/Community news outside the NEAR Ecosystem.

Implementation steps:

  1. To propose on the forum a series of Bounties for each news direction/topic
    The idea is to have someone(project, content-creator) who covers every topic on a regular basis.

1.1. NEAR Ecosystem projects’ social media support (support ecosystem projects and their marketing activities to promote their updates and attract new on-chain audiences to dApps on NEAR);

1.2. Grassroots DAOs highlights (engage ecosystem media to create more explanatory content about NDC Grassroots DAOs’ activities and disseminate it beyond the NEAR ecosystem);

1.3. NDC Congress and Operations

It can be

  • Content-creator(s)
  • ‘Reporter’, who constantly searches updates from projects/DAOs/members in each direction(topic) and creates threads/podcasts/AMAs around these Ecosystem/NDC/DAOs updates

1.4. Community engagement events (organization of monthly engagement events on Zealy or NearTasks platforms for/about grassroots and ecosystem projects’ communities);

Review proposals to define the best candidates for the mentioned roles above, comment on and approve certain proposals, and give necessary mentorship to the teams

  1. Increase Web3-influencers awareness with the establishment of Media Partnerships

  • attract influencers from outside the ecosystem (monthly engagement activities for them on behalf of MDAO or from grantees)

  • AMAs with key NDC Congress representatives

  • AMAs with big/medium web3-influencers

  1. Collect a list of Ecosystem projects, regional communities and WG/Grassroot DAOs’ communities chats (started, in progress)

  2. NDC news stream channel and chat development (for now it’s just set up)

  3. PR agency set up

  4. Update Official MDAO Grant Requirement with the point:

All recipients of MDAO grants are mandated to display the MDAO and NEAR logos on all events and activities associated with the granted project. This logo inclusion is a formal requirement to ensure proper acknowledgment and representation of MDAO support. Grantees are expected to adhere to this guideline as part of their commitment to the terms and conditions of the MDAO grant agreement. This practice serves to enhance visibility, promote transparency, and acknowledge the collaborative efforts between MDAO and the grantee.

Related documents:

  1. NDC SMM Processes (Framework) and Budget
  2. SMM Content calendar

DAO/Project Charter - Marketing DAO Charter | Final

Section 8. Budget

  • Projected Budget for the next three months: $225,000
  • Links to Similar Proposals from Near Foundation, existing GDAOs, Near ECO (if applicable) N/A
  • What is the length of Commitment to Delivering Your Project? Ongoing
  • Will your team be working on this project full time? As required
  • Will your team be fully remunerated from this budget? Yes

Section 9. Project/DAO longevity

  • Does your project/DAO require one-time or continuous funding? On-going
  • Will your DAO/Project device have a way of sustaining itself after this round of funding? N/A
  • What are the possible roadblocks to the success of your project/DAO?

Our success is inherently tied to the success of the NEAR Community, the proposals funded and their outcomes over time. In many ways, we view the community’s collective challenges as our own and strive to shift, change and iterate based on the key objectives outlined by the NDC, NEAR Foundation and ecosystem stakeholders.

While we are bullish on the future of NEAR, we do face a couple of consistent challenges that we are working to make inroads toward under the new NDC governance structure:

  • Reporting. Because we allocated funding to many types of projects that track their own KPIs in different ways across different platforms, it has been challenging to provide an “apples to apples” view of all funded ecosystem initiatives and their outcomes. All of the work to assess project performance is currently done manually by the council and advisors. While this work does surface the information we need to make responsible decisions round the allocation of funding, we look forward to collaborating with ecosystem partners to improve efficiencies around this over the next quarter.
  • Evolving ecosystem needs. As the ecosystem changes over time, we continuously face the need to update our approach to reviewing proposals and reports to ensure best value for funding allocated. While this is a challenge, it is also a significant opportunity to refine and experiment.
    • Current example: a restructuring of our approach to funding content creators is currently (November 2023) underway with the goal of better aligning the content produced by the teams we support with the key objectives, campaigns and initiatives most important to the NDC, NEAR Foundation and ecosystem stakeholders. We anticipate sharing a more prescriptive approach detailing campaigns eligible for funding with the community soon.

We encourage anyone who would like Marketing DAO support in the future to reach out to us at anytime.

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Hello Marketing DAO team! I’m going to be your sponsor in NDC V1!

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Dear @so608 ! Your proposal was approved!

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