Marketing Update: Week of Feb 12, The Foundation From Moving From Sandbox To The Real-World

Hey Joshua - Thanks for jumping into the discussion. It’s helpful to hear the current branding was an initial turn off. We’ll be sharing more shortly on the evolution of the explorer archetype so I hope you keep giving us your perspective on it.

3 Likes

The idea of constructing the brand identity through archetype is brilliant. And I am in strong favor of running brand iterations through the test groups, e.g. using https://surveymonkey.com/ .

4 Likes

100%. We are working with the agency now on getting a shareable drive for conversations, assets, iterations, etc. It’s important that our partners, community, investors, internal teams and wider ecosystem have transparency, understanding, a way to share feedback/contributions, and a guide through the brand refresh. I love the idea of Survey Monkey. Consider it done. Thanks, Max!

2 Likes

Let me tell you the truth, the telegram management is terrible! Not only is the number of people small, but the atmosphere is also very poor.

I hear you @victor - thanks for the feedback. My perspective is that @nima and the community team are a small and mighty team doing an amazing job trying to be everywhere at once. Same with marketing team. (Both our teams are actively hiring as we scale!) Telegram hasn’t been as much of a focus compared to other areas and it’s worth the NF marketing team and community team having a chat about how to improve this experience. Sounds like this is a place you find value in and we’re underdelivering there. Is there a specific Telegram community you like a lot and think is well run? That will give us some more context and perspective. It’s a bit crazy trying to navigate Discord, Slack, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Forums, etc but I think feedback like this helps let us know where folks prefer to roam.

Thanks,elrond cardano solana zil…

1 Like

You should raise this question to NF. This is a marketing strategy and NF’s understanding of the crypto market. Tinsman and the team has done a very good job.

1 Like

Yeah, a few of these for sure have developed active communities over the years in TG. I get where you are coming from on this. Our team is chatting about this so thanks.

This is simply outstanding, I found a reference to the strategy I’m following, Thanks :grinning:

1 Like

Awesome! @jiten123321 If you have feedback and/or ideas – shoot me a DM or put it in the forums here. I’d love to hear more from you on it.

1 Like

As a user & hodler & dev in training, I just want to comment a few observations and thoughts after reading through the thread:

  1. I really like the current brand of Near, the rainbow, nearkat, the logo, the color schemes etc. It’s refreshing and awesome. But I don’t think I will be alienated by a different brand, what’s most important to me is the technology and the team’s track records. I am happy to see that there will be efforts for social media, PR, marketing etc, I think near is really great and just not enough people know about it.

  2. I want to caution this point: in the slides the brands listed are mostly non-crypto brands (except for Ethereum). But I think there is a fundamental difference in how crypto world operates compared to, well the default world where Target, Nike and Apple live. The explorer archetype is an great summary of crypto & defi crowd, but the vibe I get from the general community though, is that no one wants to be put in a box. This is the ultimate wild west, everything is dynamic and changing, one week in crypto equals one year on earth. No one really knows what is what and what’s going to happen next. Crazy stuff happens every day and everyone is just winging it. Because of that, putting near in one box or a few boxes might not be very effective or a good investment of time or money.

  3. Due to the nature of the uncertainty and warping-speed change happening in crypto, it’s very disorienting and hard to stay on top of things. That’s why the Near attributes of dev friendliness and openness are distinct and awesome features that make near stands out. I just want to emphasize how much I like that as someone new-ish to crypto.

  4. This is just to repeat point 2. The key feature of crypto right now is dramatic rapid change, a desire and vision for change and sorely lack of infrastructure builders to meet the demand for change. Whereas in traditional world, a brand needs to appeal to the users, in crypto at this point in time, the brand needs to mostly appeal to builders and devs. If there are good projects and ecosystem, the users and liquidity will come, everyone is dying to fill their next bag… Yet devs tend to be smart and weird people lol, their taste could be significantly different from average target or apple users.

Just wanting to put my two cents out there.

4 Likes

I read this on my phone a few days ago and realized I never responded back to you. This is great feedback. Thanks for taking the time to write it up. We hear you and we think you’ll appreciate the next few updates from the brand working group.

Thank you. Keep the feedback coming.

1 Like

about airdrop, you can get the marketing data from pulse:

telegroup members increase 1000% in 3 days,from200 to2000

3 Likes

I come from the createbase community and I think there are many good designers there ready to be involved in a more meaningful way than little easy bounties, we would be happy to cooperate in building the new brand in a more endemic way to briefly answer to @mattlockyer .

As an answer to @blaze I would propose to see the feature of near as a Dev friendly chain as an asset and not a diminishing point (that’s been the very strength of ethereum in the past), I’m graduated in art, but find coding one of the most creative things I ever learned to do, helps me shape new ways to bring technology to people, and that’s what a near Dev is in charge to do imho, create quality smart contracts to be used by as many people as possible. Seeing design and development in a separate way is a losing prospect

3 Likes

Hi, thanks for dropping by. We don’t see design and development as separate either which is why we have a working group dedicated to the Brand evolution and it why we’ve been posting weekly updates and created the Open Brand - NEAR Protocol website. If there is specific feedback you’d like to share with the working group (comprised of NEAR collective, ecosystem partners/founders, and community) – please DM me and I’ll be happy to work with you on this.

Createbase has some great momentum and talent – I really love your passion and that you shared your thoughts on the forum. Thank you.

3 Likes

Some thoughts on this one:

—> If there are solid designers on Createbase lets get them connected to other projects building on NEAR so that these projects can have the design support they need a la memes, infographics, startup-branding, etc. I know a lot of the community projects would benefit A TON from this type of help.

—> NEAR is now valued at over $2 billion dollars. As an ecosystem that is going to be gearing up for the next 10 years+ I think it is absolutely essential that we do branding right. That means it is going to take a while to do, and should in principle, encompass and supercede where a lot of crypto is today. That’s a tricky thing to do, but I think it’s pretty clear by now that the route that the NEAR marketing team is taking is a thoughtful, inclusive, and strategic one. I think we should see where this goes and trust in the process.

—> I might have missed where there was a reference to differentiating design from development, but as far as I can tell, design is quite essential for making development accessible and engaging. And, to date, at NEAR we have a super strong and solid focus on development that needs more design thinking, and more long term outreach and branding thinking. Again, why don’t we think about this on a scale of 5 to 10 years: NEAR’s Sharding design will allow the network to scale, NFT’s will evolve, the ecosystem as a whole will grow, Sputnik DAO V2 will go through more Versions…and naturally the NEAR KAT will need to evolve, the brand will need to be enhanced nd positioned as a leading global crypto brand looking ahead. So let’s support that now and see where it goes, and change it up down the road if it’s not working later on !

Imo, the only way we lose is if we stop trusting each other and stop building this ecosystem together.

2 Likes

Yes, you got my point, we need to build our ecosystem together, but in the last two weeks I’ve spent my time on:
1 a social media strategy design just to find out that the basic points on the importance of design <-> developent interactions pointed out on first instance (as the design thinking path suggest, I teach design thinking in an after college school at the moment) were completely forgot by my referent on the near team, which kept talking about development powers as not intended for the social media strategy.

2 I found Devs scamming with not so defined Dev projects and bounties on the subreddit I already manage for near nft artists, which I’ve been struggling to build in a serious way.

So, I’ll be absolutely glad to speak with a serious person about the social media community design on the design thinking pathway, but in the case I will have to repeatedly point out unfair behaviours I won’t let my time to be wasted anymore.
I am part of createbase but this doesn’t mean I’m less serious in my design practice than any other designer, I actually am a freelance designer.

1 Like

And yes the timing point was also one of my issue you can’t ask a designer to get an insane amount of subscribers to a subreddit as a first goal, you need to design what that social media can do to promote the near features first, the subscribers will come in the years while the ecosystem grows.
I’m a designer I don’t sell subscribers or followers, we need to build this together seeing each other’s worth, not competing in importance in the community.

1 Like

Hey there! Thanks for your feedback. To be specific about what social media channels the NF Marketing Team owns - it is Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Blockfolio.

It sounds like you are helping support efforts across Reddit and other areas (which is very much appreciated! :pray:)

I’m happy to chat with you 1:1 about your experiences and I know the community team (now led by Grace) has put into place some solid strategies, tactics, and support to help with growth of our ever expanding community.

Again, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback.

2 Likes

Hey thanks a lot!
I’d be glad to have a call on telegram (where I’m @jeeltcraft) on wednesday if it’s ok for you, let me know your favourite time, I’m in CET timezone (GMT+1).
Thanks for your reply, and happy to coordinate :slight_smile:

1 Like