TL;DR: Rainbow Bridge launch, brand refresh audit complete, say welcome Wachsman PR, SEO refresh underway, many new partnerships announced, and summer events line up announced.
Branding Efforts
This week we hit a major milestone with the completion of the Brand Agency Audit and first glimpse into the new creative direction. 
All of your feedback has been shared, discussed, and will continue to contribute to the evolution. We went into this project armed with metrics and stories to try and dig deep into why conversions were lower than we liked at various places. This brand audit helped confirm some of our suspicions.
Here’s how NEAR has historically approached “top of funnel” marketing at NEAR (ex. Website, Newsletter, Social, etc.)
And here is the high-level chart from the Brand Agency Audit that shows how NEAR is doing with matching against delivering on the needs/wants of segments across NEAR (ex. Developer needs, Token Holder Needs, Community Needs, Founder Needs).
Specifically look at the areas highlighted in blue that show major gaps/opportunities we have at the points of converting users over to NEAR and empowering them through affinity and advocacy. We’re good at directing people to NEAR with a ton of types of content (even though we’re missing the mark now on categorizing things intuitively, layering in SEO and addressing basic UX/UI to help people find what they need fast.)
We believe we can improve the areas in blue and give clear pathways for everyone who comes into NEAR’s website – we think we’re in a good place to dramatically improve converting people from learning about NEAR to becoming an advocate and participant in NEAR’s ecosystem. 
So this is what we’re doing now.
At a high-level, it was interesting to interview folks across the ecosystem and check out their “journeys”. Think of this as a common way that people discover + engage with NEAR. There’s actually quite a few pathways but this is a sample of what we found:
It’s pretty cool to see it coming together and next week, we will share some visuals for the direction of the new brand and show how it will address some of the pain points and opportunities NEAR faces today. 
SEO update
SEO work has begun! We’ve identified a lot of opportunity, an audit is underway, and we have onboarded new systems to help us scale fast. 
Events & Experiences Updates
It’s been non-stop on the events side for NEAR. Check out some of the things we’ve been up to (even more on the way)
Partnership Launches
This summer is going to be lit. 
This week we shared the partnership announcements on Ledger publishing our app for Nano X and Nano S, Octopus Network, Mask, Dystopia Labs, Guarda Wallet, Band Protocol, and more! We’ve also been heads down planning and preparing assets for even more upcoming launches of some awesome partner campaigns and announcements with DappRadar and more!
Welcome Wachsman PR
We’re thrilled to announce that Wachsman PR will be the agency of record for NEAR. We began our journey with Wachsman over a year ago and are excited to work alongside them to amplify NEAR’s ecosystem, protocol, stories, and successes. Wachsman’s clients extend across some familiar faces in blockchain including:
Product Launches
ICYMI - NEAR has had a busy week with a few notable releases! 
We’ve been happily supporting all the many kickass teams across the collective including: Rainbow Bridge, Aurora, Wallets, and more. We had a blast exploring Berry Cards.
Last but not least - jump into the conversation with our teams on Discord, Reddit, and Telegram!
-The NEAR Foundation Marketing Team