Marketing Ideas

This kind of proves my point. Of course you liked what you heard from Dom, so did I, that is why we are all here. I was interested enough in the tech to get over the delivery of the message, but also acutely aware that the message was being delivered in a way inaccessible to my friends less acquainted with or interested in blockchain.
One would expect the VP of Growth to understand this rather than going the relativistic route of, “Oh well, there is no consensus on which style is better”. This is wrong.
Style matters, knowing one’s audience and addressing it accessibly matters a lot, and the Dfinity belief that its tech will necessarily win out is misguided. There are tens of thousands of very intelligent people working on blockchain, and every one of them that is not working on the IC could be working with a competitor. And very few are working on the IC because of its reputation as a scam. I met a guy the other day whose entry at June’s ETH New York made it to the top ten. I mentioned ICP and he retorted that it was a complete scam. Only after I showed him a couple of comments VB had made in the past was he willing to take a deeper look. This is what you are dealing with even among people who are deeply into blockchain tech. Imagine what it is like among normies. Dfinity dug itself into a very deep ditch and depending purely on the tech to climb out is a huge risk.
To be considered a success, the IC will have to be used by a billion people, very few of whom care about tech. BTC integration is great, but the true promise and test of the IC is whether it can, as promised, build consumer-facing websites and social networks on the blockchain that can pay for themselves and suitably reward creators working on them.
Otherwise, the IC risks becoming a bit like that bonsai tree we see next to DW in his workspace.

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I echo @Denis 's well articulated point. “Build it and they will come” is a very risky position to take.

Department of Growth at Dfinity stand seems to be that we will let the work speak for itself and then there will be little need to explain the details about the protocol …because it is too difficult to explain? Am I understanding this correctly?

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  • Legal, medical, identity documents
  • all defi applications where bridge hacks are happening
  • High value NFT storage (individuals owning canisters)
  • Music and any other creative licensing
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I sincerely apologize if I was not clear in my comments above.

IC (as with nearly any product) appeals to different types of persona. Clearly the fact that one should understand the motivations of their audience and deliver an accessible message for each of the different persona’s shouldn’t even be a debate :slight_smile:

Stating the obvious here but for any message to appeal to the audience it should solve for “What is in for me?”. Lot of our communication so far has been targeted to attract builders to the platform. The fact that we are all here and the developer community is growing is an evidence that at least some of that style of communication is working.

Can we do significantly better to attract the builder persona? Absolutely!
Should we focus a lot more on attracting non technical audience? Without a doubt!

All of us here in the community are constantly iterating. Not just the foundation (be on the lookout for multiple new initiatives in this direction) but we also have multiple independent community driven initiatives like ICP League - Medium or https://www.dfinitycommunity.com/tag/icpsquad/ amongst many others. We clearly need to do a lot more.

To clarify, I am not at all suggesting build and they will come. That never happens and we all know that. Rather it’s the classic story that one doesn’t need to teach every person the internals of TCP/IP for using social media apps. The mass adoption comes from use cases (benefits).

It is not going to be very easy to explain to any non technical person say how is BTC integration that uses tECDSA is better than a bridge. For the sake of clarity I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t attempt to explain the messaging in an easier way. We absolutely need to iterate and we are doing that. Having said that, my personal hypothesis is that delivering use cases that appeal to everyday users and promoting that aggressively will play a large role in driving mass adoption.

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Thanks for the feedback. I have tried to clarify in the comments below

This is pretty superfluous. Crypto as a whole hasn’t been adopted and a few eth degens not joining us is not a big deal. If you notice the devs that get hooked on the IC a lot of them are from the web 2 world. The super fans that are technical are al from the web 2 world. ICPs game plan should not be to try to beg for degens it should be to find use cases In global commerce.

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If we can’t even onboard the crypto crowd how can we expect web 2 devs to come onto the IC? Do you think they’ll try out every different L1 and decide on their own? Most likely they’ll follow the market or do some research and find plenty of misinformed people telling them ICP is a scam. Better tech doesn’t always win.

There is no need to say probably the data already shows web2 developers have been onboarding onto icp on their own slowly.

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I’d argue data also shows the same for other chains, Web 3 is attracting lots of talent looking to make a profit. Now what we have to ask ourselves isn’t whether devs are being onboarded on the IC or not, but how many are choosing IC over other chains.

I’m not sure this data exist anywhere but if it did I’d bet IC wouldn’t be in the top 5, most likely not even top 10.

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I don’t think anyone is trying to argue that point. I’m saying that our marketing is doing fine based on the market conditions: I’m saying it’s superfluous to say icp is gonna die so early in the game. We don’t even have a token standard yet how do you all expect any start up to raise funds to build.

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More than a justification this should be a red flag, how in the world after more than 1 year since genesis we still don’t have a token standard?

Oversights like this are the exact reason we can’t just rest on our laurels and blame poor public image on market conditions, FTX, Arkham ,etc…

Dfinity definitely can step up their game marketing wise, looking at Supernova’s overall production quality or some of Dom’s slides during presentations you wouldn’t tell its something coming from a multi million dollar foundation with hundreds of employees.

That being said marketing can only go so far when it comes from a corporation that has a poor reputation in its field, what Dfinity should focus on to improve its reputation is networking and getting partnerships with legitimate businesses. A “Matic” tier partnership would do more than any fancy tweet or video.

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Apple and Google take 15%-30% from app developers’ gross. From what I understand, they’d be free to develop whatever they like on the IC, with future SNS capability and tokenization of their dapp, and no one skimming profits off the top of their gross to allow them to operate.

That’s seems like a massive selling point to me, to make loud clear to the web 2 world.

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Apple and google are have mobile Eco systems icp is a web eco system. It doesn’t apply

It took Ethereum 2 years to recognize a token standard. R&D takes time.

This is along the lines of marketing to web 2 developers (even if it is currently a only web eco-system). Thanks!

Then by extension , an SNS project through an NNS vote, is an endorsement of the project by the IC community.

ETH was the first of its kind so its an unfair comparison, also was it 2 years worth of active RnD or 1.5 years of nothing and 6 months of actual work? It’s a big difference.

We need stuff like this to happen to redeem the IC’s brand and attract new devs/investors: https://twitter.com/iftikharpost/status/1556378640077946880

I know we can’t have the specifics but is Dfinity actively working towards AAA partnerships?

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Some thing like this seems like a great opportunity to bring the IC’s potential to a wider public:

TLDR: A Czech family owns castles, a huge art collection and historical documents that been returned to them after being seized by Nazis and then the communist regime. They cannot sell most of their possessions to fund their archival work because Czech law does not allow it. So, they are turning to NFTs as a way to monetise and archive the collection.
It would be the perfect project for the Dfinity Foundation to fund, with a continuous stream of publicity as each new batch of the collection comes online.

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Exactly. Marketing and partnerships with trusted brands will go a long way to help the IC repair its reputation and build good rapport with the Crypto community and beyond.

Also what doesn’t help is Dom starting useless arguments with other founders who are likely more connected and have deeper roots in the crypto community than the foundation. He should try to make friends and collab when possible with other projects. Stop telling them the IC will make them obsolete. As the saying go you catch more bees with honey than vinegar.

At this point, a PR firm is probably necessary because as proven the foundation strength is in r&d, not marketing.

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Is dfinity seriously concerned about being turned away from the public due to marketing failures?

The ability to understand the public is essential, but dfinity did not take it into account due to the pride of being superior to others.

Most of the masses lack knowledge and are unwilling to change unless they are several times better than what they use.

Unfortunately, dfinity’s reputation, regardless of its nature, blinds the public and accelerates it in a negative way.

I am concerned that this technology will be buried due to marketing failures.

dfinity believes in community growth and is paranoid with plausible numbers, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s just an echo that cries into the air.

I want developers to know that the reality is very political, cold and naive people can only be used and thrown away.

I am not good at English, so I used Google Translate. please understand.

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Stop telling them the IC will make them obsolete. As the saying go you catch more bees with honey than vinegar.

Whether or not Dom points it out, they know that the IC has the potential to make many of their projects obsolete. So the IC has natural enemies, both in the crypto sphere and from very powerful cloud services.

I think it’s important to acknowledge this and consider how it can make marketing this product an exceptional challenge. Nobody wants to be led by the hand to their grave.