Decentralised Futures: The Growth Guild - Connect the Dots

[DotDraper]

I hope this post finds you all in high spirits, your mugs brimming, and your browsers free from the clutches of infinite tabs. However, in case you don’t have the luxury of what I’ve mentioned, hopefully what I propose will lighten up your day/night depending on where you are situated.

So there is a guy…

He started as the VP of Digital Marketing at Parity (unfortunately 2 days before the reorg) he was then contracted with the task of figuring out how to decentralise his function . He’s never been one to care about micro movements in a self serving way. so he started wondering how an env could be built for everyone. His working model is very heavily tied to performance evaluations via OKRs and KPIs but he gets the importance of brand presence, positioning, narrative, health and recall in web3 .

At a high level his deck conceptualises how collective and effective decision making could work between an entity and community die-hards, how capital might be deployed and how guidelines and principles can be formed so cohesive GTM strategies can be formed and realistically mobilised between various levels of contributors, he even included backstops to limit the ability for unskilled keyboard warriors who disguise themselves as highly skilled ‘ecosystem agents’ via bounties and potentially a system of meritocracy. He’s also open to leverage/test something that someone in this amazing community has systematically created or also conceptualised for contributor rankings.

This gentleman also has 13 years marketing experience and spent his last 5+ years at a big ETH blockchain company . Working across the end to end stack for Dev, End-user and enterprise audiences (think Wallet, IDE, Smart Contract Auditing, Node Provider etc) Inside of this org he helped launch brand refreshes, content strategies, build out web properties, data infrastructure, event tracking, marketing machines and performance related OKRs and KPIs that resulted in multiple fold increases across product usage, marketing campaigns and sales opportunity pipeline. He’s also managed multi-million dollar paid media campaigns, agencies and run initiatives that have resulted in being one of the largest minted NFTs and rumour has it he can quite easily spin up marketing functions and advisory boards in the web3 space as most of his previous colleagues either created or belong to VC’s, Web3 Agencies, or run entire departments within some other noticeable blockchain companies

During his short time helping Parity, the team he manages have focused on building v1 onramps for end-users by creating a wallets LP and campaign that has resulted in 50k+ total clicks to listed wallets over a 1 month period (20k-25k if you want to be unique about it ). There is also a v1 dapps LP and campaign to follow which will effectively waterfall and warm audiences further into the polkadot dapp landscape. He’s a bit disappointed wallet teams didn’t show him their uptick in potentially having net new users, or increased DAUs when he asked, but either way he thinks it’s a move in the right direction - btw kudos goes to Alex, Oli, Eugene, Evan, Eric, Lana, Stefan et al.

So why did he come here? Well…he believes the tech is better, but that’s not enough.

(Hopefully you enjoyed the 3rd person read)

Let’s get serious, what’s next?

What I am proposing within this deck is to build an all encompassing decentralised marketing org with the community being given a seat at the table with regards to the formulation of GTM strategies and contributing to certain aspects of campaigns. This working model is aimed at transparency, which allows for accountability for poor results, feedback loops with the community, hitting objectives at different levels collectively. What does this deck include?

1. The current status quo and opportunities that have derived from this situation
2. How the formulation of an accountable body purely aimed at end-user, developer, enterprise and ecosystem growth could operate - Its founding principles, governance and structure.
3. What a decentralised marketing org that’s community led could look like (It’s advantages, disadvantages and how they could potentially be remedied)
4. Org/working model and each component’s role and responsibilities.
5. A blueprint of how it could work practically
6. Examples of certain functions being decentralised (Brand & Design, Web, CRM)
7. The outlook and future assumptions we can make based on what we already know thus far.
8. Overarching objectives that must be a) preserved and b) evolved c) accelerated based on product milestones
9. A timeline of the transition to this new target operating model

VIEW THE DECK

Disclaimer : It’s still a work in progress but I want to be transparent in the train of thought.

This proposal is unique based on the fact it doesn’t seek to replace an existing function in exactly the same way, instead it is a whole concept and architecture which lends itself to a more democratic framework, which adequately represents all contributors along the value chain. It leans toward the idea of taking a performance-led approach to specific activities to ensure there is a clear understanding and measurement of why certain strategies and tactics might succeed or fail . Standards and quality of work are important to me, but first we need foundational elements to be put together such as a strategic narrative, customer, market and funnel analysis, content strategy, tech stack, product marketing to name just a few.

Disparate, unorganised and uncoordinated efforts don’t seem fair to the people who are trying to make a difference for the ecosystem. Effectiveness and efficiency should be measurable so we know how to make educated decisions that benefit everyone’s collective efforts.

SO WE HAVE THE WHY, WHAT & HOW IN YOUR DECK BUT WEN BUIDL?.. THAT’S ENTIRELY UP TO YOU

I haven’t included a budget or headcount in here as that would be something to become more concrete in future. The CTA here is to share your thoughts and leave a if you believe in the substance of what I’ve attempted to portray and hopefully get the chance to build if it’s not quite there yet I’m always happy to receive constructive feedback (apparently it’s a gift ) I already have a studded team in mind who i’d like to include in this project from the get go.

For those of you who feel sceptical about my proposal, let me leave you with this - Think about ‘the knowledge’ a test every black cab driver in London has to take. In order to have their own special lane, to have an iconic vehicle, to take their passengers to destinations without any hindrance. Without the guild who set that test and standard you wouldn’t be able to have a top quality experience or journey when doing something quintessentially british. Structures need checks and balances to ensure the best people are in the right seat to take you on a safe journey to your desired destination.

In any event, I’d love the chance to represent you, create huge world-class marketing activations and anticipation around Polkadot, Parachains and its development milestones. For me the network upgrade will be the rebirth and moment where we can position ourselves in the market to be the pioneer of pioneers, the ones who had a bigger dream and brought it to reality.

Things I’d like to happen!

1. Multifaceted integrated campaign similar to onchain summer but using our parachains/dapps/enterprise clients when the time is right.

2. Creating an NFT mint to celebrate these technological milestones. Imagine how wild it would be to have Kusama involved in the digital artwork. Maybe then she could consider us a friend

3. Brand Audit to assess where we are with regards to brand health then potentially creating a new design system and headless brand that can be mobilised by people around the world.

4. A reasonable decentralisation of the polkadot website so contributors have a platform to show their skin in the game and being given a style guide and principles to work within. First up is to fix what we have atm.

5. A cool end user web3 experience built into the polkadot website so native, curious and n00s alike can dip their toes in the web3 water

6. An fully aligned integrated experience across multiple content formats where we are able to showcase and spotlight Developers, end-users and enterprises to the world and why they chose Polkadot.

7. Separate marketing funnels for each target audience, clearly mapped out from end to end. Coherently between offline and online activity. (Dw i’m totally interested in psyopsing existing crypto natives over to us too…respectfully via side events )

8. Improving SEO re indexability, crawlability leading to better visibility. Achieving feat snippets and better rankings on SERP for specific keywords and topics.

9. Garnering attention from tier 1 and 2 publications and increasing our SoV and improving advertising value equivalency and potential reach globally.

10. Any integrated product strategy orchestrated between parachains and core dev (Parity/W3F) product managers. Which informs a v1 go-to-market strategy (difficult but not impossible)

11. Including and coordinating with the community to act as a massive growth lever to amplify network effects across various social platforms.

12. There’s more but that’s all for now folks

- Can you connect the dots?

[dotty]

This makes a lot of sense. Marketing is like tapestry, it threads through everything. Not having cohesiveness will simply mean there will be pulls and gaps when standing back and looking at Polkadot as a whole.

[Nick]

love this idea and supportive. I think it strikes the right balance between enabling decentralisation but ensure some level of coordination, standardisation, and sharing of resources where it makes sense.

[hndrx66]

Great detail, planning, and balance. This is very robust and what is needed to see a real drive and lift in marketing and growth - solid proposal and concrete thinking!

[DegenofDotsama]

I could get behind something like this

[clay00911]

@DotDraper

onchain summer

This is the most credible proposal i’ve seen so far, the others seem to lack depth and your background is extremely credible, would love to have you build this out for the community to plug into!

[Stef0]

Great job @DotDraper!

I’ve been supportive of the Growth Guild idea ever since I first heard the broad outline, but you’ve really done your due diligence in breaking it down. Not only is this one of the most detailed and well-thought-through DFP proposals I’ve read to date, but it also introduces a ‘decentralized marketing’ model I believe could actually work.

[dgencitizen]

This is one of the proposals I was the most excited about and still am.

I personally, am of a strong opinion that this decentralisation effort needs a robust a clear framework. This proposal hits the nail on the head and provides exactly that.

Having worked directly with @DotDraper in the recent months, I’d like to extend my full support to this initiative, the vision and the man behind it.

[NateHam1]

Hey All - Glad to see so many teams interacting here. While reading through this I was certainly inspired by the team’s dedication to the ethos of decentralization, that being said I have significant concerns about the structure proposed;

• Efficiency is mentioned as a benefit to this, generally, the more decentralized something is, the less efficient it can be. So I was surprised to see efficiency called out as a benefit here. I feel there are levels/steps of decentralization that can expand over time without impacting the day-to-day and without creating overly complex approvals/orgs etc.
• What is the goal? Is the goal just to decentralize Parity or to make Polkadot’s marketing better? This focuses specifically on decentralization but doesn’t lay out how things will get better for the community or ecosystem.
• Timeline - Based on the timeline laid out in the presentation, it’ll be Q4 2024 by the time that this can be ramped back to current corporate levels - the community can’t wait this long to get comprehensive marketing going again.

I guess my biggest concern is that the builders, teams, and community have been starving for support and execution for 2+ years and this plan, in my opinion, doesn’t solve for this. I understand Parity’s desire to decentralize these functions however it shouldn’t come at the expense/to the detriment of the people who have been dedicated to the ecosystem. There should be a happy medium to decentralizing these functions while not having to press pause to the actual marketing of Polkadot.

Happy to chat live or via the forum on any of my points above, feel free to let me know.

-Nate

[DotDraper]

Thanks for the feedback, let’s address these concerns:

1. Efficiency is raised as a benefit because there are no walled gardens to communicate between guild and community members who wish to participate in marketing initiatives. They now have a mode of being able to plug and play into a working model that aids contributions in a coordinated way. Decision making at each layer is also quicker when working towards a succinct common set of objectives. Hence the reason of wanting to build a GTM and RFPs with the community. Bottoms up decides and top down help guide/facilitate the motions - think of it as a meeting of trusted minds who want the best for the ecosystem as a whole. L0 = Guild & L1 = Muti-Agency & L2 = Community Contributors who support and amplify core themes.

2. The goal is quite simple, give the ecosystem a way of being apart of the decision making process and shape the future and direction polkadot marketing efforts. Things get better when they are a part of picking world class agencies to represent them for specific high level execution and campaign activations for example. Things also get better when they have a seat at the table to share thoughts on what our GTM focuses should be.

3. Your interpretation of the timeline might be a little off, the Q2 aim to have the model ‘switched on’ Q3 and Q4 are to ensure the dials are turned up correctly to hit GTM objectives and milestones. Scale and deploy is about increasing capabilities along with increased spend levels for 2025 and hopefully some fine folks in this ecosystem forming a BD function, so marketing isn’t purely perceived as a cost centre. I agree the community can’t wait, nor should it and, nor will it.

No pause on marketing, the team I have assembled have pretty stellar backgrounds and more than 10+ marketing experience in their respective fields and at least 3+years of experience working in Web3 space companies include Serotonin, Near, Aztec, Notabene, Atendis BlockFi, ConsenSys, Parity, IOHK, Celo, Gitcoin.

Thanks!