Hi Obi,
It’s a pleasure to meet you! Thanks so much for your reply to the posting of the questionnaire and also for your thoughts, insights and observations.
Without you, your perspective and the perspectives of the community, we can’t hope to build out a better brand - So I really appreciate the time, thought, consideration and passion you so clearly demonstrate.
To add a little context to some of the points you raise, I’d like to begin by explaining that the questionnaire shared last week is the first of multiple engagement pieces designed by our 3rd party Brand partner. Over the next three months, we plan to engage the business, ecosystem and community multiple times to garner the opinion, experience and insights regarding the perception of the Polkadot brand.
And you’re completely correct. It really isn’t the intention of the brand team to force the community to fit Polkadot into a traditional corporate branding process.
I’d like to see somebody try 
What we’re creating is a hybrid brand development model.
We’ll be utilising best practice from existing brand design processes (Brand Archetypes for example as a method to quickly classify perceptions of our brand), examining our extrinsic and intrinsic signals, identifying value propositions and brand expression to foster greater alignment with core strategy, competitive analysis of existing brand design assets and our outward facing touchpoints to better understand how and where we need to refine and evolve - If indeed we need to evolve.
The reason we should use such techniques is to provide a baseline of where we are right now. A ‘simple to understand’, transparent synopsis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in our existing brand platform. In my humble opinion, the most successful brands all have a strategy at their core.
As far as I can tell, the Polkadot brand does not. I’ve searched.
Without this strategic core, it becomes impossible to measure how and what we engage the community with. How we identify bona fide pain points.
We operate at a reductive ‘tactical’ level. Fix this specific item. Rework that thing. And so it goes indefinitely.
Of course, we can ask our community questions. But without a baseline, (the ‘control’ in an A/B test for example) we have no framework for structured, prioritised improvement.
And let’s not underestimate the importance of the Polkadot community in this project.
We want to build an authentic community engagement model, gathering opinion, gleaning insights, practical real world experience, amazing ideas and issues that need to be fixed. We’ll seek brand guidance and expert witnesses - all contributing to the ongoing development of the brand refresh. We’ll be delivering more questionnaires in the coming weeks and months, asking for and providing feedback, updates and opinions to help influence the direction we go in.
This all begins with the discovery phase.
We’ve also created a stakeholder group including Polkadot founders, Engineers, representatives of the ecosystem, members of our community and the business. This group will be involved with every step of the process, providing critical insights and helping to ensure the project is surfaced in a fair and equitable manner.
The process will follow an expansive then reductive process - No brand strategy direction or foundational parameters will be set before the community has been engaged.
I also agree with your point of view regarding Web3 and ownership. I don’t believe the agency intended this phrase to be part of the eventual rebranding premise or strategy - but more a catalyst to create a reaction. It’s way too early to be defining any actual premise yet. That said, we’ll double down and ensure this is clear moving forward.
Finally, I’m really grateful to you for your thoughts and advice Obi. And to all the members of the community who care deeply about Polkadot and Web3. We’re looking forward to moving our strategic brand in the right direction. Thank you!