NOT GOING TO HAPPEN : Marketing guidelines, rebranding and redesign

Proposals
#1

Organization
A separate marketing team would be created to be in charge of all of the official output of the BTCZ community.

The design part of the group is done by a company that has done projects for the likes of Orange, Samsung and Renault and a lot of real world banks, financial projects and startups. We have 10 years of experience in how branding and UX works and we’re applying it here. The team is doing design, UX and marketing professionally, not as a hobby.

The proposed Marketing Team will not answer to BTCZ developers, but instead will only answer to the team itself. In the essence of decentralization this team will conduct it’s marketing outside of the community. There will be no leader or president, but simply a conglomerate of like minded peers with the same ideals and desires for BitcoinZ’s future.
Once an individual creates content, the content would be submitted for proofing and critique. Discussion would ensue to clarify the message and prevent harmful content that would adversely affect the community. As well this safeguard would protect against simple grammatical and spelling errors and possible cultural impacts that the content creator may not be aware of.

Marketing Strategy
By creating a consistent and professional platform of marketing that comprises of imagery, articles, blog entries, press releases, and testimonials the message will be stronger and BitcoinZ will gain in image and exposure. A steady release of this consistent and upscale content will hopefully dilute the “fan art” that many see as a harmful impact on the BTCZ community. The team will provide PSD and Sketch files of templates that can be used for new marketing materials so they will all be consistent before it goes into the review process.

Logistics of the Marketing Process
With the use of a private forum channel, the Marketing Team would be able to create a new thread each time content is created. Discussion in that thread would be directed around the submitted content with the updated or altered version always appearing in the first post. Once the majority of the marketing team is in approval of the content, the content would be released into the wild and dissemination would take place as it already organically does

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

1 Like
#2

Amazing stuff.
Looks clean and professional.

#3

Yes, Yes, Yes !!

We need professional design like this proposed.

We shouldn’t look like BTC we are BTCZ and we go in our own way.

2 Likes
#4

Finally, we see a professional approach to image issues. The perception of the entire project on the market is very important. In every good project, the regulated principles of visual aesthetics improve the image of the project. Let’s go in this direction. It can not be that random people make primitive, strange pictures, for example with flinstones or other diamonds and game characters. Later, these terrible creations circulate on facebook and other places on the internet. I strongly support professional projects and continuous creation of a favorable image for BitcoinZ.
Vote people for YES.

2 Likes
#5

This is amazing stuff. I’m very glad that this problem has been recognized as a serious problem and is being addressed. The coin needs to stop looking like an amateur project and needs to reflect the fact that it has a strong solid management team capable of making clear decisions.
Professional branding brings trust to users which is a core concept of the coin. This is also very necessary if the coin is to be listed on and even more importantly invested in on more exchanges. Investors need to understand this is simply not a hobby.
I hope that this branding exercise will also follow through to the Twitter and all social media accounts. The quality of posting there right now is horrific and almost spam like. I really would like to retweet more stuff from the community and help push to promote it… but you need to give me professional materials to work with first! :slight_smile: This looks like what I have been waiting for.

5 Likes
#6

This is only marketing oriented asking for a stand alone marketing entity that doesn’t not report or is not hold to any standards of the community.

How can this be? How can you represent an audience of even create content on their behalf yet not be held accountable by them?

Also does that mean the community would not ever fund any marketing acticities?

This is important to comprehend because it means currently anyone can do just that and it’s in the similar if not exact vein of what ‘Gerro’ does.

If you want to '‘Gerro’ that’s fine as long as you know it can’t be representative or a community that does not have any influence over how it is represented.

Please be sure to not that this does not require a vote. Given you can produce the results you seek by assisting decentralization and hosting your own and a new bitcoinZ site with Branding and fonts etal that can be useful and eventually catch on and be resued if you allow it to be, by other community members.

3 Likes
#7

Please keep in mind this does not follow the white paper and is quite frankly the type of proposal that should be rejected or approved before submission to the forum is allowed.

Also why would the community vote on something that proposes to take control away from the community of it’s branding? The image and representation of the community to the wider world should not be taken lightly by any

Whomever votes for this is clearly not in the interest of the community.

I would ask that it is resubmitted in accordance to the guidelines set out in the community paper/white paper.

2 Likes
#8

@Jhanny Currently there is no vote for when someone shitposts to social media. There should be. A lot of the idea is exactly about that - if you want to post something show it first so people will decide what to do with it and if it hurts the image of btcz then it’s rejected.

The marketing team would simply be a filter to weed out lower quality output, but everyone can create marketing materials using the brandbook / guidelines provided and then post for review.

Also for clarity - I wouldn’t be on the marketing team myself. We’d only help with a redesign / rebranding and help the marketing team create the guidelines.

2 Likes
#9

Thanks for your proposal and the work anyone has done to put this proposal together.

I’ll start by mentioning that this is the very nature of the way decentralization works, that is that people can bring forth an effort and own it, as it says in the community paper.

Here are my thoughts:

  1. There should be a separate vote for any logo changes. We’ve tried this before and the community overwhelmingly voted no. You can find the details here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_kWO1lly4P54nNZbU168EOpgnoGnThR07pZbscy_BLTME
    My suggestion is, if we must change the logo, we take this same look and feel and choose a color scheme that compliments our existing logo and keep it. Regardless, we cannot vote for a logo and a ‘marketing’ team at the same time. This proposal seems crafted to slip in a complete rebrand under the disguise of “building a marketing team”. You do not need a vote to market any of the products/use cases BitcoinZ currently has.

  2. “we don’t answer to any devs” - Well that’s a statement that carries with it the meaning to completely takeover operations, as marketing can be viewed as the forefront and publicly facing component of ANY organization. We cannot forget that blockchain has only solved the trust problem in the transfer of value, ONLY, and not the required trust between people.
    Considering the above, there still is a requirement that any community supported initiative and dissemination is done (or support shown by) BitcoinZ trusted community channels. That is, those listed communication channels in the community paper, our FAQ, our ANN, etc. This is a key component to having a trusted infrastructure for BitcoinZ, as only those trusted members (that have been identified by other trusted members) have the “keys” to this infrastructure. So although you may not “answer to devs” - which if you’re supporting the true representation of BitcoinZ, you shouldn’t think you have to - marketing still needs to have support displayed by these trusted channels. This is a way to ratify support and show trusted legitimacy for BitcoinZ community initiatives.
    The only reason, in my opinion, you would need to make a statement like “we don’t answer to…X” is because you will indeed attempt to completely change the landscape and the community representation of BitcoinZ.

  3. Corporatization approach - I’ll remind everyone that the commercialization technique of having a control structure is not what BitcoinZ is about - in fact a majority of people that join the project join it because of its decentralized feel. There is nothing wrong with organizing a marketing team and feel, while utilizing the current logo and products - if you’re in marketing you should be able to do exactly that. We had several investors approach us in the past and ask us for ‘control’ of the marketing and information distribution, that is called a corporation and we kindly said no. This hasn’t stopped other investors from helping our progression, because they really are interested as investors and not corporate control mechanisms.

I understand its difficult to see what we’re trying to do with decentraliztion and everyone expects the corporate feel, but we’re doing something different.

You can read more on my thoughts on decentralization here:

7 Likes
#10

I love the look, but as well would like to see it with our existing logo and colors. ( @mikeM I know you tried and didn’t like it, but we should have more opinions on that decision) ** and just for the record I truly believe @mikeM knows what he’s talking about. His portfolio is impressive.

I love the concept of diluting fan art with a consistent concept and marketing messages that make sense.

I love the design targeting new crypto users, and leaving the info more experienced crypto users want to see a little deeper in. (ie: no ico, no premine etc)

One of the reasons I stopped marketing was the issues I ran into where nobody in the community nor any of the devs could explain a popular phrase we post on everything.
The other reason was that my marketing targets gave me an extremely hard time regarding some of the fanart that hit their feeds. Words like “immature” and “childish” were used to describe a project trying to acheive global traction.

I’m confused at how a separate side project as a group is different than individuals posting material on their own. They don’t answer to any devs either. Just trying to play devils advocate there.

I agree “Decentralization” is going to be tricky, and it’s entirely plausible for this website to sprout up under a separate domain name and side step the entire community. If you want to embrace Decentralized then you must be prepared for that to happen. It’s already happening on a smaller scale on Twitter and Facebook.

4 Likes
#11

You’re right - I’m not saying anyone needs to answer to anyone - but more so that any publication is truly aligned with the community offerings and capabilities. For example - what if your ‘side step site’ lists a section that talks about masternodes? The has effectively become a fork. A major part of this project is enabling people to buy and forget, only to return with the same coins they had.

The side steps sites cannot be expected to be included in trusted lists of sites unless they are handed to the trusted members - that has been the hardest part - the trust element but I think we’ve come a long way. From two people trusted, to a total of nine - with a few of those nine having FULL and unfettered access.

My point is that these types of efforts can be used to demean and/or misrepresent the founding principles of BitcoinZ - the same principles that have attracted most of our members. That’s what we have to be careful for.

Additionally, I’m in no way diluting the capabilities of MikeM or anyone that can fuel a marketing effort. There is no doubt marketing is needed. Let us all build a trust relationship with the marketing initiative is more along the lines of what I’m trying to express.

3 Likes
#12

“Let us all build a trust relationship with the marketing initiative is more along the lines of what I’m trying to express.” Thanks, I totally get this.

Just for transparency, I was the architect of much of the text in this proposal, but it was meant to be a stealth project with a lot more development and tweaking before it went live. Just for the record as well, there was never any intention of forking, undermining or varying the project away from the core concepts, in fact it was more about embracing and promoting the core concepts with a look, message, and fell to appeal to a wider more mature and educated demographic that is not necessarily in the crypto world now.

I was hoping to have a lot more background discussion and full comprehensive list of optimized marketing options to go with it. But here we are, I’m overloaded with my day job and no time to work on this as I was hoping and it’s open to the public before I wanted. So be it, open discussion can be a good thing too.

I voted “Yes” because frankly this is my last attempt in working with the community, it’s obviously not going as planned but I will take it on the chin and adapt before I move on.

Below is a list of items I was hoping to comprehensively develop before this went live.

  • Core concept, ie: Marketing teams core mission statement and fundementals. The start of that is pasted above, but needs some work to maintain white paper compliancy.
  • List of acceptable marketing phrases (ie: “100% Community Driven and Developed” or “BitcoinZ+zkSNARKS”)
  • List of acceptable marketing messages concept (ie: global adpatation, fast, decentralized)
  • List of un-acceptable marketing message concepts (ie: moon, lambo, buy now get rich)
  • Possible graphical changes with examples of integration into existing platforms.
2 Likes
#13

Superb work - it is hard to believe that this can be done for free… Apart from design i find that this brand/coin need more profesional approach as a lot of damage has been done by Flinstone/Diamond type graphic etc that some members of the community have done.

I apprecitate everyone’s work but lets keep it reall. If we act non profesional… than nobody will invest into the coin big time and my 7 y.o son can draw better graphic than dimonds/flinstones type.

I realize that not all of us can be Linus Torvald’s… so if we have a possiblity to use profesional it is our best shoot. How can You vote NO.

#14

I would love if that were in your proposal along with the fonts and content to be used.

The one thing that got me was the intention to not be part of the community and ask for a community vote.

That one thing of deviation from the Community paper and white paper what didn’t work for me.

2 Likes
#15

Yep. I know this to be a fact. I immediately thought this because it looked like the background discussion about this was nowhere near completed.

Understood.

1 Like
#16

The problem with a stealth project is one response every 24h. This isn’t a way for a forward momentum to take place.

We understand the concerns. We don’t want to take over anything, only give it justice.

If there’s no way to reach an understanding here and the future is „free for all” then I don’t believe in btcz success anymore.

1 Like
#17

It doesnt take control away from community. Anyway what can be more disturbing from publishin flinstones or diamons on official page ?? Really ?

  • How we verify who can vote and who cant ? If I have 0 or 1 BTCZ can I vote the same way and with the same force as somebody who holds 3 000 000 BTCZ ?

Does community means everybody can do what they want ? This way we will never progress…

#18

I love this redesign, you know!

It is a very radical change and I understand that there are people who perceive it as an aggressive change, but it is necessary. I do not see the problem in adopting it or not adopting it, if we have a minimum of material to work it, anyone can use the option that you like, I am sure that with time this will be a very popular option or the most used.

Remember the first btcz logo :alegría::alegría::alegría::alegría:

PS: Count on me for this!

#19

Oh I get it mike. Please don’t take my statements the wrong way.

1 Like
#20

There is, make a new proposal focused only one what you want to achieve that has relevance to the growth of Btcz.

Or continue and do as you will in a stealth project and launch and only share with the community when ready.

Note that if it is alined with the community paper / white paper then it will be fine.

Btcz has been successful. There are coins since 2012 to 2015 that have been successful and many came along saying it would fail.

A coin fails when it no longer exists and doesn’t service it’s purpose. However as long as this coin exists and has members following the core and findemebtals it was built on, it will thrive as coins beyond those coins from 2012 to 2015 have.

If you’re unhappy about a failed vote, join the club. It’s happened to me before and I am still here.

Or leave if you choose. No one is forcing you to be here.

We appreciate all you have done. However marketing isn’t the end all be a and sometimes doing nothing is just as relevant as doing something.

Moreso doing something at the right time for the right purpose is just as relevant.

1 Like