Forming the PoolTogether Marketing Working Group

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## Aim of This Document

To create a proposal on gov.pooltogether.com to introduce the concept and proposed structure of the PoolTogether Marketing Working Group (PT MWG) to be voted on by the PoolTogether Community to gauge initial reaction, adjust accordingly and decide whether to proceed to a PTIP application.

This will follow the same approach as the work done for Forming PoolTogether Treasury Management Committee.

##“2022 is PoolTogether’s Year to Scale” - Leighton Cusack, PT Co-Founder

Thanks to the incredible strength of its vibrant community, its proven, secure and robust technology which is ready to scale, PoolTogether V4 has seen significant linear growth in user deposits. The average monthly deposit growth rate is around $10m USDC from approximately 100 new unique wallet addresses- we are getting new depositors every day.

This has been a good rate of growth and we also see the growth in PT v4 v PT v3 with PT v4 being at 61% of v3 levels currently (as of 28th December 2021)

The issue however is that v4 is currently operating at a loss, and a large one. The prize pool is depleting PT’s treasury daily with only 15% of the prizes being funded from the yield of existing deposits. More specifically, every day that PT operates its cross chain Polygon, Avalanche, Ethereum Pool, at current investment levels, it is losing between $5,000 and $10,000 from its treasury, depending on individual prize claims. That equates to between $1.825 million and $3.65 million of annualized losses. According to the treasury working group, PT needs to achieve an 8-10x increase in user TVL to $150m to $200m to avoid this continual treasury depletion.

This however, is not the largest challenge: PoolTogether is the clear Web3 leader in no-loss savings opportunities. The opportunity cost to not investing in scale is immeasurable. The exponential growth of people entering the crypto market is only proof that PoolTogether is not hitting its true potential yet. If PT doesn’t act now to seriously scale depositor growth, someone else will, jeopardizing everything that has already been achieved. There are already new, well funded competitors starting up and the opportunity is too great for more not to try. Someone will have more than a billion TVL within the next two years, it should be PT.

##Introducing The Marketing Working Group (Hopefully)

In order to deliver against this goal, we propose the launch of a PT Marketing Working Group (PT MWG) with one mission: depositor growth. The working group will be comprised exclusively from members of the PT community, who have between them more than 40 years of marketing experience and will of course embody the inclusive PT culture and community.

The first order of business for the the PT MWG will be to work with the PT community and potentially a third party partner to simply and professionally articulate:

A. What and how many personas embody all types of PT depositors?- what is driving the different groups of depositors to participate in PT and why? How long do they stay deposited? What is the Life Time Value (LTV) to PT of a depositor from each persona?

B. What are the depositor journeys for each of these personas? Where are the friction points in depositing? Not just at onboarding into crypto, but even earlier in the process: When they decide to save/invest money, when they earn money? When they get a job? What are the friction points in their journey and where can we help? Are there opportunities to create increased motivation to overcome PT’s already defined onramp challenges even earlier in the savings/investment discovery process?

C. How do we use these two inputs to refine and better articulate the PT brand? How do we communicate what we do and why we do it in words and pictures, to each persona effectively and consistently every time. (Note: this does not mean we will be making any changes to the PT logo, but instead defining the meaning and communication protocols behind it)

All of this will come together to form the basis of PT’s communication strategy. It’s brand house, brand guidelines and opportunities for engagement. This will be the primary input of PT’s new depositor acquisition strategy and we will use it to build campaigns that span across PT’s three pillars of communication:

Owned Assets: like PT Social Media, the PT Community Substack and any additional content and communication tools developed by the PT Community

Earned Assets: like PR generating activities that generate non-PT related assets to talk about and promote PT and its brand/mission and values

Paid Assets: like additional influencer partnerships (like Kris Kay) or other paid media assets like search, social media and potentially even ‘dream big’ scenarios like sponsorships or out of home (e.g. advertising on subway trains).

##Funding the PT MWG

The PT MWG will be awarded a separate bi-annual budget by the PT Community, to be managed by a multi-sig within the group to cover both Committee remuneration and also budgets for working with external agencies and service providers.

Each individual engagement with an outside third party will be quoted on by at least three independent potential partners. Once the winning quote is assigned, it will have separate statements of work, service level agreements and an accountable member of the PT MWG to oversee the successful completion of the engagement.

To ensure the PT MWG can operate with the speed and efficiency necessary to deliver against it’s mandate, it is proposed that the group will have the autonomy to approve contracts at or equal to $50,000 USDC. Any contract or statement of work over $50,000 USDC, the PT MWG will submit a temp check snapshot: Snapshot

This is a directional vote. If there is resistance, we will consult the community and reconsider the direction.

##Structure of the PT MWG

The initial size of the PT MWG will be nine members, 2 co-chairs, 5 active members, and 2 advisory community advocates, all of whom elected and approved by the PT community as a full slate every 6 months.

The co-chairs, in addition to being active members, will be responsible for co-ordinating and organizing all team activities, communication, post feedback/comments on the forum and the tracking, verification and approval of all hours worked by the PT MWG.

The active members will be responsible for actively building marketing strategies and be the liaison and contact point with specific partners on the execution of acquisition campaigns.

The advisory community advocates will be non-voting members, responsible for attending PT MWG meetings and ensuring that the MWG upholds the standards, vision and mission of the PT Community.

Based on participation in PT MWG meetings and sub working groups, we anticipate the following members – (to be more decided)

  1. Loitering_gorilla (Co-Chair)
  2. Smart Investor (Co-Chair)
  3. Tim (Active Member)
  4. Anne_O (Active Member)
  5. To be determined (Active Member)
  6. To be determined (Active Member)
  7. To be determined (Active Member)
  8. To be determined (Advisory Community Advocate)
  9. To be determined (Advisory Community Advocate)

All decisions of the PT MWG will require a supermajority (70% of 9) approval before going forward. Members who cannot attend meetings will proxy their vote to another PT MWG member to vote on their behalf. This applies not only to awarding contracts to 3rd party vendors, but changing the structure of the group or adding/removing any individual PT MWG member who are not determined to be living up to their accountabilities or responsibilities.

## The PT MWG Will Not:

Create any marketing campaign on its own

  • The PT MWG will define strategies, metrics and deliverables, but will work with third party contractors to create and execute any marketing/acquisition campaign.

  • Make any changes to the core app or website

    The PT marketing group will be focused primarily on new depositor. In the course of it’s work the PT MWG may come across recommendations for improvement of the core assets which it will share with PT inc for potential inclusion in the PT inc core website/app roadmap.​

  • Operate against the value of the community

    It is essential that PT work closely with the entire community to ensure it captures the values, mission (the brand) of what PT means. Once established, the PT MWG will ensure that any communication to potential or existing depositors will fully embody everything that this community stands for.

##The PT MWG Will:

  • ​Develop a comprehensive understanding of who we serve

Who are our silent majority- those who deposit into the protocol but don’t participate on discord? Why are they here? Where did they come from? Who else is out there like them that we can speak to?

Set and Report Operating KPIs

We will have defined metrics that will help identify how we are performing across the entire acquisition journey and what we can do better. These will be defined, tracked and reported on once the phase one persona/journey mapping/brand work is complete.

Always Strive To Be Better

All members of the PT MWG will be available to the PT Community and will be open to any and all suggestions/improvements ​

Update the PT Community Monthly

A member of the PT MWG will provide an update on the PT Community Swim and meet in the main discord voice channel when possible knowing that competitors are part of the PT community.

##Proposed Marketing Objectives

  • Increase TVL in V4 by $20 million over the next 6 months

    At PT’s current approximate APY, this will generate approximately $700,000 return to the treasury allowing the funding of the PT MWG to pay for itself. More importantly, this will prove the efficacy of the committee’s work and set the groundwork for real, scalable growth in the back half of 2022.

  • 3,000 new depositors in v4

This will ensure that PT’s mission is met and we are not only attracting Whales looking to game the system

##Examples of PT MWG Initiatives

The PT MWG strategy will potentially operate across some, if not all of the following communication channels:

  • Partnerships/Affiliates:

  • PlannerDAO, CDAA

  • Centralized Exchanges

  • Bankless/The Defiant

  • Referral/Incentives

  • Online/Offline Media Campaigns

  • Digital/Social ads ​

  • Sponsorships

  • Influencer Marketing

  • New Language/Markets

##Community Checks

  • Ultimate approval of any major initiatives and strategies proposed by the Committee

The PT Community would have to approve any major marketing strategies e.g. engaging a Marketing agency or major marketing strategy proposed by the PT MWG before it can be executed. The MWG will be responsible for determining the terms of deals but statement of work approval will be subject to a PTIP and Community Vote

  • Ability to replace members who do not fulfill the requirements of the role

If there are members who do not meet the duties and responsibilities of the role, are frequently absent, etc, the committee can remove that member with sufficient votes

  • Authority to add and remove powers delegated to the committee

The community can, through the normal PTIP process, add or remove powers to/from the committee as they see fit. This ensures that the committee is always ultimately just an extension of the will of the community itself.

  • Authority to dissolve the committee

The committee will be subject to periodic reviews, and if the community is unhappy with the PT MWG’s performance or the community does not believe the committee is necessary anymore, then the community can vote to dissolve it

##Initial Thoughts on Budget for the PT MWG

  1. Compensation for PT MWG Members: The PT MWG will use the Pool Grants Committee model as the bases for its compensation. Specifically, all committee work will be compensated at $100 per hour. This $100 per hour rate will be applied in two ways:

  • a. An upfront fee of $8,000 for the initial work done to build this proposal and the initial operating structure of the PT MWG

  • b. An on going work commitment of for the PT MWG of 20 hours for the co-chairs and 15 hours for the standard committee members per month. Additional, The PT MWG will hold an additional ‘bank’ of 100 hours compensate individual PT MWG members who need to work over their capped time. Advisors will be compensated with a $600 USDC quarterly stipend for their time.

  • The total compensation for PT MWG Members will not exceed $80,000 for the first six months of 2022. All compensated hours will be tracked, approved and shared with the community. Any unused team compensation will either be rolled over or returned to the treasury. All funds paid to the Marketing Working Group will be paid in a yield bearing stablecoin and distributed to the group as such.

  1. Budget to work with external marketing agencies and partners to conduct research and execute against PT MWG objectives and metrics.

  • a. We need up to $100,000 to engage with an ethnography/brand agency to properly build out the personas, journeys and PT Brand

  • b. A budget of up to $400,000 to engage with an acquisition campaign over the first six months.

To summarize: The budget for third party work is $500,000. The total request is for $580,000, for the first six months of 2022 when in include third party work and compensation for the PT MWG.

##Why This Much Money

It is a natural reaction to look at the requested budget and wonder, why do we need so much money? Why can’t we spend less, prove success and grow from there? The answer is frustratingly simple: ad-hoc, tactical executions can be effective and cheap- when successful- but they are not replicable or scalable.

A foundation for sustainable, profitable growth creates value well beyond the immediate users acquired. Although the immediate goal of the PT MWG is to acquire $20 million dollars in TVL from 3,000 net new depositors, our real success metric is that we have a model for new user acquisition that we can scale profitably, by simply adding dollars.

PoolTogether is a challenger brand. That means we will never be able to outspend any traditional competitors (banks and lotteries) and we will never be the loudest voice, anywhere. As a result we need to get really good at knowing our potential new depositors, and really scrappy at getting our message to them. Financial and lottery brands, will have marketing, advertising and media budgets in the $10’s of millions or higher.

Any single advertising campaign, in a single market, would usually have a budget of at least $500,000. Plus, their brand, persona and journey work will already be complete and proven. A $500,000 working budget gives us just enough room to get our footing, try multiple channels, tactics and regions. It gives us the start we need to build that foundation for real, exponential growth. Can something be done with less? Yes of course. But it comes at a tradeoff: long term, profitable, scalable growth.

##Let’s Make 2022 The Year PoolTogether Scales

Ultimately, the PT MWG is about the PT Community and DAO investing in it’s future by stepping outside of its comfort zone and scaling in a way which dare we say it is more “professional” and sustainable. This does not mean becoming corporate or suit and tie, but it does mean becoming more structured, purposeful, accountable and results oriented.

We can no longer operate in a small piecemeal fashion, but need to work with professionals and think big. So while we believe in, and can assist with, community led one off campaigns, they will not be part of our mandate, they will remain with the Grants Committee.

##Disagree? Great! Make It Better.

It’s easy to read all this and say “No and here’s why”. But we believe we are all aligned that PoolTogether is ready for scale. We also agree that if we don’t invest in this moment and use our strength and resources as an advantage, we are going to lose far too much money and more importantly, our position as the clear market leader.

So we need your feedback on this proposal. But just don’t tell us what you don’t like and why, tell us how we can change our mandate, structure, mission and operations to allow for 2022 to be PoolTogether’s year of scale.

##Answers To Potential Issues

1. We aren’t addressing the user onboarding problem

I think we need to be honest with ourselves- onboarding non-crypto saavy depositors is not just a PT problem it’s a category truth. It is faced by every protocol that is not itself an onramp, from the big ones like Uniswap and Aave to the small ones that even we haven’t heard of.

While we definitely believe that PoolTogether should invest in streamlining it’s onboarding, this should be done in concert with our scalable marketing efforts, not before. The PT MWG, would be 100% supportive of creating and participating in an onboarding working group which would include members from the PT MWG, PT Dev, PT Community Advocates and PT Inc. However, we will save this for a second post.

2. Marketing for a protocol is not the same as marketing for a company

While this may be true, the PT MWG has seen direct advertising for Pancake Swap, Aave, Crypto.com, Coinbase, Coinsquare (Canada) and more on traditional media channels. It is important to recognize that growth involves moving from bleeding edge depositors, to leading edge depositors, to fast follower depositors. To these people, there is no difference between protocol and company, there is just opportunity, we need to make sure they understand PT’s brand and unique value proposition when they do.

All that being said- we are still on the bleeding edge, so there may be differences in marketing for a protocol. The only way to know if there are, is to try something and learn.

We’re taking mass market marketing strategy and customize it to the space. We welcome your feedback into the process in the marketing-wg channel!

3. We will grow with technical integrations e.g. with Rainbow Wallet

Absolutely we will! But integrations require effort on all sides- api integration, UX and communication, etc… The stronger the PT brand, the more momentum PT has, the easier it will be to find integration partners and for them to find us.

We’re taking a multi-pronged strategy here. As the space and offerings develop, we’ll take advantage of them, but in the meantime we need to build for what exists now and those efforts should pop even more as product integrations grow.

4. I have an idea for X tactic or Y strategy. You should do that

Yes and! But a scalable, profitable marketing strategy is grounded in understanding our users, their journey to find us and how they perceive who we are and how we can help them. That is why we need to do that work and share it with you all. Once you see it, we want to hear every idea you have as input in our strategy. If it doesn’t fit into the strategy that is ultimately built, and the community approves, then, please, please, please, apply for a grant to execute it yourself

We want to entertain every idea! But please don’t be discouraged if your idea does not come to fruition. It takes a lot of effort to bring something like your idea into existence. We’ll always entertain new ideas. And we could potentially integrate something similar into the marketing strategy in the future. Keep submitting your ideas!

5. Many projects have grown without marketing. Why do we need it?

Absolutely they have, just like PoolTogether has. But that doesn’t mean those projects didn’t start investing in marketing once they achieved growth. Every organization and project in the world has started to invest in marketing once it hits a certain level of growth, Pool Together has hit that level!

Marketing happens whether you focus on it or not. Not focusing on marketing is a marketing strategy. We want to give PoolTogether the best chance it can to scale in 2022.

6. We should keep marketing community driven with community based projects

Agreed. The marketing working group is community driven and a community project, just one that’s entirely focused on optimizing the marketing efforts of the protocol. The Grants Committee will keep working with the Community based initiatives e.g. the PT Community Substack allowing the PT MWG to focus on larger more structured projects

##Action Required

This post can serve as a guidepost for forming a PoolTogether Marketing Working Group. If the recommendations presented are agreeable, the Committee can work to create a Charter and propose a PTIP to form the Committee.

Do you support forming the PT Marketing Working Group as outlined above?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Unsure

0 voters

Please also add your thoughts and feedback as to the points outlined above and any other comments you have which can help us improve the vision and plan for the PT MWG.

Thank you for your time in reading the Proposal and giving us your feedback

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I appreciate the work and thought that went into writing such a comprehensive post. However, I do have some big remarks.

You mention that PT v4 has been growing at about $10M per month. Obviously, we are in the growth phase right now and this may taper off in the coming months (especially without proper marketing). However, I do find the goal of $20M over six months to be a pretty low bar given the current growth.

That is technically correct. But given that you also point out that we are currently at a large deficiency in terms of expenses related to PT v4, I do believe that the goal of the MWG narowly paying for its own operation is, again, a bit of a low bar to clear.

I also have some very big general question marks towards the budget.

First of all, on the topic of clarification. Are you requesting funding in POOL or USDC? Assuming external partners don’t care for POOL tokens, I’m guessing (at least partially) the latter. I am of the opinion that the MWG members should, at least partially, be paid in POOL tokens (and maybe even in uGMI tokens like with the Coordinape program). This is similar to how it happens in the TWG and it aligns your monetary incentives with the success of the PoolTogether protocol.

This is a very big ask. The GC did not receive any backpay when they started. The TWG received a 250 POOL backpay to be distributed over 7 members. This backpay was valued at about $2500 at the date of asking. You are essentially asking for triple that for 4 members as no other persons are appointed.

The monthly hours quoted here are very high and there seems to be very little distinction between co-chairs and standard committee members. Two co-chairs times 20 hours and five committee members times 15 hours equals 115 hours per month and a $11.5k monthly expense funded for six months. You are asking for a very high level of trust of the DAO without much to show for. The GC and the TWG only got approval for half that period in terms of their renumeration (and given that the POOL price took a nosedive, the TWG compensation is currently significantly lower than what’s being asked here).

That is a very high-level of autonomy. Drawing a parallel with the GC, the Bankless media campaign funded by the GC cost $16k and most (if not all) bigger expenses first went to the community for approval. I would probably be comfortable with a mandate of a $20k expense at most. $50k is too much in my mind.

I’m repeating myself here, but a $500k working budget without any previous work to show for is a lot. Yes, the GC has a similar budget, but their scope of the GC was (and is) much larger. They funded technical work, normal marketing work (e.g. Bankless DAO) and tutorials by influencers (e.g. Kris Kay). As a personal standpoint, I was also way more familiar with the people forming the GC.

In summary, I don’t think the PT DAO is anywhere near the size to approve an expense of this size towards what is essentially an experiment. What I would propose is to start smaller. We can allocate a smaller renumeration budget for at most three months (similarly to how it was approved for the GC and TWG) and a much smaller marketing budget for those three months, e.g. $100k. This marketing budget can then be used to set up at least two succesfull campaigns after which we can reevalute the MWG.

Following is a general remark, not necessarily related to this post. I know that both the GC and the ET (executive team) are receiving $100/h and I’ve always considered that to be a pretty high rate. Note that a similar request was flat out denied for the TWG and it was switched to a pure POOL renumeration system. I do wonder if we want to pay everyone that does any work for the DAO such a high rate. This seems unsustainable.

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@drcpu thank you for this. You make a lot of great points, but I want to call your attention and introduce you to one thing: always on marketing. It is very important to understand the difference between ‘always on’ and ‘campaign windows’.

Here is a good article that explains more about always on and it’s differences from a campaign based approach.

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I agree with @drcpu that this proposal asks for far too much money and sets a very low bar for success at only 20MM TVL added. If we can only add 20MM TVL in the next 6 months we have failed as a community IMO. I support hiring a third party marketing firm but don’t think a MWG is necessary to do so. Our marketing has not been to the standard that I would have hoped for so far but this proposal hasn’t set a clear enough plan to get my vote. I would rather see PT Inc hire a third party marketing team and make some more hires centered around marketing and communication that will directly work with their team.

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I am the first person to admit I have zero knowledge about marketing. However, I am not arguing against the asks in this proposal from a marketing standpoint, but from the viewpoint that the treasury cannot support such a big ask. Furthermore, even if it could, I don’t think we should delegate more than half a million dollars without a trial project to show what you as a group can achieve.

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@TheRealTuna, I’m not sure how to not be offended by this take. Between @tim @anneo and myself we have 40+ years experience working at, building from the ground up and managing third party agencies. The cost for PT. inc to hire only one of us to manage a third party agency would be significantly more than the $100,000 over the six month period that we are asking for ALL of us. Not to mention, that any third party agency would still cost upwards of $500,000.

So all I see you saying here is- pts marketing is not good enough, but instead of trusting a group of qualified pt members, led by a long time and proven pt community member as a co-chair, all of whom are willing to take significant discounts over what they would be usually compensated, to set a brief, run a process and select the right agency partners, then manage and be accountable for the results of that agency. You would rather hire a third party agency without any proposed process to do so and no clear brief or mandate other than ‘make our marketing better’ and make PT inc responsible for managing the agency?

Maybe I’m misinterpreting…but I need help seeing how.

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@drcpu This is a fair question. Is PT ready to invest in growth?

I mean things are good. PT is already growing and a lot of good things are happening…so perhaps the bet isnt necessary.

I also understand the hesitation with a group you don’t know. The issue is, lowering the working budget takes away our ability to work with the agencies necessary to deliver results. That is why we created two community advisory/oversight positions monitor and guide the group.

Our objective in putting this together is to be as collaborative and transparent as the community demands. We understand this is PTs first big investment and we don’t take it lightly…but we know that less really hampers our ability to deliver.

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Tough to know the value you can bring without knowing the details of your combined 40+ years experience. Was not my intention to offend or insult and we very well may be missing out by not approving this proposal. I just don’t feel like we know you well enough to commit this amount of money based on the presented plan. @SmartInvestor is the only person in this group who has been a part of this community long enough for us to get to know, as far as I know the rest of the group joined the community just before this idea was formed. I have no marketing experience and don’t have the answers but I am not sold on this proposal yet.

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@TheRealTuna so not knowing much about myself, Tim or Anne makes complete sense. I don’t know when Tim or Anne joined, but I’ve been here for just one month.

As Ive told few people, the nature of daos as a community that anyone can join are fascinating and I’m here to learn as much as I am to contribute.

But if that is your hold up, I at least and I’m sure the others as well, would be more than happy to present our backgrounds, experiences,.some campaigns and clients we’ve been involved with and of course be available to talk with anyone in the community one on one, or in a group setting to answer any questions.

But what makes a 3rd party agency any more trustworthy?

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Thank you @Loitering_Gorilla for the proposal! I appreciate you spear-heading marketing efforts for PoolTogether; it’s currently a blind spot for us. I think we need a marketing team, especially with the launch of V4, so your proposal comes at an opportune time.

That being said, I said no to the proposal as outlined. Largely for these reasons:

  • Heavy reliance on outsourcing
  • Low targets
  • Large budget without any track record

I think we need to grow the DAO: to grow our expertise and knowledge. Hiring third parties for marketing research and strategy runs counter to this; I would prefer to see a marketing DAO that hires talent, rather than outsourcing to costly third parties that lack any understanding or context. Third parties make sense for one-off campaigns for design and execution, but I believe the research and strategy needs to be in-house. Strategy is long-term, and hiring consultants who don’t understand our protocol isn’t the most effective approach.

The targets outlined in the proposal are low. I estimate we need at least $70m to cover current prize subsidies, and easily another $30m or more to cover operating expenses. We currently have ~7200 users, which were acquired over two and a half months, so an additional 3000 users over 6 months is a low bar.

The $500k USD you requested is about 11% of our entire treasury. I think that’s quite reasonable for an effective marketing team. However, without a track record and a clear execution strategy I think it’s a big ask. More value needs to be proven before having that kind of budget.

Finally, I believe the MWG should be autonomous. The MWG is a marketing venture to whom we give funds and expect ROI. To that extent, perhaps we shouldn’t even be dictating how you run your team: you have a budget and all we care about is results. Of course, transparency does give us trust. The PT Marketing Group should have full autonomy in how those funds are best spent. This is why we have a marketing group- because we are deferring to the experts to make decisions.

So to summarize, these are the changes I’d like to see:

  • Primarily develop research and strategic talent in-house as full or part-time hires. Let’s retain the knowledge! We need to do this more as a protocol.
  • Set ambitious targets that are significant to the protocol
  • Start with a smaller, leaner budget and prove your worth.
  • Spend your budget unilaterally. You are the experts, we trust you.

I’d like to hear your thoughts. I also think it’s a point worthy of discussion by the PT community; of thinking of the MWG as a venture. They are autonomous and we expect results.

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Well, quite unexpectedly I suddenly find myself put in a very precarious position, between the need to stand up for myself and the time I have put into being an active participating core member of the “MWG” on one side, and on the other side; maintaining the integrity of my still very optimistic outlook on the positive contributions I know I can contribute going forward.

I am at a bit of a loss for words here to be honest. I am though actually shocked and disappointed, that somehow in the course of the last day or so, for whatever mysterious reason; my colleagues by intention, or by oversight, snubbed my name from the list above.

Somehow in the last day or so, the list went from looking like this:

To; as seen in this document above…?

Here is what I wrote to @SmartInvestor, after being asked to submit what my compensation request was for the work done in the last month:

Bottom line; it’s just not right. It actually makes me seriously question the intentions of those involved. Specifically I think @SmartInvestor and @ LoiteringGorilla did not act in good faith in not giving me the credit and recognition, that I believe I deserve, for the contributions to the group that I made. And by not including me in the dialog that continued (above), and not projecting my future involvement in their calculations. I have no way to fully know their motive. But, by “doing me like they did”, pulling the rug out from under me at the last moment; If it does not show a lack of trustworthy character, than it at least shows very short sightedness, by doing something so unnecessary and self defeating. I would put my name on the line to defend anyone else put in a situation like this, so it is only right that I also stand up for myself. Not to get too deep on it; But, without integrity, what does one have?

I welcome anyone to please go ahead and put, "from: StarTreeTV​:ocean::trophy:#3103 “ into the discord search bar, and go all the way back to the end of Nov, to get an idea of in fact , just how much time and energy I have indeed contributed.

I could have just not responded here in this way. But, would that have really been the right thing to do? Trust me when I say, I don’t appreciate having been made to feel like I had little choice but to make a stink. I really hope the community here does not see these words as negative, because that is not how I see it. I see it as being positively strong and proactive.

To be clear; the above proposal highlights what was primarily the hard driven narrative that @SmartInvestor was so adamant about pushing forward in his vision of the absolute need to purely hire outside agencies for the execution of mass marketing campaigns, after the discovery phase of customer and market research.

Multiple times it was brought up by others in the MWG, to varying degree, that they had interest in not only participating themselves in marketing initiatives, but also that involving the broader community in such, as at least a piece of the overall marketing plan, seemed like a good idea. I specifically advocated that there should be a hybrid approach, whereby which the MWG would act at the the central organizing body to help coordinate, and oversee all of the marketing initiative sponsored by the PT DAO. I had put forth the idea that when it comes time to execute marketing activities, that maybe 70-80% of that part of the budget could go to outside agencies, but that 20-30% should be under the MWG discretion to use for spearheading marketing campaigns utilizing the talent and resources of those within the community. Ultimately @SmartInvestor was calling the shots, and these ideas were shut down and dismissed as not being part of the agenda for the MWG as per his perspective.

I have a lot to potentially continue to contribute here, and I am still very optimistic and hopeful that we can find the most mutually beneficial, organizational working structure, that strikes the right balance for optimum results.

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this great surely will boost pooltogether name on crypto world

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Been a bit “offline” the last few days and catching up today. It seems most of the feedback I had has been addressed by other community members already. My original feedback on the first draft of the proposal can be seen here (and a few messages after)

The main question I still have though is:

What good does it do to spend $500k on advertising PoolTogether if there is no easy on-ramp and guide for depositors?

People will hear about PoolTogether and that’s great, but with the amount of friction involved to get into crypto I have doubts on how many [ad] viewers would actually be converted to depositors.

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I appreciate your attempt at transparency here. It’s never an easy thing to share. @BRONDER has an interesting idea I’d like to work on with him, would be great if we can include you!

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Hey @AndyKaufman this was our thoughts on the onboarding issue…i know the document got longer since you provided notes, not shorter, sorry.

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in other words, yes the onboarding issue needs to be solved as best it can as a top priority. We should commission a cross-functional group to try to solve it.

However, we don’t know yet if the onboarding challenge is our lowest hanging fruit. I will give you an example: I was speaking to a couple of people that I know who were in crypto WAAAAY earlier than I was and was pushing PT. Both of their responses were- “Why would I enter a lottery for a protocol that is farming on Aave when I could just go and generate 20% APY or higher on my own”…

All I’m saying is there MAY be a large swath of people out there who are cyrpto saavy and can be persuaded to deposit in PT, they just need different messaging. I don’t know this to be true, we would need to do the work to determine who are the easiest segments to attract and how to attract them.

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I’d say that most people on crypto are here to invest, and mostly willing to take high-risks/high-rewards.
Meanwhile PoolTogether offers the exact opposite, because it’s not an investment , it’s a savings account, which offers an incentive for people to save money and accumulate wealth themselves, all this with minimal risk, clearly not the thing that the “crypto mainstream” may be looking for but there is for sure demand outside (altho heck, even your friend who can make over 20% on his own needs a savings account right?)

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@SmartInvestor @Loitering_Gorilla and everyone else who has worked on this, thank you!

I know a ton of work goes into creating a proposal like this. For months (maybe years :)) people have been saying that PoolTogether needs more marketing and you have stepped up to get it done! I really value and respect that.

First a few comments mostly on structure:

  • Structurally I would like to see the marketing team to be more empowered and a bit leaner. I think ideally only have one lead is better. We tried two leads with the grants committee and that led to issues. I’d go for one lead and consider removing

  • On this note, have you considered having a full time lead? I think it should be considered at least. If none of the current members want to do it we could look to find someone. Obviously having a full time person would require a higher level of diligence

  • I’d also go easier on what you have to bring back for full votes. I think ideally governance can approve something and then you can pretty much run autonomously

Comments on substance

The budget contains three separate asks 1) payment for marketing DAO members 2) execution of a research campaign by a third party and 3) execution of a marketing campaign by a third party. I’m 100% aligned with #1, I’m aligned with #2 but not sure on the method of execution method. I don’t think #3 makes sense right now. Additionally, #3 makes up 70% of the total budget so eliminating that piece at minimum makes the proposal much more feasible as a first step. Finally, (correct me if I’m wrong), but it does seem that #1 and #2 are independent of #3? We could do the first two and that would not preclude us from doing #3 later?

I’d love to see this project start with a grant that:

  • Forms who the marketing committee is and how it operates
  • Funds payment for the marketing committee to start working by doing the ethnographic research and also researching the most effective marketing methods from other protocols.

Quite simply I think DeFi protocols are too nascent and too unique to be adequately handled by agencies. Additionally, I think we have resources in PoolTogether that have professional skills in doing this sort of research.

Most effective protocol marketing I’ve seen has been organic and meme based (think 3,3). I don’t believe I’ve seen any major DeFi protocols do any direct to consumer marketing. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t of course but I’d love as a first step in this all for the marketing committee to actually reach out and interview all major DeFi protocols on how they handle marketing! I think we could learn a ton before we outsource this to an agency.

So these are my initial basically I love the motivation and group, I’d just rather pay to have this group work more deeply and understand our unique opportunities better rather than contract that out. I think we’ll get a better result with more long term knowledge accumulation. That doesn’t stop us from doing a paid campaign if we want in the future but it means we will have a much better understanding of what that would look like.

Also, I’d nominate Kris Kay to be on this team!

Thank you again to everyone who has worked on this!!

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I mean this makes sense, but I’ve seen it a million times before, just because something seems logical, doesn’t mean it is.

Until we do the work to audit the silent majority (the non-posting depositors) to learn who they are, whats going on in their lives, why a lottery savings account appeals them, we are just guessing.

Could the audit reinforce what we already know? Absolutely, but what if it doesn’t and there is a whole category of people that we can get to deposit that we would have completely overlooked otherwise?

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Oh! For sure! I totally see stuff like surveys on the website giving very useful insight, I’m just stating what the protocol is aiming for