If you haven’t read the MWG Creative Process Primer, I recommend you do. With PoolTogether’s coming launch on Optimism, the MWG would like to create a campaign to drive excitement and help achieve our goal of an additional $20 million in TVL.
We will attempt to build this creative campaign as a test, in concert with the community using the bounty program. We will discuss this further and add/edit our updates as necessary.
THE BRIEF
Background
Since the launch of the Pool Token in 2021, the PoolTogether community has grown in both size and strength. With members across the globe from different ages, backgrounds and skill sets, the community has fully embraced its role as evangelist for the PoolTogether protocol while also taking accountability for its growth. In early 2022, the community agreed that it was time for the protocol to expand to a new layer 2 chain - Optimism. Why?
At its peak, the PoolTogether protocol had more than $150 million of TVL committed, primarily through the Ethereum blockchain. Despite the fact that the PoolTogether protocol has continually enhanced its product with the launch of its v3 and then v4 offerings which were built to directly address depositor and community requests, TVL has decreased to over $50 million today.
Although the exact reason for this drop is unknown, the primary belief is that the Ethereum blockchain was not a strong enough partner to support the PoolTogether protocols. Specifically, the high gas fees associated with the Ethereum chain made many of the prizes PoolTogether was rewarding unattractive. While the protocol attempted to address these concerns by expanding onto the Polygon and Avalanche chains, security concerns with bridges and the high costs of moving funds failed to capture the interest of the previous depositors.
In 2022 however, the community saw two emerging trends that presented the opportunity to re-capture the previous depositors of PoolTogether:
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The Summer Of Layer 2s- For years now, the Web3 community has been waiting for Etherium’s promised change from proof of work, to proof of stake. Although the merge has been officially been announced for August 2022, others have endeavored to solve the scaling and environmental problems posed by the Ethereum main net. These solutions: ZK Rollups and Optimistic Roll Ups have now been tested and are gaining traction across Web3. They allow for the security provided by the Ethereum Mainnet, but also scale transaction speeds, decrease gas costs and operate at significantly lower energy consumption. The summer of 2022 is poised to be the time when these ‘layer 2’ protocols become the primary chains of operation across DeFi and Web3.
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The ReFi (Regenerative Finance) Movement - This movement is gaining traction and is the concept of using money as a tool to solve systematic problems and regenerate communities and natural environments. People, and specifically the Web3 community, is increasingly looking for ways in which they can use the value that they are driving.
With these two trends in mind, the PoolTogether community zeroed in on Optimism as the perfect opportunity to expand the protocol. The specific reasons that the community believe that Optimism is the perfect layer 2 to expand to are because:
- Many of the previous PoolTogether depositors already hold assets on the Optimism chain
- PoolTogether’s mission of financial literacy and incentivized savings align perfectly with the ReFi movement, which the Optimism community has fully embraced.
Additionally, Optimism is air dropping tokens to Optimism users, is willing to work with PoolTogether on a co-marketing initiative and is potentially willing to provide incentives for PoolTogether to reward depositors on Optimism.
The Ask:
Drive deposits into PoolTogether on Optimism from the lowest hanging fruit:
- People who know about PoolTogether and are on Optimism
- People who are on Optimism and looking for dAPPs that qualify for airdrops
- People who know about Optimism and are deposited in or know about PoolTogether on mainnet.
THE OBJECTIVE
Optimism does security and community better than any other chain that PoolTogether already supports. As a result, we believe there are $20 million worth of incremental deposits on optimism from people that wanted to deposit into PoolTogether, but didn’t trust the security of Polygon or Avalanche and didn’t like the fees of mainnet.
The objective is to identify both communication channels and to craft communication messaging that can stimulate our target audience to take action.
THE AUDIENCES
Primary Audience:
People who are not currently deposited into PoolTogether but have assets on Optimism and know about PoolTogether
These people are very community-driven. They hold a disproportionate amount of their assets on Optimism, and they have already experienced financial growth. These people are generally strong believers in the REFI movement and believe that Optimism and the applications that sit on top of it, can help drive greater public utility while also rewarding individual contributors.
They are looking for protocols that help them qualify for the airdrop, and PoolTogether MIGHT help them qualify for future AirDrops.
Secondary Audience
We believe there are two secondary audiences who already have a base knowledge abou Optimism:
People who had previously deposited into PoolTogether on MainNet and are no longer depositors
These people are early depositors in PoolTogether who liked the concept of PoolTogether but decided to move their funds out of PoolTogether. (Perhaps because fees were too high to claim deposits.) These people likely know about and are intrigued by Optimism and may be willing to move some of their assets from Mainnet to Optimism and deposit them in PoolTogether if they believed they could both earn additional rewards and participate in the refi movement.
People with assets on MainNet and are familiar with PoolTogether and are not depositors
These individuals are intrigued with the PoolTogether protocol and are interested in depositing but they either don’t trust, or don’t want to use Polygon or Avalanche as they are worried about the security of bridges and the underlying chains themselves. They have never gone through the process of depositing into PoolTogether, but for the right mix of incentives and social good, they would be willing to do so.
Tertiary (Lowest Priority) Audience
People who have deposited to PoolTogether on Polygon or Avalanche and are looking for more secure blockchains (and don’t know Optimism)
THE KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPIs)
- $20 million TVL
- 20% increase social conversation (tweets, retweets, memes)
- 50% increase in web traffic
- Increased community participation
INSIGHTS
Consumer Insights:
Insight 1: Investors want to prove that Defi can be a force for good
Insight 2: Investors want the opportunity to earn rewards
Category: Community driven initiatives prove the power of decentralization
Culture: It is time to consider regenerative finance and use the power of community to simultaneously drive the public good and individual returns.
SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION POINT
YOU can win prizes while helping build a real world use case for REFI on Optimism
REASON TO BELIEVE
Why should a customer be confident in the truth of our message? How do we prove value? How is purchase/action worth it to users?
- Optimism offers all the benefits of Etherium with greater safety and scalability
- You can win and claim small daily prizes cost effectively
- The more deposits, the greater the prizes, the more savings exist
- Both Optimism and PoolTogether have strong communities working towards the mission of creating financial tools for good
TACTICS
Where should we act? Where will it be seen? How will people find this content?
This campaign is about re-engaging people who already know about Optimism, and as a result, should target both media and messaging to those who have already deposited. Some potential tactics that can be considered:
Earned:
A community meme challenge/bounty
A NFT campaign like the Valentine’s Day campaign
A Web3 podcast tour with PoolTogether and Optimism
Join Optimism demo day
Owned:
A microsite like fixsavingsaccounts.com that explains how PT is fixing savings and invites Optimism depositors to help
A video highlighting what PoolTogether’s launch on Optimism means for depositors
A social media content calendar with unique posts promoting PoolTogether and Optimism
A refi-based email campaign
Paid:
Media campaigns/partnerships focused on Optimism centric media properties
Influencer campaigns with leading Optimism influencers
TIMING
The launch of this campaign will need to follow the launch of PoolTogether on Optimism which could be as early as June 15 early July is the most likely
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS or WATCH-OUTS
It is very important to keep the focus of this campaign on our target and not devolve into the larger challenges of raising PoolTogether’s awareness within the larger crypto/web3 space or attracting new depositors to defi or elsewhere.
Budget
If we are successful in driving $20 million of incremental TVL to Optimism, a budget of $75,000-$125,00 is realistic. However, this budget MUST include any and all media fees, sponsorships, production costs as well as any compensation for those managing any aspect of this project.
If the Branding/Steering group is not convinced that this campaign cannot drive $20 million of incremental TVL, the budget will need to be reduced accordingly.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS/ASSETS
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They are currently in “Phase 0” which is open to projects that have already deployed on Optimism
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We most likely would be a part of “Phase 1” which will be after the OP Token officially launches (June)
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Their process around incentive approval is much more transparent and governance-based than other protocols. They are favoring projects that are already on Optimism and have some proven traction.
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They favor multiple phases for incentives, with distribution of additional incentives based on benchmarks that have been agreed upon
Basically, the next step is for us to figure out an exact deployment date. We will then coordinate marketing with them. Depending on what the launch date is, we will either 1) launch without incentives and then present our plan as part of phase 1 or 2) potentially get put into phase 0, so there are incentives at launch.
I specifically presented them with an incentive plan based on reaching $25 million and 10,000 depositors in the first 10 weeks. This was the “phase 1”, my projections were that 450,000 OP tokens would enable us to reach that.