Budget System v2 / Transform PR

[stan.distortion]

I propose to make a step back and evaluate where do we stand. That's because I believe the confusion about marketing goes deeper than the conundrum around Transform PR developments.

Firstly let us face it: we are the lunatic fringe (in the most positive sense of the term) of society. What DASH wants to achieve? Perhaps to be accepted as "A Privacy-Centric Crypto-Currency" as the original Darkcoin / DASH Whitepaper states. It is based on Satoshi work that defines Bitcoin as "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash (that) would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution," so it is quite clear that what Bitcoin / DASH and the crypto community as whole wants (can, it may be able to...) achieve is a gigantic shift of biblical proportions that would disrupt the very core of the way how the world works. Never before an invention had a chance to face off with the powers to be and, perhaps, even win. (or at least find its niche)

At one hand we have a brilliant team of developers and tireless people around the foundation putting endless hours into creating a narrative about this exciting project but we got caught into the ancient PR (as in Press Releases) thinking that does not live up to the genius of the project itself. Moreover, we face the very core question each new product (idea) faces: who is our "buyer persona," who is our ideal customer, our target?

To place a PR or an interview into CriptoNoticias or CoinTelegraph, contrary to the popular belief, does not do us much good.
Luckily we have several very CLEAR pointers:

-- DASH is an ASSET. In the U.S. it is a virtual currency and as such "treated as property for U.S. Federal Tax Purposes," and in tungfa and flare's native Germany, it is a "private money" that can be used in "multilateral clearing circles," and in Australia DASH, and all other crypto-currencies is "an asset for capital gains tax (CGT) purposes." A crystal clear disclaimer ("DASH fiat value might go to zero") can than be used to promote Class "A" shares of the DASH, that are its MASTERNODES. As I type this, one DASH is priced at $3.70 and each MN provides an income of 0.34 DASH per day. That gives 0.34 DASH x 365 days = 124.10 DASH a year x $3.70 = $459.17 dividend per a year on an investment of $3,700.00 pays an investor a hefty 12.41% interest a year. The Wolf of Wall Street anyone? We can sell the idea of PROFIT to the wider audience. With a fantastic twist: think of Jobs and Wozniak working in the garage on Apple. And now think of them giving you a chance to MAKE PROFIT while they are still development what ended up being the most valuable company in the world. if this is not a framework for a fantastic pitch, I do not know what it is. Thusly, we have our targets - investors all over the world. A small script can run these numbers in real time and provide with historical values, all of which are beneficial for the DASH.

-- DASH transfers MONEY. (instantaneously, almost fee free) Yes, we want DASH to become The Money of the future but for now we have a huge number of people that transfer the money via Western Union et.al, a money-grubbing bastards I'd like to see vanishing from the face of Earth. "WorldRemit Gets $45M At A $500M Valuation To Grow Its Mobile Money Transfer Business," to "a remittance market that the World Bank estimates will be worth $610 billion in 2016." Well, isn't that a service for the future our Governance model can fund to be developed and than reach out toward the retail customer and venture capital alike?

-- DASH is PRIVATE. Kristof Atlas was paid to analyze the code and "identified no significant security vulnerabilities in the closed source Darkcoin (now DASH) code." Now think:
a) of people like Nick Szabo etc., that may be approached to analyze what DASH's advantages might mean for the new world of the crypto;
b) of people like Snowden, Occupy, Ai Weiwei, Assange, Greenwald and yes, Chomsky et.al, that value privacy and anonymity in the Orwellian nightmare the powers to be have been creating for all of us and think dissidents, journalists or simple a people in need for private and anonymous payments to their therapists... and you'll see how we'd be able to start building, not only awareness, but also the businesses around numerous features DASH offers;
c) of academics like David Graeber and his Debt: The First 5000 Years book. We approach him to pull Atlas, and analyze (and publish) what DASH might mean. And yes, we pay him for his work. Compare that with the idiotic payment for Press Releases Google started to penalize a year or so ago...

Opportunities are endless!

-- DASH is INNOVATIVE. Evan is Benjamin Franklin of crypto. His Governance Self-sustainable Decentralized Governance by Blockchain idea is a social experiment of the highest order. Academics and students alike can, in real time (Dash Whale) follow the experiment and talk / write about it...

I can go on forever but would like to hear is what I wrote here idiotic or not first :smile:

It's not and you know it Posting more to bump it than anything else but a thought after reading it that may be worth adding, if a PR company does a good job the price will rise and maybe they should be willing to back their work with that, work at cost now and the the more effective they are, the more they profit. Maybe that sounds crazy but if someone's selling a product or service that promises a return on investment then basing their profits on that return on investment pretty much guarantees they're offering something genuine.
Just a thought And who does Putins PR? Worth every kopeyka whoever they are, maybe they'll work for Dash

 

[InTheWoods]

stan.distortion

It's called Ketchum http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/11/confessions-of-a-putin-spin-doctor.html

https://www.ketchum.com/

 

[masternode]

i do not agree
Being on the floor at Miami Conference really showed us that people have no idea about Dash and what we do.
Any News helps, the wider spread the better, there is still a LOT of educating to do.
I think the price rise was more connected to the Conferences than anything, (i saw people buy right there at the conference after talking to us) but the Terpin PR helped, there is no doubt.....

Tungfa, I realize that you guys are doing a lot of work on the PR front, and I have much respect for that. By no means do I want to take anything away from that or seem ungrateful with this post. I'm going to run through this exercise not because I'm trying to discredit the value of PR but because I think we really need to calibrate perspective. I'll also try and stay away from opinions here and just stick to facts.

During the Dash price run up in January, the daily traded volume was consistently between $500k and $1M across the various exchanges (I was aware of this because i'm always looking at volumes of coins). These are not small numbers. So you have to ask yourself, what can possibly happen that will bring in this kind of volume into a coin? Was it Terpin's PR efforts for Dash? Was it the conference? Was it problems occurring in BTC? Was it the recent and massive wave of hype surrounding blockchain tech in general? Was it just a pump team trying to exploit an unsophisticated market? Or was it something else?

If you look at the Dash volume during this stretch you'll see how signficant it was (which the white arrow points to). Keep in mind this chart is from Poloniex (since Bitfinex and Cryptsy no longer trade Dash). But as you can see It was an insane swell of money that came pouring into the Dash market in January.

So, back in May / June 2014, before I was in any way officially involved with the Darkcoin foundation or Darkcoin other than being a coin holder, Otoh and I managed to persuade Bitfinex to list Darkcoin (which wasn't easy). I don't think anyone would argue that optically this was one of the bigger events to happen in the history of Dash, as at that time Bitfinex was one of the largest exchanges in the world (and still is). You could even say that this was a huge event to happen to any altcoin in 2014, since Bitfinex had never before listed any coin other than Bitcoin and Litecoin. Anyway, I remember that event well, because people were buying like crazy and the price surged massively from 0.0125 to around 0.025 on the day it was announced. Obviously the people buying Darkcoin were all people within the crypto community who were knowledgeable about both Darkcoin and Bitfinex. However, even with how big that event was, the volume on the day of the Bitfinex announcement was not nearly as significant as the volume we saw in Dash during the upward spikes in January this year. In the chart below you can see the volume from Bitfinex announcement on June 2, 2014 on Cryptsy (where most of the volume was back then). So looking at both of these charts we have some perspective for exactly how much volume came into the market this January. It was a really big deal.

Now if you know Elliot wave theory, you'll see that there are three impulse waves upward in Dash price that occurred in January (and three volume spikes as well) which correspond to waves 1, 3, and 5 of the pump. So looking at the Poloniex Dash chart (the top one), you'll see that wave 1 was on Dec 27th taking the price to 0.00975, wave 3 was on January 14th taking the price to 0.0139 and wave 5 was on Jan 20th taking the price to 0.017 (which was the final capitulation). In unsophisticated bubble markets like those in crypto, the trading behavior almost always follows Elliot wave theory during these massive pumps. So the pump cycle occurred specifically between Dec. 27th and Jan 20th. However, the Miami Bitcoin conference didn't kick off until January 25th. So according to this chronology you can rule out that it was the conference that caused the increase in price.

Well, there was some overlap on the dates that Terpin started sending out press releases and when the final leg of the pump (5th impulse wave) happened. Terpin sent out his first release on 1/19 and by 1/23 he had sent out a total of 9 releases (about half of the total he managed to do for us). I could be mistaken here, but the list of outlets that these releases went to wasn't all that impressive in my opinion (AllCoinsNews, Coin Telegraph, Bitcoinist, Finance Magnates, Bankless Times, Crypto Mining Blog, CryptoCurrency Buzz and CryptoNoticias). But by the 19th the pump was already fully underway, as the third impulsive leg was on the 14th before Terpin had sent out releases and the final breakout was on the 24th after Terpin had sent his releases. So looking at this you can pretty much see it wasn't the PR that caused the pump. The pump was already going. However, it is possible that the PR gave us an extra push in that last wave up. I'll give him that.

So we pretty much know it wasn't the conference, because that happened after the swell in price. And because of Elliot Wave theory we know that the swell was already underway on the 19th when PR started going out. Terpin could have been responsible for some of the pump, but the questions is how signficant could that have really been when he got us into a small handful of sub-premium publications? (by sub-premium I mean one's that aren't NYT, WSJ, Wired, etc.). Also you have to consider that a previous major event in our past didn't even get us the kind of buying volume we saw in this period (i.e. us getting listed on Bitfinex). So looking at all this from this perspective it looks like the PR may have nudged the price up a little, but it was definitely not the cause.

In case you are wondering why I thought it was Mike Hearn that caused the swell in Dash volume, it's because the timing of his freak out fits just right. The blocksize / scalability issues and debate had been going on for some time in bitcoin. This eventually culminated with Mike Hearn's freak out on 1/16 which likely triggered the final wave up on the dash price a few days later. This mess had been a serious and ongoing discussion in Bitcoin, so many people were aware of this problem. A lot of people have very large bitcoin positions, and naturally with all the infighting that led up to Hearn's freak out a lot of people were probably looking for alternatives to BTC to hedge themselves (while still making bets on crypto). If you take the time to look at these other premium altcoins you will also see they experienced a swell in volume around January as well. Check out Ripple, Stellar, Monero (ewww gross), Bitshares, and most obviously Ethereum (which started 1/11 and is still pumping today). And lastly you'll notice that in January Litecoin did NOT pick up in volume or price. So as you can see, the coins that are likely to do well as an alternatives to BTC picked up a ton of volume in January, and Litecoin which is a total shitcoin walking zombie got none of it (because any investors with half a brain would realize this will go straight down the toilet if Bitcoin does).

Again, I'm bringing all this up because I think it can help us really study everything and figure out what is the best decision to make in terms of PR. My opinion is that pushing press releases to cryptocentric publications probably isn't gonna do all that much for Dash. But do you know what will? Getting an article in a premium publication like Wired magazine will. It's almost as if people forgot how much of an impact a real good article in a premium publication can do for a coin. Remember that cryptsy chart above and the massive run up in price to 0.0274? Well the swell started a couple months prior to that 0.0274 peak because people were starting to get all excited about anon coins for the first time. And the volume in that run up was epic. It eventually culminated with the help of a really well timed article that wasn't orchestrated, it happened to be released organically. Here it is:

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/darkcoin-is-booming/

I personally would rather forget about price and focus on getting Evolution up and running solid. Let's let our product speak for itself. Then after it starts getting early traction and good feedback we can look into setting up a well timed article in a major publication. Hell, I'd much rather wait and pay one person $18k for a single well timed article in the NYT, WSJ or wired (etc.) than to have someone do PR for us for 3 months in crypto type publications. I think we should treat the marketing of this coin not all that much different than how good artist development in the music industry is done (which could be a useful thing for us to study if we want to learn how to get consumers to adopt this coin). Let's focus on quality products, growing slowly and not trying to get too far ahead of ourselves while continuing to find clever ways to get people excited. If we do too much PR when we don't have fresh and incredible things to report, we'll start seem like a lot of the one hit wonders that try and go straight to radio without properly building up a fanbase. I'm not saying we don't have a ton going on, I just think we can wait til we have something really big going on and then make sure we get it covered by a publication that is actually really big as well. Then we'll get noticed in the right way imo.

-Ed

 

[GreyGhost]

Again, I'm bringing all this up so that we can really study everything and figure out what is the best decision to make in terms of PR. My opinion is that pushing press releases to cryptocentric publications probably isn't gonna do all that much for Dash. But do you know what will? Getting an article in Wired magazine. It's almost as if people forgot how much of an impact a real good article in a premium publication can do for a coin. Remember that cryptsy chart above and the massive run up in price to 0.0274? Well the swell started a couple months prior to that 0.0274 peak because people were starting to get all excited about anon coins for the first time. It eventually culminated with the help of a really well timed article that was simply released organically. Here it is:
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/darkcoin-is-booming/
-Ed

Ditto. That approach - relying to PR alone -- is almost a total fraud. I stated earlier, I can place a PR to 200++ websites, Google News, Yahoo Finance News etc., for about $225.00 using a service of my IM partner. So it is ridiculous to charge a small fortune for niche, crypto online publications.

Even PR sites were severely penalized by Google a while ago:

I personally would rather forget about price and focus on getting Evolution up and running solid. Let's let our product speak for itself. Then after it starts getting early traction and good feedback we can look into setting up a well time article in a major publication. Hell, I'd much rather wait and pay one person $18k for a single article in the NYT, WSJ or wired (etc.) than to have someone do PR for us for 3 months in crypto type publications. I think we should treat the marketing of this coin not all that much different than how good artist development in the music industry is done (which could be a useful thing for us to study if we want to learn how to get consumers to adopt this coin). Let's focus on quality products, growing slowly and not trying to get too far ahead of ourselves while continuing to find clever ways to get people excited. If we do too much PR when we don't have fresh and incredible things to report, we'll start seem like a lot of the one hit wonder's that try and go straight to radio without properly building up a fanbase. I'm not saying we don't have a ton going, I just think we can wait til we have something really big going on and then make sure we get it covered by a publication that is actually really big as well. Then we'll get noticed in the right way imo.
-Ed

Ditto again. And, frankly, EVERYONE needs new content, new developments etc., and I am sure even NYT, WSJ, Wired people would publish a thoughtful analysis / article about DASH from someone reputable. Some ideas along these lines I myself have outlined earlier @ https://dashtalk.org/threads/budget-system-v2-transform-pr.7991/page-4#post-84045

 

[TheDashGuy]

Where did all of these people above me loaded with common sense come from? Where were you guys a month ago when I was about to get thrown off the Dash boat??

Anyways, great analysis of the actual facts.


Oh and:

It's not and you know it if a PR company does a good job the price will rise

Thats the whole problem here. No PR company is going to make everyone rich, stop hoping for the easy profitable way out and go help with a project! Go recruit new users, hell why not go to a local merchant and explain the benefits of Dash to them.

Just for the love of god get off of this PR is going to save us campaign everyone. PLEASE. Makes the whole dang community look scammy. We have a great product and we need to keep building and supporting that product. not marketing it or worrying about the stupid premine scam trolls. A PR company is a HUGE waste of funds. Especially right now.

 

[TroyDASH]

Also, there is something to be said about measuring the success of PR by things other than DASH price. I'm not really interested in pumping DASH if we aren't bringing in people who are going to be actively involved in the DASH community/economy. The focus needs to be on innovation and a vibrant community where people are excited about what we can actually do with DASH.

 

[Solarminer]

masternode, great analysis. The facts speak for themselves.

Ok so this thread is also talking about the budget system. Just giving a few opinions on how we should make this change.

I pay for advertising with my company. Lately they have been providing no traffic. I complained and threatened to quit. Surprise, the next day several calls. I know they just threw a bunch of money into adwords, which is ok. But they were slacking off not paying attention. If I had an irrevocable payment setup they wouldn't have responded to my complaints.

I also see the problem that we have no hysteresis between yes and no. Theoretically, one masternode could switch the vote back and forth.
Now:
Proposal to pass = 10%(350) yes votes more than no votes
Proposal to cancel = 10%(349) yes votes more than no votes

How about we change this (for contracts only)
Proposal to pass = 20%(700) yes votes more than no votes = 2000 Yes/1300 No
Proposal to cancel = 20%(700) NO votes more than YES votes = 1300 Yes / 2000 No

If you see Transform's votes, they didn't actually get a significant no vote...They just lost the threshold of yes votes. For cancelling a contract, we should have a significant threshold saying no(not just meeting yes). Maybe the 20% should be higher....Just giving an example.

Having a way to cancel(with a significant no vote) will give suppliers the incentive to produce quality work.

Another way to do this is to have a 3rd party reference. Like number of hits to dash.org or something. If that is met the payment goes, if not, then payment is stopped. Finding that metric is not easy. But if that type of programming is in place. Then we can easily move to a decentralized dash-fiat exchange. If payment is received in x account, send x dash.

 

[TanteStefana]

So you want a thousand masternode owners to try to evaluate whether the PR company is doing a good enough job and come to a consensus? That can't work. Also, you must remember what Voltaire said...

The best is the enemy of the good.

Dash is succeeding because it's providing "good enough" solutions to privacy and instant transactions. "Good enough" wins!

Well, I agree to a point. If a person is dead because they were shot cleanly in the head between the eyes, and another was torn apart, limb by limb, but also dead. Dead is dead. You can't trace a DarkSend transaction, you can't trace a cryptnote transaction and you can't trace a zerocoin (if working) transaction. Out of the 3, only DarkSend transactions are thoroughly understandable. The risks are known and precautions can be taken in a completely understandable way. I still think that a person could have kept a separate copy of the cryptonote list, with times and amounts, so that they can do a timing analysis. And of course with zerocoin, you must be sure the initial key is destroyed. I don't like it, and there will always be a ??? hanging over both those solutions.

---cut--- So we pretty much know it wasn't the conference, because that happened after the swell in price. And because of Elliot Wave theory we know that the swell was already underway on the 19th when PR started going out. Terpin could have been responsible for some of the pump, but the questions is how signficant could that have really been when he got us into a small handful of sub-premium publications? (by sub-premium I mean one's that aren't NYT, WSJ, Wired, etc.). Also you have to consider that a previous major event in our past didn't even get us the kind of buying volume we saw in this period (i.e. us getting listed on Bitfinex). So looking at all this from this perspective it looks like the PR may have nudged the price up a little, but it was definitely not the cause.---cut---

I understand your analysis, however, did you consider that this was a 3 month project and that maybe Terpin's team had a plan of building up the buzz before approaching the NYT etc... ? Does that not make sense? This is why they work behind the scenes. They're organically growing the buzz, guiding the talk, influencing the rumors. You have to let them do what they do, they're professionals. And they were cut off less than 3 weeks into a 3 month project. What did you expect to see? This is why they didn't want to show it, because they knew the public wouldn't understand.

If you're going to hire a PR team, you have to let them do their work and give them the time they were expecting to have for their marketing campaign. The team representing Dash were told exactly what to expect and how the plan was laid out. Our team isn't stupid, and many of them are actually in the business or have utilized marketing tactics and PR firms before. It seems to me that this small - no tiny ecosystem of crypto nerds is acting like a small town hall full of the local old lady's bridge club where rumors are abound and get stretched and reputations are destroyed. Lets not let such stupidity guide us. All these guys still think Terpin was on the right track, and I trust them. I hope we can try this again soon, and really get moving on adoption. Because despite what some here say, I think we're very much ready for mass adoption with the functionality Dash has today. That it will be improved over the next year or year and a half doesn't mean that it's not completely functional today. Lets get the ball rolling. It IS time. Hell, Dash is arguably safer, more secure, with a better network and much better performance than Bitcoin TODAY, lets spread Dash like a wildfire in Southern Calfornia on a hot August day!

I just want a thread to discuss and lay out all the workings of the contract so that when the community starts to act up again, we can point to the contract and say, look, this is what was agreed upon, they're sticking to the contract, there is no basis to act like a lynch mob. Hopefully that will help people keep cool heads. The biggest enemy here is fear that Dash is being taken advantage of. Keep it clear, and everyone will keep a cool head.

 

[masternode]

...I understand your analysis, however, did you consider that this was a 3 month project and that maybe Terpin's team had a plan of building up the buzz before approaching the NYT etc... ? Does that not make sense? This is why they work behind the scenes. They're organically growing the buzz, guiding the talk, influencing the rumors. You have to let them do what they do, they're professionals. And they were cut off less than 3 weeks into a 3 month project. What did you expect to see? This is why they didn't want to show it, because they knew the public wouldn't understand.

If you're going to hire a PR team, you have to let them do their work and give them the time they were expecting to have for their marketing campaign. The team representing Dash were told exactly what to expect and how the plan was laid out. Our team isn't stupid, and many of them are actually in the business or have utilized marketing tactics and PR firms before. It seems to me that this small - no tiny ecosystem of crypto nerds is acting like a small town hall full of the local old lady's bridge club where rumors are abound and get stretched and reputations are destroyed. Lets not let such stupidity guide us. All these guys still think Terpin was on the right track, and I trust them. I hope we can try this again soon, and really get moving on adoption. Because despite what some here say, I think we're very much ready for mass adoption with the functionality Dash has today. That it will be improved over the next year or year and a half doesn't mean that it's not completely functional today. Lets get the ball rolling. It IS time. Hell, Dash is arguably safer, more secure, with a better network and much better performance than Bitcoin TODAY, lets spread Dash like a wildfire in Southern Calfornia on a hot August day!

....

Hi TantaStefana. So after I was told that we were thinking of using Michael Terpin, I called around. He has a reputation of promising major publications but doesn't deliver. I can't find a single example of a PR campaign he did on an Altcoin that was able to get press releases in a major publication (i.e. WSJ, NYT, Wired, etc.). I spoke with industry insiders, attorneys and even the CEO of crypto company that he's actually worked with in the past. People here were very interested in working with him, so I kept an open mind and decided not to say much and just see how it played out. When I finally saw the list of outlets that he got us into I wasn't impressed (but on his behalf I will say I enjoyed reading the articles). While it wasn't total proof, it was consistent with what I suspected which was that he wasn't going to be the guy to get us into premium publications.

I'm not quite so sure why everyone is so ready to jump behind Transform PR. There are a lot of PR firms, and this whole process seems like it should be very simple because with a lot of options out there I can't see why we can't get them to try to win our business. You just ask them for a list of publications that they say they have reach with and ask them to SHOW YOU PROOF of this. If it's impressive, then you set up a list of expected deliverables that they commit to if they want our business. If they can't deliver then they don't get paid, or it's a lesser amount. If they are confident they can get you were they say they can, then they shouldn't have an issue with this. If we were to do it this way, then we wouldn't be speculating on someone's ability to get us into where they promise. We would then have set ourselves up in a situation that is cut and dry and we are investing in PR (because investing and speculating are not the same thing). If it's structured in this way then we don't waste money if what we expect is not delivered.

But what worries me, is that I'm not positive we need to be spending money on PR at the moment, or if we do it can be better executed. And if we do hire another PR firm, my suggestion is let's try someone totally different. Why go with the same guy twice, especially when we are concerned about his effectiveness. Let's get an additional data point, and see how effective another team is. But for certain let's have them show us some proof first that they can deliver what they say they can.

I've been pretty busy lately with a crypto-startup I helped launch (www.blockfolio.com for anyone interested - shameless plug!). I'm handling the biz dev / marketing for them and in the process I've gotten a lot of ideas that I think can help Dash deliver a strong message as well. I can make the time to spend with Dash core team in the future and see if I can help set up a good marketing strategy if they are open to it. This is the kind of stuff I love to do.

-Ed

 

[TanteStefana]

masternode , I don't know who you've talked to, but my research, which is all online as I don't know anyone, points to the flaky project teams in this space causing issues with results. I don't trust the rumor mill here, and since this Michael Terpin has actually been quite successful at other projects and seems to have connections, I'd like to actually give him a chance with the time period he originally asked for.

 

[masternode]

masternode , I don't know who you've talked to, but my research, which is all online as I don't know anyone, points to the flaky project teams in this space causing issues with results. I don't trust the rumor mill here, and since this Michael Terpin has actually been quite successful at other projects and seems to have connections, I'd like to actually give him a chance with the time period he originally asked for.

Fwiw, I spoke with people who've directly worked with Terpin. No second or third hand stories.

But to be thorough let's not just take my word for it. If Terpin is in fact quite successful at other PR projects like you say, then please show me a list of ALTCOIN articles that he managed to get into major publications. It's a very simple and a very necessary step in the process. Then we can look up other PR firms who've worked with Altcoins and compare. Let's make our PR decisions with data and clear facts!

 

[tungfa]

guys
can we please drop that Terpin discussion by now !
this will go nowhere as everybody has different opinions, research and thought on him , and PR / Marketing in general !

I wanted to make some points here as well,
but honestly i have no time to work though this endless thread !

 

[raganius]

Fwiw, I spoke with people who've directly worked with Terpin. No second or third hand stories.

But to be thorough let's not just take my word for it. If Terpin is in fact quite successful at other PR projects like you say, then please show me a list of ALTCOIN articles that he managed to get into major publications. It's a very simple and a very necessary step in the process. Then we can look up other PR firms who've worked with Altcoins and compare. Let's make our PR decisions with data and clear facts!

So, my suggestion is: The system must be so that the decisions are more prudent, meticulous and demanding before the approval of any budget item, avoiding that the community accepts some proposal out of pure enthusiasm and hype.

I solution I see is: the voting thresholds must be higher enough for any decision to be made. Being more strict means less possibility of poor quality proposals accepted into the budget (proposal owners will have to convince more voters).

 

[InTheWoods]

So, my suggestion is: The system must be so that the decisions are more prudent, meticulous and demanding before the approval of any budget item, avoiding that the community accepts some proposal out of pure enthusiasm and hype.

I solution I see is: the voting thresholds must be higher enough for any decision to be made. Being more strict means less possibility of poor quality proposals accepted into the budget (proposal owners will have to convince more voters).

High threshold also means high participation which is not guaranteed. Could end up being a `perfection is paralysis` kinda` thing.

Also, what I'd like to see is faster payouts if possible. We could miss some cool events for example because funding is weeks away. Why not have weekly budget payouts?

*sidenote: Look at the price action of our competition following Amanda's interview. I think hiring her would be totally worth it. We should encourage her to put up a proposal.

 

[stan.distortion]

So, my suggestion is: The system must be so that the decisions are more prudent, meticulous and demanding before the approval of any budget item, avoiding that the community accepts some proposal out of pure enthusiasm and hype.

I solution I see is: the voting thresholds must be higher enough for any decision to be made. Being more strict means less possibility of poor quality proposals accepted into the budget (proposal owners will have to convince more voters).

Maybe after too, something like 50% initially and the other 50% after a vote on whether the project has been completed successfully.
I'd like to see IDs attached to budgets too so a track record can be built up or anything else that can assist voters and be searched with simple filters.

 

[TheDashGuy]

Hi TantaStefana. So after I was told that we were thinking of using Michael Terpin, I called around. He has a reputation of promising major publications but doesn't deliver. I can't find a single example of a PR campaign he did on an Altcoin that was able to get press releases in a major publication (i.e. WSJ, NYT, Wired, etc.). I spoke with industry insiders, attorneys and even the CEO of crypto company that he's actually worked with in the past. People here were very interested in working with him, so I kept an open mind and decided not to say much and just see how it played out. When I finally saw the list of outlets that he got us into I wasn't impressed (but on his behalf I will say I enjoyed reading the articles). While it wasn't total proof, it was consistent with what I suspected which was that he wasn't going to be the guy to get us into premium publications.

I'm not quite so sure why everyone is so ready to jump behind Transform PR. There are a lot of PR firms, and this whole process seems like it should be very simple because with a lot of options out there I can't see why we can't get them to try to win our business. You just ask them for a list of publications that they say they have reach with and ask them to SHOW YOU PROOF of this. If it's impressive, then you set up a list of expected deliverables that they commit to if they want our business. If they can't deliver then they don't get paid, or it's a lesser amount. If they are confident they can get you were they say they can, then they shouldn't have an issue with this. If we were to do it this way, then we wouldn't be speculating on someone's ability to get us into where they promise. We would then have set ourselves up in a situation that is cut and dry and we are investing in PR (because investing and speculating are not the same thing). If it's structured in this way then we don't waste money if what we expect is not delivered.

But what worries me, is that I'm not positive we need to be spending money on PR at the moment, or if we do it can be better executed. And if we do hire another PR firm, my suggestion is let's try someone totally different. Why go with the same guy twice, especially when we are concerned about his effectiveness. Let's get an additional data point, and see how effective another team is. But for certain let's have them show us some proof first that they can deliver what they say they can.

I've been pretty busy lately with a crypto-startup I helped launch (www.blockfolio.com for anyone interested - shameless plug!). I'm handling the biz dev / marketing for them and in the process I've gotten a lot of ideas that I think can help Dash deliver a strong message as well. I can make the time to spend with Dash core team in the future and see if I can help set up a good marketing strategy if they are open to it. This is the kind of stuff I love to do.

-Ed

We have no room for your logic around here! We are 100% backing Terpin because..... wait, why are we backing Terpin so hard again?

As I have been saying for months now. Terpin is a WASTE of money.

What startup builds a marketing department OR hires a PR agency when the product is half finished and the product support isn't even up to par?

A community full of people wanting to flip a quick profit. Is that us? I would hope not.

 

[TheDashGuy]

guys
can we please drop that Terpin discussion by now !
this will go nowhere as everybody has different opinions, research and thought on him , and PR / Marketing in general !

I wanted to make some points here as well,
but honestly i have no time to work though this endless thread !

Why would we drop it? It needs to be discussed because obviously there is a HUGE disconnect between the ideals and methods of the core team and some of the community. And for us to move forward we NEED to be on the same page.

Also, why are we SOOOOO set on Transform PR? I would happily cause a shit storm again unless it's discussed in the fullest of ways. As masternode has pointed out in a very nice and polite way, Terpin is a car salesman, who is leaching off the Dash community for his profiteering scheme. I have worked for tech companies since I was 16 and I have seen these types over and over. Go into ANY eCommerce (I have worked at these places) company and go to the sales floor where they sell marketing packages comprised of half baked search, outdated concepts bad bloated projects and tell me it doesn't scream Terpin...

Anyone can contact http://www.prnewswire.com/ and dot he same exact thing Terpin is doing , for a hell of alot less than 6k a month. ESPECIALLY with an irrevocable contract in place. You are setting us up to waste a crap load of money on this guy for no reason.

If anyone would like to have open discussions on these subjects, you are more than welcome to join the Public Dash Slack channel.

 

[BolehVPN]

I'm ok for long term contracts but voting no as there has to be a mechanism to exit the contract in the event of breach of non performance.
Either this is done by the proposer or have a certain vote threshold.

Since the proposer is the one who tends to be bound to the contract, he should have the right to cancel the contract and stop payments. Maybe even without the vote. After all if it was a popular proposal, it can be resubmitted again by another person. Or is this already in place with the existing system?

There should be also another way to cancel which is to vote it out with a higher threshold than what was required to pass it.

 

[stan.distortion]

A couple of things I don't get here, why the high level of opposition to a PR proposal when the budgeting is barely even reaching capacity (let alone competition between proposals) and why the continued deviation away from discussing improvements to the budgeting system and onto a single example? I'd missed most of the early parts of this discussion and taking the current state on spec, logic points to competition between PR companies. Hard to believe but if so its not healthy competition, quite the opposite as its getting the community hung up on something that's little more than a triviality compared with the budgeting system as a whole.

I'm no fan of PR and think the system is quite capable of standing on its own merits but the world doesn't work that way these days, build a better mousetrap and the world doesn't beat a path to your door, it beats a path to the door of the of the inferior mousetrap with fancier packaging and promises of increased sex appeal and you only need to compare PR budgets with development budgets of leading products to see proof of that. We need PR whether we like it or not and we're fortunate to have people in the community who understand it.

 

[TheDashGuy]

A couple of things I don't get here, why the high level of opposition to a PR proposal when the budgeting is barely even reaching capacity (let alone competition between proposals) and why the continued deviation away from discussing improvements to the budgeting system and onto a single example? I'd missed most of the early parts of this discussion and taking the current state on spec, logic points to competition between PR companies. Hard to believe but if so its not healthy competition, quite the opposite as its getting the community hung up on something that's little more than a triviality compared with the budgeting system as a whole.

I'm no fan of PR and think the system is quite capable of standing on its own merits but the world doesn't work that way these days, build a better mousetrap and the world doesn't beat a path to your door, it beats a path to the door of the of the inferior mousetrap with fancier packaging and promises of increased sex appeal and you only need to compare PR budgets with development budgets of leading products to see proof of that. We need PR whether we like it or not and we're fortunate to have people in the community who understand it.

Half of my arguing and complaining is due to the nature of the PR company and the idea behind why we are going with them.

Some people think a PR company is going to get us users and/or whales so they can increase thier net worth in the Dash ecosystem. And I DARE anyone to PROVE this isn't the case.

As I have repeatedly said; who hires a PR company when the product isn't even finished yet? Who markets before they build and support the product?

Evolution is a long ways out, we do not need a PR company. It's a waste of money. We need to be investing into other small community projects and building a platform for PEOPLE, not for companies like Transform to leech off of. We have an amazing system, why not use it? Why not show it off? Wy are we asking a PR company to come save the day?


You know why? Because we have too many short term profiteering type around here still and I honestly Hope the Dash price tanks so we can weed these people out. They are not good for the long term strategy needed for Dash to succeed.

There is a reason investors have rules about selling share and such, they are always in it for the profit.


Please stop thinking with your wallets people, lets use some grit and good ol fashioned sweat instead of hiring some PR firm who just wants your money, for the least amount of effort.

Some links:

http://seedcamp.com/resources/when-does-it-make-sense-to-hire-a-pr-agency/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/03/how-to-hire-a-pr-firm-dont-do-it/
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246044
https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/6things-to-know-before-you-hire-a-pr-firm/

Since noone is going to read them, mostly it just says, Startups DO NOT NEED PR. Go ahead read them.