• Forum has been upgraded, all links, images, etc are as they were. Please see Official Announcements for more information

Pre-Proposal: "Border-Free Love" - Live action + VFX DASH Commercial, 2M Views over 6 Months.


Border-Free Love - Live action + VFX DASH Commercial, 2M Views over 6 Months.
Help us to advertise Dash Evolution to 2 million potential users over 6 months!​

Amount: 643.19 Dash
Time: Four months: (Four monthly payments of 160.80 dash each.)

Treatment document:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MHFQtqSOPBMdT2G-BQ90itjF4wDTxgt5

The storyboard (WIP):

Budget:

ogJSXfnxKegWdxwc36UO_VTNF-JzNTNTRIXz0JpIiBifYV5466xVHfKM8su9wUMlpyUZRkZTemUitX9fXEewBqfWCBCYCw9BUqA5v6zwF1tl8H9rmAqcVWsUXkg95Az_qw



(Calculated at 1 Dash = 301 USD, 30 day moving average)

Proposal details:

A: Background

1) We have already launched two successful Dash YouTube advertising campaigns.

The first ad, “Instant Private Cash” is here:

The campaign report thread is here. We budgeted for a total of three months via two funding proposals. Because of the appreciation of Dash, we ran it from June 09 to September 15 when the campaign ended officially. There was, however, more money left in the account, so we ran the campaign for a further three weeks after the last report.

We believe that the campaign was hugely successful in spreading the Dash brand: There were 1,037,471 impressions. Since most of the message (Dash outperforming Bitcoin in terms of privacy and speed) is in the first five seconds, the message was broadcast 1,037,471 times. The ad has had a total of nearly 180,000 full views to date.

Our second ad, “Project Jet Plane” is here.

English version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRSpkAGzqr0

Hindi version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B6bm1Cr66w
Spanish version:
https://youtu.be/UOSQpKmEsOw

Brazilian Portuguese version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrD1RhkL8Ak

We rolled this campaign out on November 8 2017. The reason for the delay was that Instantsend was disabled due to a vulnerability in the code. As the ad's main message is that Dash is lightning fast due to its Instantsend function, distribution commenced with the rollout of the Instantsend fix. Details are available on the campaign report thread, found here.

As of Monday,13 November 2017, this ad has received 393,133 impressions and 81,148 views across 4 languages, in the space of 6 days and spending $2,234 of $30,000

We gleaned a lot of information from these campaigns. Two facts we currently utilize are:
1) By far the most people interested in cryptocurrencies are male (90%). For true market penetration we need to target female users. Our currently proposed ad "Border Free Love" will appeal to both males and females, and target the remittance industry.
2) India is the most open English-speaking market for cryptocurrencies. (30%) of our audience. For this reason we have translated Project Jet plane into Hindi. India is also the world’s biggest recipient country for international remittances: More reason to target the remittance industry!

A2) The international remittance industry

We firmly believe that the remittance industry is one of the most important markets where Dash can make an impact on people's lives. Point of sales use cases are being successfully demonstrated all the time, but impact is limited in developed countries where contactless cards and authentication methods such as Apple Pay are used on a daily basis.

Remittance is a multi-billion dollar industry, relied on by millions of consumers to maintain their families overseas. Overall global remittances totaled $582 billion in 2015.

However, in many cases waiting times are long and fees can be very high for people who have to make the most of every dollar.

That's where Dash comes in, and our commercial will point this out to average consumers who will benefit from Evolution.

A3) Ogilvy & Mather

Ogilvy & Mather is one of the largest international advertising agencies. They have been contracted by Dash Core via a proposal to the DAO to develop a corporate image and brand for Dash.

Pieter_Eralith inquired regarding their role with Ryan Taylor (@babygiraffe) at the London Dash Conference, and the takeaway message was that whilst they will be in charge of branding and corporate image, independent companies may still offer proposals for advertising campaigns.

If our proposal is successful, we want work closely with the relevant people at Ogilvy to make sure that our ad is 100% compliant with the official Dash Evolution corporate identity.

A4) Production Partners

This is the biggest project that Eralith Studios will undertake to date. While our first ad was very simple and was done 100% in-house, our second ad (Project Jet Plane) was significantly more complex. We made extensive use of local freelancers for that project. Our third commercial, Border Free Love, will be of true Hollywood-grade production value. It will be shot on the Arri Alexa camera, and will incorporate live action actors as well as computer generated VFX. For this reason we decided to tap into the Cape Town film industry, and have partnered with two established media companies.

A4i) Polycat Studios

Polycat is a highly successful VFX studio based in Cape Town, with access to a cutting-edge render farm. They specialise in hyperrealistic animal animation and VFX.

Polycat will be responsible for the execution our VFX production design, and animation of animal characters under our direction.

DEMO REEL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5i5RNB9rBQ

A4ii) Conduit Productions

Conduit Productions is a veteran production studio that has been producing live action and animated commercials for global clients for over a decade.
Conduit will be in charge of shooting the live action portion of Border Free Love.

DEMO REEL:

https://vimeo.com/222198974

B: The ad: Border free love


B1) The target audience

Our target audience for this project, will be customers of international remittance corporations such as Western Union, who need to send money to their dependants on a regular basis.
  • We will appeal to family-oriented individuals and target users on YouTube who are interested in remittance services.

  • The commercial will be shot in English.

  • We will specifically target the following receiving countries (the 7 largest remittance markets) with localization: India (Hindi), the Philippines (Tagalog), Mexico (Spanish), France (French), Nigeria (English), Egypt (Arabic), and Pakistan (Urdu).

B2) The message

Evolution will commence rollout in the coming months. We want to produce a showstopping ad that is 100% relevant to the consumers who will benefit from Evolution’s borderless transactions and ease of use. Touchpoints are:
  • Traditional remittance companies charge high fees, and transactions take time. There is a lot of paperwork involved to send money overseas. By contrast, Dash transactions are extremely cheap and are instant. Dash is truly border free.
  • The storyline is designed to appeal to the emotions of consumers. It is not money we send home to our families, it is love.
B3) The story

Qaf479t2KPBGIia1z1F5yQR67-64OkVqVaPen0d34I_1ZuTnt3IrQH-bIOw3Wu49OAFEggHf-G0gexyuFAyMbJpiUdKl5rLaR5vuRxA7ObHHs5tGqB9C9gkatFr7oVuhBA



A young man needs to send money to his family in another country. He looks at the long queue outside the not-quite-Western-Union remittance office and shakes his head.

Looking down at his phone, he swipes the lockscreen of his wedding picture. The Evolution app appears. He taps InstantSend to send $200 worth of Dash to his wife’s account.

A blue swallow with the Dash logo on its chest emerges from the screen with a magical pop. It salutes him and swiftly flies into the distance. When it reaches the clouds, it is joined by two scruffy pigeons with the Dollar and Euro logos. They approach a digital force field with holographic border signs displayed on it. The pigeons smash against the force field, and the Dash bird flies through as if it does not exist.

A drone shot of the family home is seen from above. The Dash bird descends through the wife’s living room window. It chirps a greeting, then dives into her phone, which pings with the receipt of the $200. She smiles as the camera zooms out to reveal her pregnant belly.

After the emotional conclusion of the ad, a bonus scene is shown where the Fiat birds stumble out of the remittance office with their feathers plucked, beat up and exhausted.

Working taglines:
Dash: “Instant, Border-Free, Digital Cash with almost zero fees”
Dash: “Digital Cash in a Heartbeat”
Dash: “Send cash in a heartbeat!”

B4) Distribution

We consider the work we create in service of the DAO, to be the property of the DAO and fair use for all Dash marketing associates. Although we handle distribution through YouTube, we are completely open for DAO marketing associates to redistribute our content. Be it through blogs, network television or public screenings. We encourage all associates to share their stories of how our content works for them.

Our distribution target for this campaign is a total of 2 Million views across all languages, over 6 months. At a standard CPV (Cost Per View) of $0.05, This comes down to a campaign total of $100,000 at 11,100 views per day. Based on previous average CPV of ~$0.04 we expect the campaign to overperform the standard CPV around 20-25% for a total of around 2.4 million views.

B5) Budget breakdown

Live action shoot & Processing: Includes the shooting of all live action footage, and delivery of processed raw camera data to the VFX studio.

VFX Production: Includes all computer generated footage, including full animation pipeline and final colour grading. Also includes on-set VFX supervisor to oversee live action integration.

Sound & Foley: Includes all custom sound effects and foley (handmade noises and sounds)

Music Composition: Includes custom orchestral music track

Production Fee: Eralith Studios’ fee while overseeing all production, final editing, and distribution during and following the 4 month production duration.

B6) Milestones

As we are partnered with other production companies, we will be able to finalize the production schedule once our funding is secured. The rough milestones are as follows:

1-10 Dec 2017:
VFX: Commence creation of 3D assets.
Live Action: Commence location scouting and actor casting

10-30 Dec 2017:
Industry breaks for holiday season

Jan 2018:
Live Action: Shoot entirety of live-action footage

1 Feb - 14 Mar 2018:
VFX: Produce and render entirety of VFX portion
Audio: Compose music and Foley

14 Mar-Early Apr 2018
Post-production: Final application of Evolution corporate identity, including VFX app screen replacements and localization.

April 2018:
Assuming Evolution rollout has commenced, YouTube distribution will commence.

Working with the Dash DAO throughout 2017 has been an honour and a great pleasure. We thank you for your consideration and wish all of you a happy and prosperous 2018!

-Thomas and Pieter
 
Last edited:
You’re planning to advertise an use case that’s just not practical today.

Why?

Because Dash can hardly be used at the moment. You shouldn’t expect the Indian mother to use an exchange to change dash to actual cash.

Remittance services just exists because
A) not everybody has a bank account
B) not every nation indes the same currency

I think in fact remittance is the usecase that will need the least marketing because it’s selfexplanatory by the design of Blockchain.
If people know about dash and can use it in their everyday life’s they will naturally start to send it to their family.

You should think about advertising another usecase.


BTW I think bashing of Bitcoin as you did in your first ads is not effective. Bitcoins usecase is its appreciation in value. Nearly nobody really uses it as money. Your target audience should be fiat users and not bubble chasers.
 
Hi Inaki! We believe that when targeting Fiat users to encourage regular use of Evolution, (which is the sole purpose of this commercial, we will not market towards bubble chasers), remittance use cases are the best point of access for us in terms of market penetration.

Why do we believe this?
- Our analytics show that the most crypto-curious consumers are concentrated in the Global South, which happens to house the largest remittance markets.
- In western countries, Evolution will need an established user base before point-of-sales (arguably the largest use case) adoption can compete with solutions like Apple Pay and Mastercard. There are already several strategies being developed for point-of-sales so we are going to wait and see what the community wants on that front going forward.
- The quality-of-life improvement factor is far higher for people with unbanked relatives, who could potentially leapfrog banking and go straight for Dash.
- People who make use of remittance services will have reason to use Evolution often, as their families need regular maintenance, often with every paycheck.

If people know about dash and can use it in their everyday life’s they will naturally start to send it to their family.

-The usefulness of Dash as a remittance solution is quite obvious, but in order for customers to use evolution, they need to know it exists first. That's what we intend to do with this commercial.

Hope that clarifies things.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I love the remittance solution that offers crypto.

But dash is not an remittance service. If people can’t use or change dash for fiat they won’t use dash instead of Western Union.

Sure they have to know first but why not just tell them that dash is a better currency instead of an alternative to a remittance service(which it isn’t at this point in time).
You could reach many more this way.

I think people on these countries are not mainly interested in crypto because it can be used transmitting remittances but because they are underbanked and their currencies are or have failed at one point.

The receivers can’t just leapfrog banking if there are no merchants and services to accept dash and people won’t send a currency that’s not usable by their families

I Strongly agree that 3. world countries would adopt crypto faster and should be focused on
 
Those are all good touchpoints. Exchanges are paramount to the usefulness of crypto. We do have confidence however, that remittance users who are savvy enough to research crypto with the aim of improving their lives, will have the necessary smarts to figure out an exchange solution that works for them in the long term. There are enough users where the criteria overlap for there to be a market niche, and we can switch on the lightbulb for those people. :)
 
I'm not a fan of the "border free" message.

This isn't about tearing down fences, but preventing their abuse.

Borders are healthy. It's the misuse of them by corrupt governments that is the problem. Conflating the two out of ignorance (or deliberately out of a sick political agenda) is bad enough. Promoting that ignorant conflation is not a thing I want to see DASH involved in.

I like the idea you're trying to present, but the method smacks of SJW arrogance and stupidity.

This is precisely the attitude that makes it hard to convince adults to use DASH, or any crypto for that matter.

Giving money to a girl... Kind of a tired thing... Is there a scene where the man wonders if the child is his? Because a girl that demands a payoff for her loyalty doesn't respect you enough to give it to you at any price.

It also smacks of teaching illegal immigrants how to get money out... but I guess that's a good thing if you're a border hater that likes to dissolve nations... Just not YOUR nation...

How many successful business operators share the ideas that would destroy their business and everything they worked so hard to create?

This is what pushes DASH away from vendors; seething hatred and youthful arrogance framed as a friendly, upbeat emotional plea... How can you be adopted by vendors when you are hostile to them, and do everything in your power to hurt them? What kind of business is going to adopt money that comes with a built-in anti-business attitude problem? It's bad enough that this attitude exists as an undertow in crypto at large. Embedding it in the advertising only confirms the suspicion and solidifies the choice to avoid it.

Personally, I don't think that message is intentional. It's just so commonplace and ingrained in crypto, that you don't even realize you're doing it.

If Dollars gave me cancer, I wouldn't use them, either. Why would I use a form of money that wants to stab me in the back?
 
Last edited:
There will be no adoption until you satisfy the transactional interests of BOTH sides of a transaction.

Right now, crypto only concerns itself with the consumer.

It crosses the line from simple neglect, to outright hostility against the producer/seller.

That's never going to work no matter how cute your advertisement is.

A well-dressed, highly educated, well-spoken rapist is still a rapist.

This advertisement is not useful. Marketing of any kind, while still being hostile to the Yang, and considering only the Yin, will go nowhere. Even if this were the perfect ad, it's dead in the water.

If DASH fixes IX and makes a deal with say BitPay or Kraken, to have a retail transaction processing service similar to card processing; then you'll finally have what you need to start marketing. There are a ton of people invested in shitcoins that will be shapeshifting the fuck out of everything they've got. The supply already exists. Look at the total crypto market cap compared to DASH's market cap. DASH will be the only functioning output where they can actually use it. The only way to spend it will be via DASH. Sidechains have already had their chance and failed because they're side chains.

Right now, it's completely fuckin' pointless.
 
Last edited:
Hi camosoul

This ad is not about removing international borders but about sending money across them. Those are two totally different issues

The remittance industry was worth 436 000 000 000 USD in 2015, it is the reality of life of some of the poorest families on earth whose only life line and chance of economic participation is the money the receive from relatives overseas.

Crypto has always been about financial freedom for the poor, because it is trustless, permissionless and censorship resistant. Many of the poorest can feed a family for a few days on $5, yet that is what it costs for one Western Union transaction. The fact that crypto is also borderless adds to its massive potential to free the poor.

For many places like Africa, crypto is not seen as a plaything for the rich to get richer, but a possible tool for day to day survival.

It is of course obvious to established crypto users that you can send crypto internationally without problems. But our ad wants to facilitate mainstream adoption.

Think of crypto as the internet: In 1995 my email interface was a command line, and only REAL nerds like me used it. Now facebook has 2 billion users world wide. Dash aims to be the facebook of crypto, that will push crypto currency to the main stream and massive global adoption. Evolution is the killer app that will bring it about.

That is why we need to advertise Evolution to the people it will help most - and who have not yet heard of bitcoin.
 
There sure are people smart enough to figure out using exchanges plus how to use dash. But what’s gonna be the %? Maybe 1% of the viewers.
Using dash as a remittance tool is just to hard at this point in time. You try to skip some adoption steps.

I love advertising of dash but I really think you should advertise it as what it is: a currency people can spend receive and send for almost no cost and that isn’t dependent on a Third party.

The remittance usecase is implied anyway.
 
Hi Inaki

Of course we agree with this:
"I love advertising of dash but I really think you should advertise it as what it is: a currency people can spend receive and send for almost no cost and that isn’t dependent on a Third party. "

The point is, most people do that with Visa an Mastercard and care less about the third party.

We believe that the remittance industry allows Dash a hook into your vision of Dash that we share for the following reasons:

1) There is an absolute cap on the amount that I can send via Western Union, (because of FX regulations.) Dash has no cap. It is border free.
2) There is a minimum that I can send via Western Union, since the transaction fee is minimum $5 USD. $5 is a LOT of money for people who use remittance services.
3) My last Western Union transaction took a day. I did it via my bank's internet site. Transactions typically take about 30 minutes.
4) A large percentage of remittance service users do not have access to the service's online services. This means that both the sender and receiver have to physically take a bus, train or taxi to their closest remittance office to deposit or to get the money. So the transactions do not take the advertised 30 minutes. It takes half a day to send it and half a day to receive it.

The people of the global north do not always appreciate these facts.

Of course youvare right about the full Dash pipeline. The person who receives it must be able to spend it. I would like to invite you to research the MPesa economy in East Africa. MPesa became a currency of day to day business for poor people because it had value: Mobile phone air time. Dash can do the same if it has the value of remittances.

The point is, the remittance industry is the the most obvious point of entry into your statement:

"I love advertising of dash but I really think you should advertise it as what it is: a currency people can spend receive and send for almost no cost and that isn’t dependent on a Third party."

I hope it makes sense!
 
No doubt remittance is big (and very competitive), but as @camosoul says, the boy-sends-money-to-girl thing is a bit creepy, even though it's completely true. But my main issue is, once someone has received dash, how do they use it / cash out? So I was thinking, maybe this could be a cooperative effort, sharing the message (and costs) with a crypto debit card?
 
I agree with almost all of your points but I still think “raw” dash is not a solution.

Let’s assume people send dash to their relatives in eastern Africa.

What will they do next?
The ones that don’t have access to the remittance online service won’t probably have access to an crypto fiat exchange.
Try showing a crypto exchange to an average person, these things are just plain scary for most people.
Let’s assume everybody figures out how to use exchanges.

What happens next?
People have to send the money from the exchange to their bank.
That in countries which are referred to as underbanked. I’d bet the percentage of people without which rely on remittance payments is higher than those who do not rely on it.

Then they have to hop in a bus to go to the next atm to withdraw the cash.

Maybe I’m missing a piece here but you plan to advertise an usecase which solves one problem but produces serveral new ones.

Why is MPesa that successful?
People can top it up and withdraw cash at many places in the country and they can actually use it. Furthermore they don’t have to deal with cash which brings higher security.

Most use it instead of visa and MasterCard, because it has more utility in these Countries.

People may not care about third parties in places like North America and Europe but they do in countries with lots of corruption. That’s one of the main points people there are so crypto curios.

Dash can replace MPesa and circumvent Western Union. But it can’t replace Western Union by itself.

Dash needs to be “MPesa” first.

I hope that clarifies my points.
 
No doubt remittance is big (and very competitive), but as @camosoul says, the boy-sends-money-to-girl thing is a bit creepy, even though it's completely true. But my main issue is, once someone has received dash, how do they use it / cash out? So I was thinking, maybe this could be a cooperative effort, sharing the message (and costs) with a crypto debit card?

Hi GrandMasterDash, anything’s possible when it comes to partnering, I personally think an ad advertising an end-to-end solution would be fantastic.

When it comes to the boy-girl thing being “creepy”, they are married, rest assured. They’re wearing wedding rings and his phone lockscreen will be a wedding picture. ;)
 
Last edited:
Hi GrandMasterDash, anything’s possible when it comes to partnering, I personally think that would be fantastic.

When it comes to the boy-girl thing being “creepy”, they are married, rest assured. They’re wearing wedding rings and his phone lockscreen will be a wedding picture.

Maybe "cringe" was a better word, not sure. Anyway, I think overseas workers sending money back to their families is the bigger story.
 
It is not "boy sends money to girl" it is "expectant father sends money to wife." It is the third world reality of migrant workers!

I must say, this criticism is completely unexpected, maybe we in Africa are a bit naïve...

Anyway, we will make sure people realise the couple is married. It does seem like a valid observation.
 
Last edited:
I would personally prefer if you used your creativity to make several shorter, totally different, attention-grabbing, advertisements and tested them all for efficacy on YouTube to figure out which resonated the most instead of creating only one long higher-cost ad that may not resonate at all and has a higher risk of people skipping due to its length. This particular type of ad to me seems better saved for post-evolution when we're targeting mass adoption, females, and other atypical crypto users. I definitely agree that you should be in touch with Ogilivy as well throughout this process regardless of what ad you make to ensure compatibility with the new branding strategy.

I think there's a higher ROI and less risk for masternodes if you produce many shorter ads of different types not only because it serves as diversification, but also because we learn more about the best approaches to market Dash on YouTube.
 
Last edited:
Hi Paragon

Thanks for the observation.

This ad is planned to coincide with the initial release of Evolution, so that we can hit the ground running! Everything else in crypto is always "18 months away" but Dash has the ability to go mainstream now, as soos as Evolution is active.

We will definitely cut the ad in such a way that we get maximum interaction rates.
 
About a third of the customers queuing at La Maison du Bitcoin’s teller windows in Paris aren’t speculating on the value of the cryptocurrency. They’re sending digital money home to Africa.


“In many countries in Africa, there are far more cellphones than bank accounts,” said Manuel Valente, co-founder of La Maison. “For bitcoin, all you need is a phone.”

From the link above. I think cracking the remittance industry should be a very high priotity for Dash!
 
Back
Top