Thanks for sharing these thoughts Caesar, PNF agrees that marketing is a very important topic (it’s going to be a priority for us in Q2 onwards). The crucial question is, once we agree that it’s important, how best to execute. I’ll share here more how we’re thinking about it now.
We’ve changed our stance slightly since I last communicated (informally) in Telegram about the strategy of aligning around Daniel’s (PNI’s HoM’s) vision for marketing. Daniel will be more focused on PNI marketing and PNF will be stepping up to help the DAO achieve more autonomy over marketing to promote the ecosystem as a whole.
We’ve already started moving in this direction
- We’re shopping for PR firms
- We’re transferring all relevant IP/trademarks over to PNF from PNI
- We’re taking ownership of pokt.network and the official Twitter account, which we’ll be custodying on behalf of the DAO, and empowering DAO contributors to execute on (e.g. giving the official Twitter account some of that PoktNews magic)
- Our existing work with the community on DNA will be a key input into marketing priorities, personas, messaging, etc. Our current perspective is that gateway operators like PNI can focus on marketing to developers, while PNF/DAO will look to shine a spotlight on the ecosystem, the DAO, the builders, and protocol development - though this may evolve as DNA progresses.
Next steps
PNF is making marketing a top priority for Q2. We ultimately want to ensure that the DAO has sovereignty over its own brand and marketing activities, laying the groundwork so that the DAO is not reliant on any one entity to promote Pocket.
As we move into Q2, we’ll be taking the lead on building out DAO-powered marketing operations.
While PNF will be responsible for the ecosystem’s marketing operations, we want to empower the best capability the network has to drive specific marketing initiatives. This is an excellent opportunity for community members with more marketing expertise than us to be empowered to help ensure the DAO has the best marketing that it can. For these reasons, we’ll be publishing some POPs related to marketing, alongside other priorities that PNF has for Q2 onwards, that anyone in the community will be able to apply to.
These POPs will lay the groundwork for the more formal marketing team that you described in your post. With PNF taking responsibility for marketing as part of our duty to steward and grow the ecosystem, an additional governance layer is not needed. What is needed is the mechanisms for teams and individuals to coordinate and work together effectively. PNF will facilitate this. Note that this PNF-led operation would not be mutually exclusive with the DAO funding other independent contributors like The Doc, our operation would simply be paving the path for the DAO to align around.
Edit to add: for anyone unsure what I mean by POP, check out this post.