I want to share an intention to engage a new PR agency + my reasoning.
For clarity, this spend will come from the existing marketing budget , I’m just seeking to be fully transparent and act in the open.
Here is why I am advocating this:
There are narratives building around both DePIN and AI. The right agency can ensure we own our space in both narratives and help shape them in our favour.
We have clarity now on the audience we’re targeting and how best to use this activity to reach them.
Our performance since Q4 has lifted our credibility and media visibility now will help sustain that momentum, particularly in Asia, and in support of our Tier 1 listing BHAG.
We’ve also taken important learnings around contract structure and agency selection.
Firstly, we can break the contract any time from the 3 month point if we’re not fully satisfied with performance. Secondly, we’ll make pragmatic use of paid media this time (alongside earned), which is a vital part of the mix in many geographies. Finally, we’ll ensure global coverage, including Asia.
I’d like to give the community 24 hours to raise any concerns before I finalise the decision.
Please comment openly here - I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Marketing has been a non-stop challenge for the last several years. What’s absolutely clear is that we can’t afford to not have effective marketing. I’m in favor of a very measured approach which measures results, and responds quickly if we don’t see success.
Per my comments last week on an unrelated thread, I mentioned that I was not a fan of using PR agencies due to multiple failed attempts in the past, HOWEVER, Adz and I have had an ongoing discussion for the last 6 days about WHY RIGHT NOW IS THE PERFECT TIME. She’s explained the reasons perfectly in her post above and I personally support her efforts here.
For those interested about the the reason it didn’t work before, here’s a short summary:
The combined PNI+PNF entity (of 2021-2022) didn’t have a workable narrative that appealed to anyone but those already in this space
We had an ambiguous message around decentralization that didn’t appropriately represent POKT’s value proposition
We publicized every feature launch or new chain listing, which no one cared about, since there was no audience for it. This tactic is from a very different marketing playbook than the one we needed.
We were tasked to comment or appear on articles/shows/podcasts on unrelated or loosely related subjects in the tech space, which never made any sense, nor did us any favors.
With that out of the way, I am looking forward to what Adz has in store, as I think she is very much correct that the narrative around DePIN and AI is the perfect one to take advantage of right now for POKT.
Thanks Adrienne. No concerns here. Responding to failed PR engagements by quitting the PR game is not the answer, but rather to dissect as best you can what went wrong and try again leveraging the lessons learned
this is a welcome effort of going ahead to build again after a period of previous learnings. i believe in the method of build, measure, learn…repeat.
the points outlined by Arthur can serve as a reference to what didn’t work previously and should by all means be avoided.
i also want to point out that the PR agency doesn’t work in isolation (without engaging the current believers in the community in real time) as they craft the initiatives they’ll be coming up with.
good effort and time should also be considerably given to education/devrel as those can be key in the building a community with strong conviction about the promise that Pocket Network hold.
this is a welcome initiative and i’m pumped to see the huge impact it will have.