A strong marketing budget encouraging more broad acceptance of Saffron is critical to the success and long term health of the protocol. Long term investors, institutions, and power users of DeFi typically recognize the benefits of Saffron but don’t necessarily know about it or how it works. Similarly, the complicated nature of this specific protocol can make average retail investors skittish. We have begun to employ our 2021 rollout strategy through creating the Academy - an accessible repository of educational information about Saffron and DeFi that is being built out to feature a wide range of multimedia content - and last month have started the process of expanding into international markets and territories - as recently seen at our event in Hangzhou.
Saffron’s marketing direction and scope are rapidly expanding (with the inclusion of the new Saffron Academy website, Saffron Academy Podcast, additional content for our international markets) and it necessitates onboarding additional marketing personnel - both domestic and international. These additional personnel will help take some of the workload off the original team and helps keep us at a healthy expansion rate. The core team has devoted a lot of time and effort into Saffron Academy and will continue to in the coming months, but again, this is only one facet of our marketing strategy and focus.
The items listed below are a combination of current responsibilities and Q2 goals for the marketing team. Meeting these deliverables will help give the community the ability to track the marketing team’s progress and effectiveness should this proposal be accepted.
TASKS AND GOALS
Saffron Academy (2 videos per week minimum)
Saffron Podcast (1 episode per week)
Creating/Managing Saffron Academy website
Coordinating with International marketing and bizdev teams (Working with our partners overseas)
Managing Saffron main homepage and educational materials
Communicating Saffron statistics via saffron.vision (info site similar to uniswap.info)
Managing in-person office
Managing governance: Discourse forum and Snapshot page
Managing Discord, Telegram, YouTube, and Twitter
Writing Saffron Academy and Saffron Medium articles
Collaborating with protocol partners for announcements and updates on new features and tech (Chainlink)
Collaborating with strategic partners on marketing materials and co-marketing events (APWine)
Collecting feedback and organizing user responses and critiques into effective decision-making facts for dev team to act on
Managing active relationships with investors, partners, guests, and academic research targets
Conducting market research and producing reports on focused topics relevant to the protocol’s success
Transcribing all relevant material for distribution to regional partners
Working with media outlets on public relations and press releases
Other marketing duties as assigned
STIPULATIONS
All Saffron project relevant data stored in a cloud location with redundant access in case of emergency or unforeseen circumstance.
All Academy content, deliverables, and anything else made by the marketing team for the expressed purpose of Saffron is considered open source and free to use and redistribute.
All marketing employees report directly to psykeeper every week with a log of their hours and duties performed.
I support this idea. 250 SFI per quarter is a healthy amount to allocate to marketing at our current stage. Especially since we have several new products coming out soon and we’ll need to collaborate with other projects’ marketing. Personally, I would like this proposal to be renewable. I’m game for every two quarters to revisit.
I suggest adding:
Language that describes the who would control the 250/quarter marketing budget
Language that describes how will the 250 SFI be distributed. All at once at the beginning of the quarter (now)? Monthly? Weekly?
Language that defines when this proposal would be voted upon for renewal. Is it once a quarter? Twice a year?
A description of how the 250 SFI would be divided among the tasks and milestones described in Tasks and Goals
That’s a great point, I think that we should revisit this proposal either every quarter or every two quarters. I also think we should have psykeeper ultimately be the one to distribute out the 210 SFI allotment on a monthly basis, since all marketing personnel will be reporting to him directly to him with their hours. What do you guys think?
Thank you for the detailed break-down @Dingo. There are a lot of tasks outlined and I’m curious to know how many additional heads you would seek to hire? At this stage, I would opt to have a review of the proposal each quarter. A monthly summary of marketing endeavours would be nice to see also.
-I like that there are no funds allocated to paid marketing (e.g, ads). [Perhaps some small role is ultimately envisaged but at least it doesn’t seem like paid marketing will be a primary component of the strategy.]
-IF the info is available (and it may not), it might be helpful/powerful if the proposal offered some comparisons to the marketing budgets of other protocols with similar funding levels.
-In the second sentence of the first paragraph, it states that “institutions” are one of the groups that “don’t necessarily know about Saffron or how it works”. What type of institutions are you referring to? It’s a bit vague. You don’t necessarily need to put this into the proposal but defining the institutional target might help refine the tactics you employ down the road (and also help community members think through how they might be able to contribute).
A description of how the 210 SFI would be divided among the tasks and milestones described in Tasks and Goals
If I were to break it down then it would look something like this:
50 SFI per quarter for personnel (existing and new hires)
100 SFI per quarter for external marketing (exchanges, writers, and community builders)
60 SFI per quarter for ongoing costs (everything Dingo wrote in “Tasks and Goals” and more)
One example of a cost which we forgot to mention is that Dingo is managing a physical office which serves as a headquarters for Saffron as well as a location for filming Saffron Academy videos and Saffron Podcast episodes. The office is a great value, for $600 a month we get:
Filming on-location in professional setting
24/7 access to office facilities
Incredibly fast and stable business wi-fi for uploading content
Convenient location nearby local production companies
Meeting areas for potential clients
Business address for mailing (required for many of our partners)
I think the only SFI that would be immediately sent away would be the 100 SFI per quarter for external marketing and some small part of the 60 SFI per quarter for costs. External marketing firms and partners generally need some skin in the game to make their contributions meaningful. The majority of these 210 SFI would be held by personnel and liquid in the treasury for spending when needed.
I also propose that a significant % of these minted funds are added to the 1-year HODL contract. This goes for other minted funds as well and I’ll add this comment there too.
