Bitcoin Forum

Why doesn't the community set a goal to have a bitcoin TV commercial in 2014? How much does it cost, can we do it? We would designate a trusted BTC wallet with its own website which easily shows how much has been sent to it live. We can then pay for the commercial in BTC and prove the power of BTC and its community. The commercial itself can be made by the community as well as a competition and the winner decided via votes. Maybe 1% of the pot can be given to the winner. The big question is who controls the wallet with the donations, my first idea would be Coinbase. I think Coinbase is trusted and would be willing to help 1. for publicity and 2. because they want BTC to go up.

I think this would finally let everyone know about Bitcoin and I think it is ready for that. I also think it is definitely possible in a year, as BTC goes up we would be able to reach the cost of the commercial quicker than we think. In the end it could end up costing only a fraction of the cost, say if BTC goes to $2000 this year.


Thoughts?

I know you are probably not going to like this but I think promoting to the "main stream" is wrong! Most people hate liberty and freedom and demand someone take it from them tell them what to do. Promoting to them is a mistake. Going to regulators begging and working with them is a mistake. What Satoshi did is right focus on the few who love privacy, liberty, fredom and grow that way. If we get 5% great, 20% better. No need to promote to those who don't want it. When American had the revolution for the greatest freedom movement ever less then 5% cared to participate. It's not much better now. Work on grass roots and for god sakes top going to congress and senate those people except a few hate the constitution and liberty it's suppose to defend.

so I guess i"m against it.

Valid point, but I still believe it would do more good than bad to Bitcoin. Those who could hurt it already know about it. Other views?

is there a dollar advert?
is there a euro advert?
is there a pound advert?
is there a yen advert?

no no no no no

so why would there be a bitcoin advert.. the answer is that there wouldnt be any reason. what there would be though is adverts for bitpay, mtgox, btc-e..
basically any services that use the currency.

that is why we see visa adverts, forex company adverts, etc. because these are services that process transactions for the currency. So if you want to make an advert about something then make an advert about a company that has the most easiest, straightforward and userfriendly way for people to play with bitcoin.

oops.. there are not any companies that are truly 'granny friendly' to obtain/transfer/cash out of bitcoin. so i guess before an advert is produced. a mainstream friendly company has to exist.

so lets concentrate on that. lets not run before we walk, or we will just crash again like a toddler falling on its ass, and taking longer to gets its confidence back to take another step

We could just sell the BTC into USD right before buying the ad in USD.

I think the idea of raising awareness is a good one. Not sure about the TV ad though for many reasons, like for example where would it air?

Who to go for, the consumer or the company? It's a bit chicken and egg right now isn't it? You tell consumers about bitcoins and the benefits, and they ask "Where ? Who accepts them?" You tell retailers about the benefits, they say "Who uses them, how much business will it bring me?" ..because they aren't altruistic or wanting to change the system, just do business.

However. There IS a large area where the use of BTC is win/win ...charities. Compare the way they raise funds now to using BTC which are as close to cash as possible, lose them all those fees ? Telephone or SMS donations are popular, they always lose a large chunk of the donation that way...IF they added a "donate to this BTC address" to each appeal..how much positive exposure would bitcoin get, how much trust would be built by being associated with charity, and how much money would be getting directly to where the donor wanted it to go instead of in fees?

I can't think of a good reason why a charity would say no to using BTC as a payment option. Seeing that logo in ads and in appeals would get normal peeps at least asking what it was...especially if they knew it was cheaper to use.

Peeps wanting to donate wouldn't be mining they'd be buying and that's good for us.
I think there's a lot of people who DO mine who are sitting on large amounts of funds they never thought they'd have so are quite likely to support good causes ..not least because it's money they didn't earn and they are more ethical than the average bear.

We can do this now. Us. Free except for a little time asking them to open a bitcoin wallet in an email and explaining how it works. I'm giving it a go. :)

Agree 100%. I don't even think Bitcoin is ready for mainstream adoption, still too many issues around securing wallets for Bitcoin to work on a broader scale. Hell, most people don't even know what 2 factor authentication is! Anyone familiar with the Rogers Curve (I only just discovered it's name :)) may agree that new technologies achieve widescale adoption by moving from left to right on the curve, the innovators and early adopter assist the early majority to adopt and they then inturn engage the late majority etc. Trying to aim down the middle will not yield great results.

http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/images/picture_rogers_adoption_innovation_curve.gif

I think 2014 is about building out infrastructure to address some of the big barriers to mainstream adoption, e.g. providing more user-friendly means of securing wallets, escrow services, consumer protection insurance etc.