NEM Marketing ProposalHere are some thoughts I have regarding NEM marketing side.
Marketing and human natureThe more we study human nature we seem to discover that man is not as rational as he thought. In fact, he is invariably guided by a combination of conscious, subconscious, emotions and biases which often leads to decisions that are at best irrational and at worst very damaging for individuals and society in general. In a utopian world, we would only have to build a great piece of technology and people would rush to adopt it immediately, simply because it would be in their best interest. In our world, however, it seems it has become increasingly hard for people to make sense of the world. Not only that, but even when people understand what’s wrong and what they need to do, they rarely have the power to act in accordance to what they think.
Here’s the point where good marketing comes in. There was a time when people believed they could solve big problems just by pointing the way toward a solution. As we can see now, the decision dynamics of humanity is a nearly impossibly complex mechanism that is rarely advancing in the right direction. So if we want to change something important for the better, we simply cannot leave things to randomness and inertia. The question then is, can we change the course of things, albeit in a small yet instrumental way? And if so, how?
Making it simple and sexyI think the bitcoin story, though still at its very beginning, can offer some very useful and powerful lessons as to how this may be done, and indeed, confirm this is really possible. Indeed, consider that bitcoin has achieved the current status lacking both simplicity and sexyness. When those will be added(and I know a lot of people are working on that now) I think bitcoin will probably go to a whole other level.
In fact there may be an even better example from which one could learn some important things. Consider the story of Elon Musk, who is arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs/engineer/ inventor alive and apparently a billionaire genius.[1] As he understood where we are today and what are some of the most important problems/threats we could face in the future, he came up with some ideas and plans as to how this problems could be solved and threats could be transformed into powerful innovation for the benefit of humanity. One of the problems he figured is that auto industry was advancing in the wrong direction because of unsustainable production and consumption of energy(Pollution and climate damage with potentially destructive consequences for the long term and high consumption of relatively scarce resources). He also figured that arguably for the immediate future the solution would lay in electric cars. The biggest problem with electric cars was their perception. Who wants them?! They’re slow, ugly, unreliable, low range, boring and unsexy. So even if you would make an electric car, you could not beat people into buying it, nobody would. Or at least, nobody until they learned about Tesla Motors.[2] Elon musk figured that the most effective way to solve the problem would be to radically redefine the perception about electric cars by creating the first compelling electric car ever built that would capture the imagination of people. It should be better in almost every aspect than its gasoline competitors[3] but most important of all, the car should be sexy, irresistibly sexy. This is how the burden of psychological hard work has changed from the customer to the inventor. An irresistibly sexy product has been created and all the customer needs to do is follow his basic instincts, passively catalyzing the solution for a very important problem in the process.
An antifragile solutionIt seems the solutions offered until now are very fragile precisely because they are inherently dependent on a highly unstable variable, the human nature. But think for a second, what if we could engineer a meta-solution, one that could solve or isolate a much bigger problem which would in turn render us resilient or even better yet, antifragile to human nature?
How would that look in reality? Well, instead of asking of people to use their will power, self-discipline and invest a great deal of intellectual and psychological effort to fight a long war with the current economic and banking system, we should try to put in a great deal of thought at the beginning and design an irresistible, almost addictive product that would drive the way to decentralization at the greatest speed precisely when people would lack any kind of will power and self-discipline and would rather act instinctively and impulsively following their blind desires.
The tipping pointLets say we could engineer such a product, well in that case, our only target would be to reach a tipping point. It would be reached when enough mass and speed would unleash an exponential growth period. That is the point when epidemics become pandemics, when growth explodes in such a way that it virtually becomes unstoppable. Beyond that point there won't be any need for us.
A tale of mass adoptionIf there would be a worthy goal for NEM, it would certainly be mass adoption. In fact if mass adoption of NEM would happen, at least part of all the problems regarding current unsustainable economic systems would be solved in the process. It would seem the best way to start working on NEM would be with this final goal in mind. Picture a utopian future where NEM mass adoption has already happened. Now look closely at that future, what do you see? All you have to do now is reason backwards from there or reverse-engineer the process to understand what would have had to happen in order for NEM to reach that point.
Although there are a lot of things that are very blurry about that version of the future, at least some things are crystal clear:
- We have radically redefined the perception about crypto-currency by shifting from this complex geeky thing to making it the simplest, safest and fastest way to use money and transfer value.
- We have made the complex technological part almost invisible and came up with some simple and useful gadgets/devices which would allow us to do everything we need.
- We have gradually removed all impediments(physical or psychological) toward mass adoption – including thinking about it.
- Nobody cares how it’s even called anymore because it just works and everybody uses it.
- We have stopped showing average people technical specs and features and created a simple story to capture their imagination and outline the great benefits they have when using our system, because we figured that’s the only thing they care about.
- We have created an abundant ecosystem and seamlessly integrated NEM to naturally be used for everything we do in the world.
- We made money simple and sexy, all while solving some of the most critical economic problems in the process.
I understand that for mass adoption to happen, multiple paradigm shifts and pandemic like adoption rates are necessary at some point, however I think the idea is still worth a thought experiment.
Maybe there is a way we can somehow orchestrate these things to reach that outcome, maybe NEM is one of the next black swans.
Here are some steps we could start with now in order to take that version of the future closer to reality:1. Outline a basic plan/roudmap toward mass adoption(or whatever our target is) and establish some basic guidelines in the form of checkpoints toward which the community could aim.
2. Focus on establishing our brand:Action:
- answer these questions: who are we?(currency, store of value, payment system, a movement to enable all of that and a lot more?) what are 3 terms that best describe the benefits we bring to the end user(E.g. simplicity, financial freedom, security?), what is our target?
3. Create a concentrated, sustained and targeted marketing campaign to share our message in the most effective manner:Action:
- Define core principles and values for our NEM movement.
- Spread our brand(key words, logo, smart and attractive campaign) everywhere.
- Create a "secret" feature launch calendar and strategically coordinate launch dates and announcements of important features.
- Create the investors handout and update it along the way with our history, most important benefits we bring and long term plan(all covered in good marketing).
- Create one or more smart and appealing NEM videos. We can definitely start with something like this in mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo but why not try to make it more like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5X5cV-4LRo.
- Create a cool weekly blog and newsletter for all NEM stakeholders containing updates, market analysis, pre-announcements of features etc.
- Set a target to strategically market ourselves in the most important newspapers, publications, well known blogs and conferences four our field.
- Coordinate social media accounts strategically and effectively in accordance to our branding.
- Strategically target and offer 5 - 10 free stakes to convert celebrities/entrepreneurs/ influential people to NEM.(Economists, smart technology guys, entrepreneurs, etc)
- Try to create a viral marketing campaign - offering a great incentive to all stakeholders/businesses to bring new people in.
- Create a NEM evangelist manual outlining how businesses should be pitched and have a F.A.Q. added to the manual.
- Contact several payment processors right after the alpha launch and establish a relationship with them. (Bitpay, Coinbase, Coinkite, etc) in order to be able to offer merchants and businesses the ability to accept NEM as soon as possible and even allow them to pay salary in NEM.
- Establish the demographics of our ideal user and try to develop a very appealing marketing strategy for him.
- Create a campaign in which every NEMster is attempting to bring 3(or more) of his smartest friends into NEM.
- Create some NEM games.
- Create a corporate design theme.(I like what NXT is doing)
- Establish what we can and want to do for businesses and try to develop a very appealing marketing strategy to help businesses accept NEM, list on our asset exchange, etc(show them step by step how to do it and how they would benefit from doing that).
- Establish a target of reaching at least 30000 users until the end of 2014 and plan how we can do that.
- Establish a target to get at least 30 companies to list on our asset exchange until the end of 2014 and plan how we can achieve that.
- Establish a target to find at least 10 companies that will pay salaries in NEM until the end of 2014.
- Establish a target to fund at least 20 big NEM project to enrich the NEM ecosystem until the end of 2014.
- I have some more ideas which will be kept secret till the right moment comes.
I also believe it is extremely important try to measure the effect of strategies we undertake in order to know if we want to pivot or persevere.
This plan is meant to be some food for thought and a springboard for the community to start participating. When looking at the suggestions above, do it with this question in mind: how could we improve things even more, how can we make things even more effective?
When you think about the great potential NEM has please understand this, we're only at the very beginning and trust me, you've seen nothing yet. References:
[1]Elon Musk is working on two things at the moment: Making life multiplanetary and accelerating the advent of sustainable and energy efficient means of transportation. He is CEO of two companies at the same time(SPACEX and Tesla Motors), works 80-100 hours weekly and is arguably building the most advanced rockets and cars in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk[2] Here is a car built from the ground up to take advantage of the technology available in the 21st century.
http://www.teslamotors.com/models/features#/environment[3]Tesla Model S was rated 99 out of 100 point on consumer report:
http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports/Update: I have added a note on the antifragile solution and tipping point. 
