It seems some individuals are magnetically drawn to misfortune. In recent accounting summaries, one person experienced a succession of unfortunate events - from a flood-damaged laptop to substantial medical fees due to an injury, and now, an incident of extortion. One might think twice about standing next to him in a thunderstorm, given his streak of bad luck!
While the honesty and transparency in the financial reports are appreciated, it raises concerns when observed on paper. Instituting a spending limit for projects might be advisable. For instance, the rally car project has been a major drain on Hive's funds without a clear way to measure the return on investment.
Perhaps a more cost-effective and measurable approach would be to enlist a centralized marketing company to devise a marketing plan, allowing us to assess the returns quarterly. A well-executed TikTok campaign, for example, could offer a more affordable alternative and allow us to track user engagement effectively.
The image of a rally car blazing across the Sardinian mountainside is undoubtedly thrilling, but it's unlikely to drive me, or others, to sign up for Hive. In essence, the current approach feels less like a strategic marketing campaign and more akin to a 'Make a Wish' foundation initiative.
Having a marketing company is something that was already done (not part of VP) and it was a nightmare. It cost 75k and produced absolutely nothing. The company staff dragged their feet, promised a lot, and then it turned down they couldn't deliver anything. At least one of the staff was terminated off the project for negligence. We had to be on top of them non stop every day. That was an ordeal that will never repeat itself. It wasn't fully the fault of the company but the company wasn't prepared to deal with a massive blockchain like Hive. Those places are suitable for single businesses. What we needed was to get Hive into news publications, which they couldn't provide. They had no functional connections to have a press release picked up. The same thing happened with a crypto-focused marketing firm that was reaching out earlier (that relationship wasn't pursued). They were used to taking huge monthly fees but couldn't confirm a single article release.
I get what you're saying. The biggest issue is in our space which is the crypto space we're competing against blockchains and various platforms that have monstrous budgets and most of those budgets come from centralized forms of funding, meaning our budget is a drop in the bucket in comparison to theirs. The entire promotional industry is geared towards working with their budgets. We had an invite to a conference in Miami last year where it quickly turned into "give us 250k for a sponsorship and we'll let your speaker who we invited ourselves onto the stage". That's why we get creative with it. If you got ideas by all means.
Edit: Tiktok and Instagram we ended up doing in-house and it hasn't been too bad. There are some accounts promoting Hive events with a few hundred thousand followers. Lots of the newer Hive members have 20k-50k followers or so. Dbuzz in the Philippines has been moving with this organically pretty well as of recently for Hive. I don't know if anyone will be able to get any of the major influencers to promote any crypto after the disasters with FTX and others or even the usual Tron scamming. Paying influencers isn't in scope for VP either way. Back in 2016 there's been a lot of bad blood over that sort of thing.