Somehow I have a sense that making a difference to people's lives, such as the humanitarian efforts in Ghana, will both help people and provide better marketing than spending money on sponsoring conferences. Especially if we ask ourselves what we want to present ourselves as, and who we want to reach. Are we one more crypto project that promises future token growth? Or a better decentralized and more technologically advanced network that can make a foundational social difference? The latter can appeal to the common person, as the common person is greatly dissatisfied with the current political and economic system and is looking for alternatives. We offer an alternative economic system that's not all about token growth but actual functionality.
I don't know of a project that succeeded because it had a large marketing budget. And I know of projects that succeeded wildly with very small marketing budgets.
So I am feeling mixed about the proposal. I really like some of the budget items, and others (like conferences) seem like they could make much more difference if they are redirected to something else.
The conference sponsorships just give us access to some conferences we otherwise wouldn't have gotten a speaking spot at. Where you see a conference sponsorship (with HiveFest not included of course) that is the reason. We have not sponsored just for a logo placement so far and I doubt we will because it's a shallow type of engagement. The Caracas Blockchain Week conference just ended and it was very dynamic and productive in showcasing Hive. Its barely over and we're already seeing results in terms of connections and invites. I think it taught everyone a lot about what type of sponsorship really works.
Thanks for responding. Glad to hear how the conference went and I hope this type of sponsorship works out.
I'll write out something more comprehensive with my thoughts on it in a bit. It was fairly unexpected to see how much in terms of results was actually achieved.