[BIP-33] Orb Marketing Budget Proposal for the Remainder of Q3

[Meghan]

Overview

This proposal aims to continue Balancer marketing within the newly funded Orb Collective Service Provider (SP), under the new Operating Framework. The Orb marketing team aims to accelerate the growth and awareness of Balancer Protocol.

Orb’s marketing team consists of 3.5 FTEs and is led by myself (@MeghanGardler). As Director of Marketing at Orb, I support the growth and development of the Balancer ecosystem. At Balancer Labs, I oversaw all aspects of the marketing strategy from PR and media, event and conference planning product and digital marketing, and partnerships and integrations marketing relationships. I have actively been working in DeFi since 2017 and leverage ten years of experience implementing comprehensive marketing and communications/PR approaches in fintech and finance.

Megan Moran – As the Marketing Manager, Megan leads content strategy for Balancer in both written (blog posts, press releases) and video (launch videos, product explainers, tutorials) and manages the content calendar for Balancer. Megan runs the Balancer Twitter account and leads social media engagement and growth for the Protocol. Megan also is in charge of brand impressions in the form of swag for events and conferences and provides support for all other digital marketing efforts. Megan brings three years of experience in cryptocurrency and fintech.

Bianca Buzea - As Developer Relations Engineer, Bianca is the technical advisor to Marketing, Business Development, and other non-engineering functions. She is responsible for creating developer onboarding materials such as technical articles, podcast, tutorials and videos. She is also in charge of establishing strong relationships with the developer community to translate their needs into products and tools that enhance the developer experience with Balancer. In the past, Bianca worked at a FAANG company in a technical position.

Maria Magenes - As a part-time Marketing Contributor, Maria assists in different digital marketing activities for Balancer, giving support whenever needed, and taking advantage of her extended network. In Q3 Maria is leading the handover of the marketing activities run by Balancer marketing subDAO within this team (Discord, partnership marketing, translations, etc.). Maria has a long experience in the DeFi ecosystem, contributing to Balancer for 1.5 years and working as Marketing Manager in the space since 2018 with two of the most important protocols (Aave and Maker).

How our marketing team will scale global utilization of the Balancer Protocol:

1. Developer marketing

• Expand the Balancer ecosystem by connecting with projects and individuals who are positioned to build on top of the Balancer protocol and usher in new use cases.

2. Digital marketing

• Twitter and social media presence are very important in our space. We will continue establishing a solid presence in the DeFi space by managing and expanding the strong brand identity the Balancer Protocol has today.

3. Events

• We will maintain and nurture brand awareness and the relationship with Balancer community by organizing and ensuring Balancer presence in the main IRL and virtual events, meetups etc.

4. Communications & PR

• Assist partners by offering support and guidance with marketing campaigns and launch announcements through blog content and press coverage.

Balancer’s marketing needs are ever-changing. Each marketing campaign, product launch, or announcement is customized and tailored to the event. To have the greatest impact and showcase Balancer’s full capabilities, we will request a budget quarterly rather than semi-annually or annually. We are in the middle of a bear cycle and therefore have cut many costs in order to be as lean as possible and weather the current market.

The requested budget for the rest of Q3 is $ 76,770.00 as visualized in the breakdown at the end of this proposal. A review will be presented monthly with the entire Orb team, and any unallocated budget will be rolled over and used to offset the budget request for the following quarter.

Balancer Protocol operates on an ethos of transparency, and the marketing team now under Orb Collective will do the same. By proposing a quarterly budget, the Balancer Community will have even deeper exposure to marketing initiatives.

Breakdown of Marketing Budget

Sponsorships - For Q3, we will be requesting budget to participate in DevCon as Balancer has been invited to participate in their Supporter Program. DevCon will run during October of 2021, in Q4, but payment of sponsorships typically happens in advance in order to secure the support level.

DevCon will have a Supporter Program this year in lieu of traditional sponsorships. Balancer has been invited to contribute to donations to Ethereum public goods and as a thank you, will receive Supporter tickets to Devcon VI. We have elected to participate in the middle tier, since there has not been many details released about what is included in the Supporter Package other than tickets. We will share more details with the community as it is released.

Event Swag - Conference and event swag is a crucial component to IRL brand awareness. We continue to see Twitter mentions of elite Balancer swag such as the tie-dye bucket hats and Balancer Ray Bans. Memorable swag presents free advertising opportunities that don’t come across as shill-y. For Q3, we are requesting budget to order t-shirts and socks for DevCon.

Public Relations - PR is essential to increasing the brand awareness and exposure of a company through press mentions and media. Balancer’s PR team is Market Across, who I personally have worked with since 2017 and therefore receive discounted monthly pricing since I am a legacy client (normal PR costs are over $20k a month). Market Across has done an excellent job ensuring that Balancer is continually mentioned in the press and that product launches get maximum exposure. See coverage books under the KPI section for examples.

Video - Videos are an engaging way to showcase Balancer’s technology and maximize digital exposure of a product launch. When we launched the Balancer-Cow-Protocol, this announcement video was shown on stage during ETH Lisbon. Our video agency(s) produce amazing content at a considerably lower cost thanks to years of industry experience and relationships the marketing members have built with creators. Balancer videos also help explain the value of our complex technology, like the Boosted Pools explainer video.

Podcast - Balancer is a Protocol for programmable liquidity. In addition to providing a platform on which protocols can easily build on top, Balancer supports these protocols by providing visibility to the market. “Built on Balancer” is a podcast that aims to bring additional visibility to projects that build their tech on Balancer and use the tech in innovative ways. This podcast aims to open our community to innovations happening in the space, create brand awareness for other projects, and help to grow our social media presence on YouTube and Twitter.

Written Content - Balancer developers and partners are constantly releasing innovations that are much more detailed than a Twitter thread can cover. Long-form content such as articles, case-studies, and announcements allow us to fully explain Balancer’s capabilities. Medium is frequently used in this industry and is one of the first places people go to learn about a project. Having a steady stream of content published on Medium increases brand awareness, breaks down complex topics, and attracts developers and engineers to build on Balancer.

Graphic Designer - The current graphic designer that helps the marketing team is a well-known Baller, Cryptocomical. Cryptocomical has been an asset to the Balancer ecosystem and especially to our marketing team, as he is able to produce a very high volume of social media and blog assets in a short period of time. The budget we are requesting for graphic design work is based on past invoices submitted to Balancer Labs by Cryptocomical and assuming the same output of work.

KPIs

In order to successfully market Balancer Protocol and compete with others in our industry, we are requesting a budget to achieve certain KPIs. As I stated in a forum comment on the Orb SP Proposal, marketing teams in DeFi have a hard job. In more traditional industries, there are ways to track clicks and cookies so that the success of marketing campaigns are easy to match effort to output.

From the time I started at Balancer Labs 15 months ago, I discussed with leadership the balance between privacy vs measuring marketing success and the tradeoffs to each. Balancer prioritizes privacy and security over all, so we do not track cookies and clicks. That makes our job in marketing harder to see the results of what we know were successful campaigns.

We have had to get creative on ways we can measure success. Medium blog reads, Twitter engagement and growth, press coverage, brand recognition at events and conferences, etc. does not always correlate to users adding liquidity to Balancer Pools. Our objective is not to make Balancer the most viral Twitter account. Our goal is to make Balancer the leading platform for programmable liquidity. Does having amazing social media marketing play into that? Yes definitely, and that is why we will track it and report it to the community. But if we were to benchmark our success to quarterly social media metrics only then we would be aligning our incentives to vanity metrics. I don’t think that’s a winning formula for the Protocol.

How Orb Marketing will measure its success:

1. Medium blog visits (written content)
2. Twitter engagement & followers
3. Youtube growth in views & followers (podcast and video budget)
4. Sponsorship of events and conferences success (DevCon budget)
5. Media mentions & campaigns success (PR budget)
6. Brand impressions and social impact of swag. (swag budget)

Orb Marketing’s past achievements:

• Balancer Labs Twitter Growth
  • 129K followers (+35% in 1 year)
  • Post Engagement
    • An average 400K monthly tweet impressions
    • An average 3K monthly Twitter mentions
• Conference sponsorships and presence
  • ETHDenver 2022
  • Paris BlockChain Week
  • DevConnect 2022
  • Permissionless
• Creating Balancer’s Video Strategy
  • 25 videos published since 2021 - Average 200 views per video
• Top Partner and Product Launches:
  • Optimism
    • 25 pieces of coverage, 787k estimated views, 678M potential audience (Coverage book 2)
  • veBAL
    • Explainer videos, two blog posts, and press coverage
  • Aave Boosted Pools
    • 23 pieces of coverage, 960K estimated views, 482M potential audience reach (Coverage book )
  • Balancer-Cow-Protocol
    • First-ever Balancer launch video, blog posts, and press coverage
      
      

Full Budget Breakdown

[solarcurve]

I fully support this proposal.

I attended the recent yacht party event that Balancer co-sponsored at Permissionless and it was great. I heard from many people it was the best web3 event of the conference. During the Optimism launch I also had the opportunity to work closely with Meghan and her team and saw first hand how skilled she is when it comes to managing launch PR - the BeethovenX team was very impressed (as was I).

The concern that this spend puts puts us further away from reaching sustainability in terms of protocol revenue vs funding requirements is valid. However, I believe Meghan has adequately addressed this by cutting where she could while still maintaining the marketing excellence that Balancer has come to expect. Though it can be hard to measure the true value derived from marketing activities I think it is safe to say Balancer’s position in the market would suffer if Meghan’s team doesn’t get the budget they need to do their jobs. For now I view the amount requested as reasonable all things considered.

[Andrea81]

I also support this,

Meghan has shown great professionalism and I fully trust her judgment.
Balancer brand positioning and perception is incredibly high also thanks to the work the Marketing team has done over the last year.

go Meghan, go!

[ZenDragon]

Ultimately, I support this proposal.

My opinion is marketing teams in a down markets typically takes funding cuts on the chin but we, as a DAO, have priced majority of this in already by managing our expenses a bit more tightly. Spending concerns may still be looming, but I do think the trade-off of funding these initiatives is net positive.

Meghan and those who i have worked with from the proposal are engaged and on the ball every time I have interacted with them so i trust their judgement on these expenditures. Worth noting, I respect and appreciate the level of detail that is involved in the technical posts & articles I have seen from them in the past. To me this is all necessary to maintain and strengthen the image we have been improving over the last few quarters.

[Curtis]

I work closely with Meghan and here team in Orb and they are top notch. I think the results speak for themselves on this. The price isn’t ridiculous, especially for a Tech Company, and the recognition we’ve gotten has been outstanding.

Fully support this as well.

[Bobbay_StableLab]

We support this proposal.

This informative post detailed every aspect of the cost, helping the community understand where the budget is being spent. This is a prime example of a great budget proposal.

I echo the comments above and believe that the Orb team will continue to do great work and enhance Balancer’s image.

[Xeonus]

As for all the other SP proposals, I have to abstain from voting. Nevertheless, I think this is a very well written proposal with a clear budgeting plan and KPIs - in full support.

[zekraken]

In full support

I’ve had the chance to work with and see first hand the high caliber product that M, M, & M produces for the Balancer ecosystem. I don’t think the balancer brand would be where it is today without the hard work put in by this team. I, like others, appreciate that they’ve made an effort to scale back the projected spend due to current market conditions. I look forward to moving the brand ahead even more in Q3

[solarcurve]

https://snapshot.org/#/balancer.eth/proposal/0x797467e0b451a49773cfea97359a32ab880caee688d16fe7db41f94a4e0570f0