I am at a Craft Beverage business conference and the focus is almost entirely on marketing.  As I heard in one session it is easy to make “the liquid” but much harder to sell it.

As I thought about it the craft beverage industry is somewhat similar to the crypto-currency space.  Think of Budweiser (AB InBev) as fiat currency where they (and a few other very big companies) ruled the beer marketplace. Less than twenty years ago they totally controlled manufacturing, promotions, distribution and retail space.  For 2016 craft breweries are now 12.3% of beer volume and 21.9% of dollars ($23.5B) spent in the US.

Craft beverages arguably have a much better product “the liquid” but what has lead their growth has been “focused marketing” to get segments of the marketplace to move away from the “mass market leaders.”

Crypto vs The Real World

While the crypto-currency market cap is now over $200B what percent of the investment marketplace is that?  What percent of daily financial transactions are done with crypto?  I don’t know the actual numbers but it is a very very very small percent.

Where Does Dash Fit In?

Since Dash is a decentralized autonomous organization there is currently no single answer to the questions of what is the marketing strategy / brand attributes / story for Dash.  Some phrases used about Dash are “we want to be the paypal of crypto” or “easy enough for grandma to use” what do those mean?  Is Dash then focused on grandmothers that use paypal?

Dash Core Team hires Ogilvy and Mather

Marketing & Communication (October) – Owner: babygiraffe – 525 DASH (added on 2017-09-21)
Votes: 1017 Yes / 27 No / 6 Abstain

The main goal of the project is to begin approaching marketing and communication professionally to ensure we deliver a clear and relevant message to the market. The outcome of the project is to establish a solid basis to make Dash a powerful brand. There are several phases to the project toward achieving that goal.

O&M will develop and propose a brand positioning for all future marketing communications. The goal is to provide a conceptual framework for the brand and make it relevant for the audience. Work on this phase has already begun in good faith as we await the outcome of this proposal. This framework will serve as an input into our logo, look & feel, artworks, guidelines and creatives.

Step 1 is expected to be completed by the end of October or early November.

Questions

I can’t wait to see their first deliverables.  I would love to see some of these questions have at least a suggested answer.

What is the Dash brand / what is the personality / story Dash wants to tell?

Who does Dash want to market to? (this is so complex ….)

What does Dash sell and are we ready to sell it?  What infrastructure is needed before we can be effective in selling to the desired markets?

Is crypto a whole new market category?  Does the growth of the whole market help everyone or is it every man for them self?

What will it take to get buy-in from enough of the Dash community to focus on delivering a common marketing message?