The importance of brand in web3 - Panel

yeah hi everyone uh I'm happy that you're here today with us in this panel so uh yeah so let me introduce a bit more our panelists so uh sopia is a fractional CMO for web through startups and head of marketing and in inc4 a blockchain development company that focuses on custom development Solutions uh Alena is a web stream marketing expert who served at a head of digital marketing at fuel Arts uh at Art and Tech investment platform and also she managed content and strategic Partnerships with Christi's education and Forbes web 3 and organized events at Art Basel in Miami uh and Damian he is co-founder and properly Studio a design studio for web3 fin Tech projects and head of visual design at Angel block and he's he collaborated with Quan stop index rum maker doll alive zero and he created this beautiful branding for is waro so welcome this beautiful panelists yeah and we're starting so uh the first question uh is about branding like what is branding because many people perceive it in different way and uh yeah so we want to discuss actually what is brand and what is branding so Elena maybe this question to you thank you so much uh yeah so let's start with brand and I would say that uh brand in web 3 differs a lot from Brand in web 2 uh but not uh a watch right uh I have a background in traditional art world and then I switch to digital and right now I can see how traditional art world was a source of inspiration for digital one for example crypto once did uh an artistic residence with Nel abne which is a normal traditional art World practice uh so when we are talking about brand in web 3 we can say it differs a lot from brands in web 2 uh but there are still a lot of practices that we can take from web to and Implement in web stre in an amazing uh and really nice way uh and so I would say that uh brand in web3 should be always transparent right because uh We join the space for different reasons but one of them is decentralization we want to give our community a sense of um an idea that they can control the governance control how the company uses their finances uh so transparency is quite crucial um and I would say this effect of formo is also crucial for every brand in web three um because I've been working and I've been closing down a lot of means and when you're closing a mint in web three you always have to limit your time your mints cannot go for weeks or even days your mean going on for 30 minutes of pre-sale and 30 minutes of public sale and that's it uh and I would say that uh like the most crucial scene in BR for brand in web three would be a community uh and I think we will be discussing a little bit later on how to build a community so maybe a wants to add something or Damian it's working yeah it's a it's silent but it's silent okay so yeah as as you said from from this point this point of view I totally agree but from the perspective of of a brand when someone wants to create that the brand is not only a logo it's not only a slogan or color scheme it's more than like perception and um uh and emotional connection that people have with company and or a product so it's um it's a connection it's a a mix of tangible and in tangible elements like visual identity uh tone of voice uh brand experience messaging um and elements like that which are building this into one so from technical point of view brand looks like that but in web fre we have a bit different um elements like uh sorry I have small cheat sheet here uh I prepared before uh we have the centralization and Community which is very important here and uh transparency as you mentioned it's very important part in branding especially in web free uh because it's connected to the community to the trust and yeah that's that's how I feel thank you sopia do you want to add something just like uh yeah all is true totally agree with the guys because uh the the most important thing that uh when we talk about The Branding in web to uh we think about like big majure companies and when we talk about web free Brandon it's about like getting your community it's very important and yeah we will talk about this a later like spoiler yeah yeah thank you very much so uh the next question to deian about the core elements of brand identity because deian works a lot with branding and design uh part of branding so what the difference between branding needs for web three startups and mature companies okay so starting from the beginning as I mentioned before there's couple of core Elements which are saying that it's some it's it's branding so we have uh this brand values we have the the logo it's it's uh our VI we have ton of voice we have this visual identity uh brand experience but also we have couple of different elements uh which rers but um relating to the second part of the question what's the difference between uh web free startups and major uh companies the differ a lot I think because web free startups has have more flexibility definitely at the beginning they can experiment more because they they start uh something new um they [Music] um they are definitely Community Driven because they need to create a community from scratch which is very important as well uh but the major uh companies uh needs to FOC Fus on something different because they already have Community uh so they have to focus on cohesion and consistency in their branding they need to do their moves really uh carefully if they want to change anything uh because um they cannot lose the trust of community so if they will do something really bad it will affect the commune so yeah for sure thank you very much uh so so um let's discuss the main goals and features of building brands in web 3 so you at the beginning you mentioned a bit about this so maybe you can give more examples of companies that have solid brands in web stre yeah definitely uh okay uh so I was start that um as I see the main principles when you're are building a brand in tre is insensitive right uh I know not all of us know English that well to understand this word uh but in sensitive you can see it in webtop marketing it's when you go to any shop and they're giving you out a discount a tester a sample something for free something that you would enjoy and insensitive is also crucial in web stre um but from my experience a lot of brands in web3 they tend to give away something bad like something I really don't need I really don't need a 20% % discount uh on a company that I don't even want to use uh so from my experience when you're are creating an insensitive campaign you're giving something away please like see yourself as your customer and think what you would like to own you would like to own an nft maybe a physical code wallet or maybe something else right so insensitive is important and I would say that insensitives are quite regular for a lot of well-known Brands I know that Bak is quite all right now uh in their um crisis uh but what they did they had a lot of nice and sensitives they had the sense of physical community so uh if you have this nft you would be invited to exclusive event that you would enjoy you would receive uh free of charge merchandise so this is a nice idea of rent um and I would be still standing by if you're like a digital art company you definitely need a membership uh right uh State modern uh museum has memberships uh it's physical memberships for web to Art hours but every good brand has a membership and I've been partnering with forb web3 uh when they were launching for SM pass which is basically also a membership uh and it gives you a lot of benefits uh one of the best benefits I've seen uh from forb slap 3 was uh that you as a holder would be printed in physical addition of Forbes which is insane right uh I think it's a dream of a lot of people to have their name out on the physical edition of forbs uh so I would say yeah those are my examples and um I would say just think what you would like to receive as a user and then propose it to your customer thank you sopia maybe you can add yeah just a little bit uh so uh I see the great value for uh Brands uh for Branding is when web 3 startups uh take the best from like web to Startup or maybe like any web 2 company and make this like the sense of brand alignment so when everything in your branding actually depicts your goal your values like everything this align so basically if you're doing some very um specific Financial Services then you have some um I don't know so you you look like mature big company you're not adding DUIs so you really bring what you want to bring to your customers users and like it's brand alignment in what you're talking about and uh like I can say that not a very good good example of branding it's like a rebranding um have anyone see the sky company Sky money so yeah they was uh guys were Dow maker and everyone knew and now it's a sky and everyone is confused uh it's not very good so basically the marketers didn't they didn't done their job well so basically yeah and this guy doesn't depict what they're doing actually so yeah they are doing the great thing so they they are doing the crypto-based currency and it's nobody wants to tell to call it a stable coin but it's like a stable coin but yeah so what is sky sky is we don't understand what is it about and it's not very good for Branding it's not aligned with what they're doing yeah for sure thank you very much uh so the next question was be about hype and value so uh in web 3 it's difficult to find this uh best proportion between hype and value but uh can you uh can they work together in general and how the project can be visible and hyped without losing value and their focus as you mentioned previously uh yes so maybe Damian can share um Okay so that's that's a tricky one because I think that they can work together but it depends on on what you are doing so maybe I would take um hype uh project as an example maybe you know that the kind of 3D monkeys nftd how they created the uh the Hy the hype uh around the their project so they gather people into the Discord because the whole collection was uh White listed and uh they they were giving people possibility to buy something so they they took the direction to you know not allow people to only mint their nfts they had to do something to get the nft so they it was creation of huge Community because before meting they raised around 880,000 people in Discord which were talking together building Community uh basically so yeah they and they released the uh the collection and the hype was around that for like I don't know a couple of months but we know what happened to nft Market and uh the committee disappeared basically so a lot of people were just there still for having option to me that because there was a lot of hype around that but they didn't give any value to people what will happen after so I think um everyone who wants to create something it it doesn't matter it's anft collection branding around that or just a company uh who which is doing something different uh you need to give people value because without that they are not feeling that they are part of this sorry I completely forgot your question please repeat it how to how to find the balance between hype and value okay sounds great um actually um I would take it from a little bit like different perspective um for I think two months we've been writing a content on Twitter it was exhausting it didn't perform that well we had to like spend money on target uh on influencers uh and what we understand is that you can get a subscription for 10 bucks a month to see what's trending in your target audience at this particular moment so I don't know like right now it's trending that CES uh thinks that art and digital art is a security and everyone is super overwhelmed uh and so the idea is that you see what's trending and you're writing your content day in day to match this trend in theme uh and it's kind of like uh in a way hype and Trend that you are using this wave to go on and this is an example of uh people I know that everyone heard of this like amazing sale which happened like uh I think like three years ago so he was creating artworks for 5,000 days every day even on the day of his vedding on the day of his birthday uh if you go right now to B profile on X you would see that he's using he's still creating an artworks every day on his website you can check every particular date you want to see and you can see what he's driving like what he's creating every day people doesn't create um random artwork right he's not uh doing unicorns today what he's doing he's actually looking at a news that are trending there is something happening in USA for example or something is happening in this space and he is uh and he actually like creates an artwork about it so he's using a trend and use a hype to create an artwork every day uh and I would say this would be a good example of using something trendy for your particular benefit thank you uh okay so do you agree that money can buy strong brand uh I will start uh yes or and no so basically uh uh if you're a big brand like a fcg like in some very competitive field like a fcg yeah you need lots of money to uh get your brand visible and uh like you have to buy ads on TV you have to buy uh outdoor ads so like you're forced to do that because it's the mar Market tells you so it's it's not like your once uh but uh also lots of good brands and especially personal Brands they can could be done without lots of money so basically like the the the brand of Italian pan basically so he just very cool guy he's no no no no the agency worked a lot about his personal brand actually yeah so but when he started like okay yeah you need big money that's it uh I I think that uh it can help but uh it won't build uh the brand because as I mentioned before brand is something different uh so it can help to you know get the ads I don't know social media things buy some other stuff but without like some selling points building trust and all that elements around that money won't give you anything more than just having money but you can easily burn that uh and do not create anything pable so it can helps but uh it's not the main point what else is needed to build a strong brand um as I as I said unique selling point I think is more is very important depends on what you are creating of course but uh you need to have quality so for example if you if you have product you need to have uh I don't know good uh user experience something what uh uh attract people to join your product uh so um you need to build trust you need to build community so without this elements money is just the money thank you so what the difference H you wanted to ask I was just curious can anyone in an audience who think that you actually need a lot of money to build a good brand raise just if it is a yes okay okay we have two people here that's it so everyone else thinks that you don't need a lot of money to okay okay see I agree with the majority uh yeah okay thank you uh so what the difference between the audience uh and Community like target audience it's like typical term from marketing but in web three we we say about community so what the difference between these groups of people so let me start uh the main difference is that the target audience is the those who you want to engage to your product and the community is people who are engaged in your product so basically target audience that you're striving for and you think that those people will be your clients and the community is already your users clients maybe they're just uh having fun in chats but yeah they support you already and uh for uh VB fre it's like the main point I think like the main purpose of any project is to get lots of people into the community because the community drives every web three project thank you you want to add something okay so uh can you uh share the examples of good communities in web three that you know or maybe you participate in yeah thank you I actually I really enjoy this question uh I have actually plent of examples but I would start with my particular use case uh I'm host of weekly webinars so it means that every week I have someone uh that I will be interviewing online and um uh this show is called the amaki show you can Google it uh and basically we have a community it's a tiny Community we have 2,000 people but we've been building out those 2,000 people ourselves uh and what we did we basically had I don't know like regular benefits where you just talk to people they are telling you about their new artworks you're just connecting them uh in between each other we do a lot of open calls for this chance for them to be showcased at our show uh so this is my particular use case you just bring out educational content and you build this audience and this community around it uh another way of like good community unities and strong communities uh that I appreciate is actually Tas um I will be organizing an event in London in October in partnership with tesas blockchain so if you're in London just uh come to me after this panel and I will send you an invite uh and I think Tas has a nice Community because it's art oriented blockchain and this is what they do right they are not creating hype around their talking because they don't need to this blockchain is there to sell art and this is what they are doing that's why they have an amazing artist supporting them from the beginning to the end um and I would say also really engaged Community is pizza ninjas if you no this nft col action actually not nfts Originals it's Bitcoin collection um and they're quite nice because they have super easy brand identity like uh all the people who have pizza like be our collector and I think everyone loves pizza and things like that right and they have a nice and sensitive they have amazing real life event amazing merch and basically it depends but if there is a conference happening they are making a pizza event uh there so yeah but there are plenty a lot of ways to engage your community and there are far more uh brands that have an amazing Community thank you yeah I'd like to add a little bit and uh I want to give a little bit of kudos to the near Community actually uh I've been engaged in near Community for two years uh and uh they really do a very good job with their community and the community is super loyal so I don't know why because like lots of projects they crash they leave uh but still lots of those who are like advocate for near uh they are there and it's very cool to be to see these guys they are super loyal even like when near uh crashed from like 18 to two I think dollar so basically and they were like yeah they were sad but they were like but we believe they really believe and that's very cool when big ecosystems they have so much supporters and they are so loyal but something weird is happening now in their ex account so maybe you you saw Yes something some yeah some HED to not yeah so something's happening but uh but yeah okay so let's talk about personal brand because in web3 is vital and uh what can you recommend to Founders to builders and to everyone uh to build personal brand how to sell the product with person brand Daman maybe you can share your experience not as specially at uh personal branding because I feel that uh it requires um some additional work uh so I don't have any specific examples in in that case I just have a couple of observations um so it definitely what what could help to to build strong personal brand to be true to the game uh to not fake anything to uh to be loyal to to the people have nice communication to be natural so that's uh from my perspective that's something what convinced me uh when I when I look at some people but nothing very special instead of that uh I actually love this question too uh so um my background I'm not a gamer right so I was struggling with Discord um I'm from Ukraine Twitter is not a popular app in Ukraine right so I had to figure it out I had to it is becoming popular right it's a nice platform uh but in general yeah I had zero subscriber zero knowledge what is quote what is retweet I had no idea uh and so I was building it quite like from a scratch um what I found useful is that basically you pick five creators that you enjoy right five creators that are in your target audience and you just follow them you turn on notifications every time they post something you're there like quoting or commenting liking or posting whatever um because this would help other people um drive into your account uh another idea is that you f a creator that you really enjoy on X and you are starting to follow his frequeny see uh for example the person posts uh three times a day you do the same um and this would be like super practical tip that would help you drive some some people to your EXs uh another idea that I actually enjoy uh this space is about communi so organized Twitter spaces I don't know like you know me I know you you invite some people you know and you create a Twitter space you might have like one listener but it's already good like it's good enough to have one listener or in your Twitter spaces um another SC is that educational content is key uh right uh right now there is a trendway on Smart advertising uh because like um last decade we were advertising product like okay buy my water with Lon because this water is nice and it's like it's straightforward nobody wants it um give a try of this water to people and then people might want to purchase it uh right so what I'm talking about is when you're building a brand on Twitter um try to post down a lot of educational content free of charge you may put some CTA click to action at the end of your threat uh and you may not uh so just uh try to be purposeful try to be useful for somebody out there uh and I think those would be like my main tips to build some audience on X um of course you can go in a cheaty way you can buy audience uh but if you are talking organic things uh it would pay you much more uh than a b audience for sure thank you yeah yeah yeah we we know so maybe Sophia can add something and we are finishing just yeah one more thought is that uh uh like in adding to uh the previous speaker that uh buying uh followers won't give you nothing so basically you're doing the you're building your personal brand not for this purposes uh you build your personal brand for some other purposes or basically like I don't know better fundraising some networking doing some so yeah buying flowers won't make sense because those guys won't give you money on fundraising that's it yeah totally agree uh so thank you very much for this conversation and uh I think we have uh one we have time for one or two questions and that's all yeah so if somebody wants yeah please hey guys uh what are some of your favorite rebrands you've seen in Krypto re brand re brand okay let me think about it um oh wow um okay okay um there is U word of woman Community if you ever heard of them and basically this is an ecosystem they have an F col action and they support female creators female Founders Etc um and I think a few months ago they kind of created a tiny branding they never implemented a blockchain they never had a preferred blockchain uh but right now they are integrated by t blockchain uh which is a little bit weird right because they are not set art SE to integrate tesas um but I think if we talking about like rebranding as I know it's in web to from the top of of my head I have nothing in my mind I don't want to why like I can come up with something but I wanton all that's always tricky one to to remember a lot of Brands but I I I think uh the the the biggest impression on me was uh how AA did that and uh how they created the the entire um bunch of products com combined into one and how they divide up because it was really smart how they create it so I from from my perspective it's Ser hi could you suggest any key points to building some uh binding effect our brand to good memories for instance when we think about Coca-Cola we think about Christmas when we think about Red Bull we think about adrenaline about extreme sports how we can achieve that in we free yeah good question so do we have an answer yeah key points I think be extreme uh right if you're like your example is Coca-Cola uh have a truck they have an advertisement going on with a Santa Claus going on a truck they have physical popups with Santa Claus if you are talking about Red Bull almost every capital in Europe had a Red Bull show where people were creating like weird flying objects and just like running down the cliff with them uh so yeah I would say be extreme um if you're uh I don't know a brand with a monkey give banana some your physical meetups like be extreme like don't uh the scene is you can be funny uh you can look a little bit stupid but the main goal is that you're memorable you are not just another brand with a tote and black and white logo right be something more um be dump be funny but be me memorable so thanks a lot for for our panelist for you dear audience yes so I think that we are finishing now and uh and yeah so thanks a lot to everyone