Proposal description
For those that have been on here a while you may remember my failed attempt (but not by much) at getting funding for radio advertising. The failure was due to my ignorance around the history of long term commitments on this board, but the kind folks at on the Core Development Team, specifically Daniel Diaz, expedited things by signing a deal with Free Talk Live and saving us all the trouble of watching me flounder in here 
.
I spoke with Ryan Taylor of the Core Team a few days ago and he informed me that they are sorry but the Core Team is hiring a big advertising agency and they didn’t want to continue the advertising agreement because of the complication of bringing existing agreements to the table with the new agency, but that I should come to you fine folks and that you would likely fund me directly. Ryan committed to fund us until the next funding cycle begins here.
Free Talk Live is a nationally syndicated libertarian radio program on 170+ radio stations across the US. These are real FCC licensed radio stations. We also have more than 15 million downloads on our podcast. We are credited by Roger Ver, Gavin Andresen and Charlie Schrem as helping to give Bitcoin the initial boost it needed to get widespread adoption. We love Dash and since we are in New Hampshire, we actually get to use it. I understand that Dash is a superior tech to Bitcoin and prefer to use it over Bitcoin because of the lower fees. The Activist community here in New Hampshire has really embraced Dash.
Currently, we have are airing 3 :30 second recorded radio ads and doing one Live Read per evening. My strategy with the campaign was to use the scripts that were approved by the Core team, but to create a bunch of the same ads with different voices. This, I feel, will help function as a sort of “Word of Mouth” campaign. Listeners hear the same message repeated by many different people. We use the Live Read as an opportunity to talk about new developments in Dash; Dashforcenews.com has been invaluable for this. We also have several banners up on freetalklive.com and speak positively about Dash when the opportunity arises on air.
The price of this campaign in USDs is $11830 and that is 35 Dash at the time that I enter this, plus the 5 Dash for the fee. If the value of Dash plummets, I will bear that risk. If the value of Dash goes up against the USD sufficiently to cover an extra month, I will bonus the month of ads. If it sky rockets, yay me! but you will still see me in 4 months.
Ads that contain audio are generally considered to be branding ads. Branding is different that direct response, but arguably more powerful. If I ask you the name of the best brand of tires, you likely have an opinion, not because you are an expert in rubber, but because someone has branded that in your mind. Free Talk Live can help Dash become branded as Digital Cash in people's minds too. This won't be a short, easy or fast project, but Dash is better tech than Bitcoin, even if BTC has first mover advantage and name recognition. I have said this many times on the air. Other than one Monero guy trolling Joel Valenzuela when we had him as a co-host, the audience seems as happy with Dash as we are.
We love Dash and we don’t just take any advertiser on Free Talk Live. We have to believe in the product to do a Live Read. I hope you will vote to continue the ads and any comments you have are welcome. I am putting this in for 3 months of funding, but I must advise you that branding advertising is a long term endeavor. We will continue to support Dash, whatever your vote, but this will give us the opportunity to continue to discuss it nightly.
If you wish to research the previous campaign proposal, prior to the Core Team picking up the proposal, here it is: https://www.dash.org/forum/members/medgeftl.11200/#postings
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/let-the-show-that-launched-bitcoin-work-for-dash.13549/
This is the thread for this current proposal:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-radio-advertising-170-stations.16806/#post-139470
.I spoke with Ryan Taylor of the Core Team a few days ago and he informed me that they are sorry but the Core Team is hiring a big advertising agency and they didn’t want to continue the advertising agreement because of the complication of bringing existing agreements to the table with the new agency, but that I should come to you fine folks and that you would likely fund me directly. Ryan committed to fund us until the next funding cycle begins here.
Free Talk Live is a nationally syndicated libertarian radio program on 170+ radio stations across the US. These are real FCC licensed radio stations. We also have more than 15 million downloads on our podcast. We are credited by Roger Ver, Gavin Andresen and Charlie Schrem as helping to give Bitcoin the initial boost it needed to get widespread adoption. We love Dash and since we are in New Hampshire, we actually get to use it. I understand that Dash is a superior tech to Bitcoin and prefer to use it over Bitcoin because of the lower fees. The Activist community here in New Hampshire has really embraced Dash.
Currently, we have are airing 3 :30 second recorded radio ads and doing one Live Read per evening. My strategy with the campaign was to use the scripts that were approved by the Core team, but to create a bunch of the same ads with different voices. This, I feel, will help function as a sort of “Word of Mouth” campaign. Listeners hear the same message repeated by many different people. We use the Live Read as an opportunity to talk about new developments in Dash; Dashforcenews.com has been invaluable for this. We also have several banners up on freetalklive.com and speak positively about Dash when the opportunity arises on air.
The price of this campaign in USDs is $11830 and that is 35 Dash at the time that I enter this, plus the 5 Dash for the fee. If the value of Dash plummets, I will bear that risk. If the value of Dash goes up against the USD sufficiently to cover an extra month, I will bonus the month of ads. If it sky rockets, yay me! but you will still see me in 4 months
. Ads that contain audio are generally considered to be branding ads. Branding is different that direct response, but arguably more powerful. If I ask you the name of the best brand of tires, you likely have an opinion, not because you are an expert in rubber, but because someone has branded that in your mind. Free Talk Live can help Dash become branded as Digital Cash in people's minds too. This won't be a short, easy or fast project, but Dash is better tech than Bitcoin, even if BTC has first mover advantage and name recognition. I have said this many times on the air. Other than one Monero guy trolling Joel Valenzuela when we had him as a co-host, the audience seems as happy with Dash as we are.
We love Dash and we don’t just take any advertiser on Free Talk Live. We have to believe in the product to do a Live Read. I hope you will vote to continue the ads and any comments you have are welcome. I am putting this in for 3 months of funding, but I must advise you that branding advertising is a long term endeavor. We will continue to support Dash, whatever your vote, but this will give us the opportunity to continue to discuss it nightly.
If you wish to research the previous campaign proposal, prior to the Core Team picking up the proposal, here it is: https://www.dash.org/forum/members/medgeftl.11200/#postings
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/let-the-show-that-launched-bitcoin-work-for-dash.13549/
This is the thread for this current proposal:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-radio-advertising-170-stations.16806/#post-139470
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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
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So I'll be doing the same here -- I'm glad DASH sponsored your show for the time that it did, but I won't vote to re-up it due to the fact that most of your audience has now heard of us.
Thank you for the proposal, however, and I wish you continued luck in your obviously successful business.
So, you have a really good understanding of what is called Direct Advertising. Would you please consider that there are other ways that advertising can be used? The 2 big categories are Direct and Branding. As I stated above, if I ask you the best brand of tire for cars, you likely have an opinion, but that opinion isn't based on your knowledge of the chemistry surrounding rubber, it is just a brand loyalty thing (Mine is Michelin, what is yours?). Branding is basically brain-washing. the advertiser repeats some variation of their message over and over for years and brain-washes the public into believing their product is better, whether this is true or false is immaterial.
I humbly submit that Dash needs Branding not Direct. Here is why: you don't need to get people to try your product, it doesn't work an better or worse than Bitcoin (your main competition) from a user-side experience. You need to convince people that your product is better: more privacy, faster transactions, no block-size debate, lower fees, etc... That is the role of a branding campaign and it can't be done in 3 months, it is just getting started in 3 months. This campaign needs reach, frequency and duration. It is basically the Burger Wars for crypto.
It is obvious that you have some basis of knowledge in the area of advertising and I don't want it to seem like I am talking down to you. Please apply the most pleasant tone that you can muster to my words. Thank you for your thoughts and I am happy to continue this conversation. :-)
With respect to that, it would help a ton in future votes if you stay in touch with the community regularly. If I wanted you to succeed in the long term (and I want you to!) I would advise you to write a short weekly article highlighting interesting and/or related shows/guests. How many people you reach, how much has your audience grown, etc. Do that to all three of the common Dash forums. Literally 3 or 4 paragraphs is all it would take.
Include links so that we may easily find and listen to your show. Our crowd is a good fit for your show. And your audience is a good fit for Dash.
Mutually Assured Destruction of the competition.
Solarguy on the forums.
To the people who voted no because all of their listeners have already heard of us, that's generally not how marketing works. People have to hear about the idea many times before taking action on the idea or product. This is especially true for a product that is so new and so groundbreaking like Dash.
With online advertising becoming so popular right now, metrics are something that advertisers pay a lot of attention to. They are great for direct advertising where sales are tied to value. Dash isn't really in need of nor set up for direct. Dash needs to use branding to catch up to, then surpass Bitcoin. Branding is hard to track and is best accomplished with ads that include audio (TV, video, podcast, radio...). Consistency is also important with branding. At the end of this, I am going to share a great story about how Wrigley's Gum couldn't get the ingredients for their gum during World War 2, but continued to advertise to maintain the brand awareness that they had achieved. It helps to illustrate the importance of branding and how hard it is to track.
I hope this is of some help. Please let me know if you have anymore questions. :-)
"Soon, however, Wrigley found it impossible to produce its premium brands even for the military. For the remainder of the war, the company produced only Orbit but continued to advertise its regular brands. In billboard and print advertisements, the company featured an empty Wrigley’s Spearmint wrapper with the caption, “Remember this wrapper!†The campaign was so successful that when the war ended and the brands were reintro-duced (and production of Orbit ceased), pent up demand caused consumption of Wrigley’s Spearmint, Doublemint, and Juicy Fruit to exceed prewar levels."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/businesses-and-occupations/wm-wrigley-jr
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-radio-advertising-170-stations.16806/#post-139470
thanks, solarguy
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-radio-advertising-170-stations.16806/#post-139470