Proposal “transform-pr“ (Closed)Back

Title:Transform PR - Michael Terpin
Owner:eduffield
Monthly amount: 1100 DASH (42222 USD)
Completed payments: 1 totaling in 1100 DASH (2 month remaining)
Payment start/end: 2016-01-07 / 2016-04-21 (added on 2015-12-28)
Final voting deadline: in passed
Votes: 1054 Yes / 1135 No / 0 Abstain
External information: www.dashwhale.org/p/transform-pr

Proposal description

Introduction

The Dash project has been growing fast and it has gotten to the point where we feel is important to have professional PR representation with experience in the crypto industry. During the Labitconf conference in Mexico City, we were lucky to meet PR specialist Michael Terpin and had the opportunity to discuss Dash in detail and he was able to see the potential and became interested in working with Dash. Transform PR has been behind many very successful campaigns such as Etherium, Counterparty and Mastercoin.

Counting with the support of industry leaders like Michael willing to work with Dash and help promote it to a larger user base, shows the world Dash is a special project with a lot of potential.

Who is Michael Terpin?

Michael Terpin, CEO and founder of Transform.PR, has nearly 25 years of PR agency management. He has directly supervised many renowned PR campaigns of the digital media era, including early-stage PR for America Online, Earthlink, Jupiter, Motley Fool, Match.com, and Shapeways, as well as full-service campaigns with established brands, including Alpine, AT&T, Diamond Multimedia, Fujitsu, JBL, Konami, Memorex, Philips, Rackspace, Red Herring, and TEAC.

Terpin founded Marketwire, one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive international newswires. Originally known as Internet Wire, Marketwire was acquired in April 2006 by Toronto-based media company, CCN Matthews, and is now owned by OMERS Private Equity. Marketwire employs more than 200 people and has annual revenues of more than $100 million, with offices on four continents. In early 2013, Terpin co-founded BitAngels, the first angel network for investors in cryptocurrency startups, which has grown to more than 500 members, completing two dozen investments. He has been a frequent speaker at leading technology and marketing conferences, including Ad:Tech, CES, E3, ETRE, NAB, PRSA and Social Media Week, as well as the vast majority of cryptocurrency conferences globally. He was a finalist in the 2000 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Terpin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from SUNY at Buffalo and a dual Bachelor Degree in Newspaper Journalism and English Literature from Syracuse University. He serves as an advisor to SU’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, where he was inducted into its prestigious Wall of Fame in October 2000. Terpin is also a private investor and/or board member for several privately held technology start-up companies, and he is chairman of the PR industry digital media company, CommPro Global. He is regularly interviewed by Bloomberg, Entrepreneur, the Wall Street Journal and other leading media, as well as writes about digital asset topics for Barrons, Forbes, CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, among others.

What is Transform.PR and what is their experience with crypto?

Transform Group, LLC is a full-service public relations, social media marketing and marketing strategy firm, with an international client base and strong domain expertise in high technology, financial communications, media/entertainment, consumer electronics and consumer products. Headquartered in Las Vegas, with offices in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, the Firm is dedicated to creating and sustaining industry leadership positions for its clients through superior strategy, relationships, market intelligence and consistent execution. Over the past two decades, the Firm has helped seize market leadership opportunities in fast-changing markets, including technology and consumer electronics; media and entertainment; finance and healthcare. The Firm has been at the forefront of establishing market trends, including the introduction of the first digital camera (Chinon), nationwide ISP (Earthlink), large-scale technology incubator (America Online Greenhouse), online financial community (The Motley Fool), first videogame superstar (Fatal1ty) and world’s largest call to action (Live 8 music concerts, with 27 million participants). The Firm has also been a leader in Internet marketing, technology crisis management, social media, and international market entry.

Transform Public Relations is the brand for the Firm’s public relations practice, layering in thought leadership and a focus on new paradigms and markets (including 3D, big data, Bitcoin, digital media, mobile, on-demand platforms, robotics/drones and SaaS). Transform Group is the leading PR firm in the cryptocurrency sector, having represented more than 40 companies, organizations and projects in the sectors since 2013, including Augur, Bitcoin Shop, Blade, ChangeTip, Factom, Gem, GEMS, GoCoin, Gyft, KnCMiner, Kraken, Mastercoin, MaidSafe, Rivetz, ShapeShift, Storj, Swarm and Tether.

SocialRadius is the social media marketing division of Transform Group. With roots going back to 2003, it is one of the nation’s first social media marketing agencies, pioneering many strategies and techniques that are common today. SocialRadius crafts unique, dedicated solutions to each client’s individual requirements. Today, its solutions involve a powerful combination of social network marketing (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+) and social platforms (YouTube, Wikipedia, Tumblr, Quora, Reddit), as well as blog development and content marketing. SocialRadius works with large multinationals as well as smaller entities across a number of industries, and its programs range from strategy and training to full campaign execution. Success stories include the outreach for recording artist will.i.am’s Yes We Can video for the Obama campaign (which won 2008 Emmy, Global Media and Webby awards, as well as a 2009 Clio Gold Lion, garnering 50 million views on YouTube and 500 million traditional media impressions); social media event marketing for Live8, social mobile marketing at LiveEarth, the Green Inaugural Ball and the David Lynch Foundation; and the viral marketing of Scarface School Play for Rockhard Films (3 million views in two days).

What will the campaign be focused on?

This initial three-month campaign seeks to gain a high level of visibility in both the crypto community and the mainstream business and technology press, which is critical to driving new user adoption and demonstrating industry leadership. Through a hyper-targeted, aggressive, yet strategic approach, Transform will initiate the perfect storm of media coverage extending traditional outreach across the crypto, technology, and business verticals.

The goals for our campaign on behalf of Dash include the following:

1. Establish Dash as the first privacy-centric cryptographic currency that is based on Bitcoin software and addresses many of the problems of Bitcoin.
2. Increase understanding of Dash’s digital asset and unique blockchain technology.
3. Raise visibility around Dash’s technological achievements within the crypto community through a steady stream of hard news coverage, as well as begin to penetrate top-tier business and technology media through features and commentary.
4. Substantially increase the visibility of Dash in blogs and/or Web searches throughout the three-month campaign, as well as in social media mentions as a result of this increased coverage.
5. Increase understanding and demand for Dash, resulting in higher volume and price relative to bitcoin.

Investment

Traditional Public Relations Elements
$6,000 per month for Public Relations, Thought Leadership, and Conferences

The Firm’s basic retainer is an estimate of actual hours expected to be billed by the Firm for this campaign, according to the Firm’s standard hourly rate schedule. Client will be notified in advance if total hours are expected to exceed the monthly retainer. Unless otherwise agreed, this retainer is intended as a flat fee.

Expenses: Newswire distribution, if desired, is billed separately and averages about $300 per release. Any long-distance travel in support of trade shows or press tours (involving airplanes and/or hotels) will be paid for by Client, typically in advance. There are no travel expenses where CEO Michael Terpin is already attending a conference and simply shares time among clients and speaking.

What is this proposal for?

This proposal is only asking for partial funding of 1100 DASH for 3 months to complete the required budget as the currently existing PR budget will now be mostly dedicated to this program with Michael for the next 3 months and will cover most of the expenses. Depending on results we expect to continue to collaborate with Transform.PR during 2016.

More information: www.transform.pr

Special thanks to Minotaur for helping with this project.

Show full description ...

Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?

Submit comment
 
0 points,8 years ago
The results you're expecting from this proposal are not Terpin's fault. DASH simply hasn't done anything newsworthy. All this does it point more people to, nothing.

All hype. No substance. Solidifying the ponzi image.

Not a thing I want to spend money doing. I downvoted as nothing more than damage control for a problem most MNs don't seem to realize is a problem...

I'd love to have Terpin's services, at a time when DASH has done something to talk about... Right now you're just paying money to make people even more jaded...
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0 points,8 years ago
I voted yes, I can't believe all this fluctuation.
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0 points,8 years ago
Why not? They haven't given an evidence they are responsible for the latest news.
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1 point,8 years ago
haven't checked this page in a while. It was comfortably in the yes zone last time i checked. What happened? is it because the price doubled?
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0 points,8 years ago
Or people don't see results?
How can someone not seeing results? Because they refuse to open their eye! Something fishy around....
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2 points,8 years ago
Last month we got near one new article or publication every day.
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1 point,8 years ago
voted yes some time ago and do not see any reason to change my yes vote at this point.
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-2 points,8 years ago
Isn't this project over funded now that the Dash price skyrocketed?
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-3 points,8 years ago
I see what you did there, lols.
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2 points,8 years ago
What are we going to do with the extra value of the Dash in this proposal? The public awareness and this proposal at the $4.30 rate now amount to $13,000. That is an extra $7,000!
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-2 points,8 years ago
And by the looks of things, it's not slowing down anytime soon. They should resubmit it before this becomes even more bloat....
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2 points,8 years ago
Transform PR, is doing a fantastic job. They have been incredibly helpful in improving Dash relationship with the media. They guided us during our Miami conference and continue to make introductions for Dash that are opening new opportunities.

PR and Marketing efforts for open community projects are hard to communicate, because you can't post the strategy and every action publicly, it just does not work that way.

I hope everyone is seeing how Dash branding and awareness is improving and the project is doing well. That is the best way to measure it from the results.
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-2 points,8 years ago
I do believe we don't need them to introduce us to people, we need them to actually get out there and market Dash to the public. We don't need friends in high places, we need floods of people. Thats the only way this is going to work out. Users.
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0 points,8 years ago
It had been written that It's already running. But I see no results ATM.
Did you see something?
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-3 points,8 years ago
Did you ever find out any info on this? I would like to see some progress on this since its taking up a very large chunk of the entire budget.
Not sure the Bitcoin Roundtable counts either, I was under the impression a PR firm was mean't to get us more users and better publicity, not hide-out-in-a-cave meetings.
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4 points,8 years ago
guys !
you gotta check the news section on DT, and you see what is going on.
https://dashtalk.org/forums/dash-news.16/
a year ago i could get news out there with Press releases, but the industry changed so much that we really need a guy like Michael (with his connections) to help us out !
+
a guy like him (and these connections) brings us a much broader range of not only good PR, but introductions to other crypto businesses , meetings and conferences (look at the Satochi Roundtable !! that is amazing and Michael helped with the right introductions there too)
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-1 point,8 years ago
I'm not sure that digging up burried, hard-to-find things that aren't at all in the public eye qualifies as results for PUBLIC relations...
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-2 points,8 years ago
Right? We should have seen quite a bit more public facing things on this subject by now I would have thought. Not just a single article, and an introduction. Seems like a lot of money for not so much useful stuff...
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3 points,8 years ago
It's an old approach these guys and Mr. Terpin represent, old thinking that was based on endless Press Releases that than have became like a plague used by various "SEO services" in order to get links.
A quick Google search would reveal how all these big sites have been penalized for their ancient practices. But than, Mr. Terpin is a founder of http://www.bitangels.co/ and as such he would've been much more useful should he decides to engage with DASH and involves his Angel Investors with the project and bring the money to the project instead of taking the money out.
As a very smart and successful man, Mr. Terpin also owns http://marketeeria.com/how-it-works/ which is a startup whose approach is murky at best and works along the same old same old lines. Granted, “same old, same old” works to the point but I believe this project deserves a much more creative approach to its marketing than any of these “big PR companies” can offer. I fear boiler-plate nonsense and hope I am wrong, but I would not support this proposal.

Main reason being: we have no clue how is he planning to approach DASH marketing. Evan copy pasted his resume which shows me / makes me worry / that Mr. Terpin did not put a single minute of his own efforts into this thus far.
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-2 points,8 years ago
Someone gets it! Lord i thought I might be the only one raising my eyebrows at this. Boatloads of cash for what so far?
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0 points,8 years ago
I am very dissapointed by this trend to vote on anything that eduffield proposes. We all love him, and for good reasons, but I fear this love puts a blindfold on the democratic process of voting. As I said, very dissapointed. In terms of true - think for yourself democracy - we still have a bit to go.
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0 points,8 years ago
I think it is essential for this process to also have proposals by other people than eduffield.
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3 points,8 years ago
Evan is the main Dev and still holds the highest Dash 'ranks' if you wanna call it that, ebventually we will reorganise the team that he can spend more time on coding and less on things like that, but for now he is putting out all the Team Proposals.
I am not sure where the issue lays with evan putting this out or not, the team NEEDS help with marketing (that is more than clear) we are talking about this (a Pro Marketing guy) since a year and now we finally have one who already delivered great PR.
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3 points,8 years ago
I am voting no on this proposal because it is subsidized by the public awareness proposal. This is bad practice and will cause problems if one proposal gets voted out. With the shared funds it also isn't clear how much is needed for this proposal. I suggest this proposal get resubmitted with full funding without the awareness budget funds. I also suggest the public awareness proposal be dissolved and we move to individual public awareness projects.
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-2 points,8 years ago
"public awareness projects." Thats the key here. We need measurable projects, not expensive, bloated & outdated ones.
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2 points,8 years ago
As mentioned before, and talked about in person on the Miami conference, i do NOT understand your point here !
We need professional Marketing help. Daniel and me are running this team since a year +, but we all know that we are by no means PR/Marketing Pro's ! Nevertheless, we got a long way with our approach but to push this to the next level we need a guy like Michael + his connections in the industry for help !

The awareness budget and the issues which are mentioned again and again .... are still the same.
Marketing has to surprise, not only outsiders but the community too. If we put out in advance what we will do in PR and Marketing for the next month we would lose this momentum of 'surprise' ! Surprised means as well sharing exciting news (social media or wherever). If i tell you tomorrow we will be in X Magazine, you would be 'ok, seen it, what is next'
totally wrong approach ! Surprise, excitement have to be on our side !

+
did you ever hear of any company who played out there Marketing Stategy in advance or even after !
Imagine that trolling storm ! we would kill the whole initative by going public ! There has to be a certain trust in us and this, and i do not understand what the issue is. You guys really think we will run off with 50 coins ? come on, i think you know us all well enough to have enough trust in the team and strategy we delivered so far.
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0 points,8 years ago
tungfa, I now do see the value presented here. There was an update on the public awareness proposal since I posted that really showed how much work is going into public awareness. I really had no idea how much was going on. Also I am seeing progress in the media with articles about Dash and now the roundtable. This is great news. Keep up the efforts.
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1 point,8 years ago
Agree. Voting no
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