The Tinsman Plan: NEAR Marketing Town Hall Update

On March 2nd, the NEAR Ecosystem jumped onto Hopin for an hour-long, live stream town hall focused on a NEAR Ecosystem marketing update. VP of Marketing Alexandra Tinsman hosted the Townhall alongside Erik Trautmann, CEO of the NEAR Foundation. Over the course of an hour, Alexandra walked the NEAR community through the most important updates and planning by the NEAR Marketing team, while also defining the scope of NEAR Marketing efforts and fielding community questions. 

The synthesized updates below represent one of the most comprehensive and encompassing efforts to build NEAR into a mainstream crypto-brand. Here are the most important pieces of the Tinsman Plan: 

NEAR Marketing is Laying A Foundation for Large-Scale Outreach and Communications Relating to All Things NEAR

In the last couple of months, NEAR Marketing underwent a significant overhaul. While current rebranding efforts remain in their early stages, Alexandra Tinsman provided a very clear pathway forward,  incorporating the most important facets of creating a clearly defined Ecosystem Identity.

  

At the beginning of the town hall, Alexandra explained these facets to specifically include areas of the protocol like Branding and Design, Lead Generation (For both Entrepreneurs and Developers), Awareness, Support and Communications. The goals contained within these outreach vectors were summarized in the NEAR Marketing OKRs for Q1: 

With this Foundation, NEAR Marketing will help promote the core ecosystem brand, as well as the larger environment and culture that many new projects, developers, entrepreneurs and guilds continue to pour into on NEAR Protocol. As Tinsman explained in the context of future growth on NEAR: 

“As you all know we are going to have a ton of new products and programs launching.” 

NEAR is Going Global

A second major point from the town hall relates to the expansion and development plans of NEAR Marketing efforts to promote and foster new communities around the globe. In short, NEAR Marketing is ramping up on a global promotion campaign for NEAR across continents: 

As Tinsman explained, by expanding into new regions and tapping into communities of crypto-enthusiasts and developers, NEAR will look to source new engineering talent as well as ecosystem support across guilds and contributors. 

“We want to expand into these regions as that is naturally going to attract engineering talent.”

Beyond the rapid expansion of NEAR into Asia, and specifically, China, infrastructure is currently being put into place to begin marketing NEAR across parts of SouthEast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa as well.  

NEAR Marketing is Taking a Holistic Approach To Growing The NEAR Ecosystem

As the list below suggests, the NEAR Marketing Plan combines the best elements of traditional marketing with the innovative and fast-paced environment of the crypto-sphere. The strategy is clinical insofar as each component of the strategy builds on a prior component. Thus, while this strategy will take time to execute, the execution has the promise of being holistic and encompassing. 

Importantly, as NEAR Marketing scales up to accommodate this plan, they are actively looking to hire more people: Content Writers, Designers, and other types of marketing experts. For more information visit: https://near.org/careers/.

What Can The Ecosystem Expect From The Marketing Team Going Forward?

The NEAR Marketing Townhall did a fantastic job of setting expectations in the months to come.  A key point was the distinction between Marketing and Community. In order for marketing to function properly, it has to first define the core brand, values, and vision. Community development can only take place once these key foundations are laid.  Much of this has been done, with progress able to be tracked on the NEAR Governance Forum. 

Looking ahead to the future of marketing in the NEAR Ecosystem, it is clear that once a ground-level foundation has been established, NEAR Marketing will work across projects and guilds to foster ecosystem wide support and promotion. You can expect brand updates, more social media engagement, new designs, and ramped up engagement across platforms and mediums of communication. Additionally, Alexandra outlined some key promotional goals in the future: 

The vision of the NEAR Marketing team is only taking root right now. The larger goal is to provide recognition and support across verticals and vehicles of the NEAR Ecosystem.  Whether a project is working in DeFi, Social Tokens, NFT’s, or privacy – and regardless if they are a single developer, Guild, funded project, or ecosystem-wide event – they will have a home in the NEAR ecosystem. 

For the full slide deck of the presentation see here.