Curated Growth Campaigns and the Future of Marketing
Our recent marketing campaign for Praise went viral. Almost 200,000 entries were submitted by over one thousand unique participants in less than 48 hours—with zero ad spend.
Participants completed over 13,000 unique actions to promote 9 praiseworthy partner companies, resulting in thousands of Twitter followers, Discord members, and email subscribers flowing into multiple ecosystems. The campaign page received over 5,000 impressions. These are just a few of the impressive stats from the 2-day campaign.
This was not a lucky accident. The campaign was planned well before the bull run, designed meticulously to create a flywheel effect and go viral.
In this post, I’ll break down exactly how we did it. Anyone can replicate the model. The hard part is building relationships and engineering a reward token like $PRAISE.
Let’s also consider the implications for the future of work, and the evolving relationship between brands and consumers in Web3.
Designing a Collaborative Growth Campaign
The setup is simple. We select 9 remarkable partners who deserve $PRAISE. Each partner provides us with a link to promote. This can be a link to a custom landing page, a homepage, an X account, a Discord server, etc.
We use Gleam software to build the campaign page. Here’s our page for the Praiseworthy campaign:
https://gleam.io/PQ48e/hot-web3-startups-curated-by-praise-token
On the date we specify, partners promote the giveaway to their audiences via email and social channels. We provide all necessary visual assets, messaging, and links.
These campaigns are effective because we partner with multiple quality Web3 startups to cross-pollinate our audiences in a condensed timeframe. When all partners agree to promote at the same time, a ‘surround sound’ effect is achieved.
Global Accessibility over Walled Gardens
After analyzing the final campaign data, we can see that the $PRAISE concept is being evangelized globally. The United States was not the most popular region. Only 43 of the 1,000+ campaign participants were in the US.
The most popular region by far was Nigeria (#1) with 333 participants, followed by India (#2) with 103 participants, then Indonesia (#3) with 98, and finally the US (#4) with 43.
This data mirrors reports from reputable research firms about the increasing adoption of crypto around the world. In a recent report by Chainalysis, India was ranked #1 and Nigeria was #2.
We will continue building Praise as a global brand that exists outside the boundaries of any one country. There is enough $PRAISE for everyone.
Brand Loyalty over Brand Awareness
I’ve been a strategic marketer for over 10 years. People always ask me, what does that mean? It means I nurture relationships.
There are 3 pillars of marketing:
- Awareness: This is billboards, commercials, digital ads, etc.
- Nurturing: This is the customer journey, community experiences, world-building, and culture—all the marketing that happens after someone is already in your ecosystem or bought one of your products.
- Trust: This is the final stage—cult-following status—when benevolence overtakes logic. At this point, the relationship between Brand and Consumer is incredibly sticky (think Apple, Redbull, or Coke), which increases LTV significantly.
You can only reach Trust through Nurturing, and crypto is an excellent tool for nurturing engagement in a measured trackable way. Although the marketing campaign was an Awareness tactic, the use of crypto brings us seamlessly into the Nurturing stage with a sustainable long-term incentive ($PRAISE), eventually leading to loyalty and Trust over time.
Collaboration over Competition
Crypto allows us to win together. Multiple brands and their audiences can benefit in parallel.
In the old model, one company pays another company to put ads everywhere to get the consumer’s attention.
In the $PRAISE model, aligned partners cross-promote each other for free. All partners earn $PRAISE for their efforts. Consumers earn $PRAISE for engaging. This circular, collaborative design means everybody wins and everyone is aligned. The results can be extraordinary.
Quality (Value) over Quantity
We focused on selecting a targeted group of respected brands in Web3 with large followings. Our requirement was a minimum audience size of 100,000. We also vetted each partner on real-time calls. Most partners were my long-time founder friends—or friends of other founders I know.
Most Web3 marketers will promote anyone who pays them, with little or no due diligence. It allows bad startups with deep pockets to get promoted over good startups with fewer resources. Conversely, our campaigns are invite-only and based on merit.
Rewards Over Ads
The $PRAISE token is our carrot at the end of the stick—our incentive mechanism. This is our first implementation, and it worked beautifully to display the raw power of the Praise concept.
Rewards paired with a feeling of belonging is a killer combination. $PRAISE unlocks that potential for the one-trillion-dollar ad market, and the multi-trillion-dollar digital commerce market.
The Future is Bright
This is an important moment in the history of blockchain and cryptocurrency. I am honored to be building in this space. The Praise brand is designed around “light”—the energy that flows through all of us, and the full spectrum of color representing humanity. Let’s continue down the path to a brighter future full of color.
With Love, Peace, and Praise,
J
🤟✌️🙏
For more information about Praise, visit https://praisetoken.io/.
