Meet ROKKEX Team: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Mindaugas Savickas

5 min readJun 20, 2019

Mindaugas has over 9 years of leadership experience enhancing business growth and marketability in B2B/B2C, cybersecurity, transportation, luxury, FMCG, and aviation industries worldwide. He has conceptualized and executed a significant number of strategic and hands-on marketing & business solutions for global brands & tech startups. Besides, he has led 40+ person teams in Brazil and Lithuania as well as the product & marketing teams of a 100m + valued AI cybersecurity startup.

Hey, Mindaugas! Considering your vast experience in marketing of different industries, what brought you to cryptocurrency?

I worked with our CEO Lukas in CUJO AI — a leading cybersecurity company that’s now valued more than 100 million dollars — he headed the security engineering team while I led marketing and product teams. Back in 2017 and 2018, we would talk about the ongoing crypto craze and what could be potentially done with regard to ongoing scams and hacks as well as unregulated environments. Eventually, we have co-founded ROKKEX together with Evaldas and Modestas.

What are your 3 dos and 3 don’ts when creating a marketing strategy?

It’s a rather complex question as businesses differ so their marketing activities as well strategy itself will be distinct each time. Nonetheless, I always try to follow some common-sense logic:

1. Do market research correctly: audit the scope needed for products/services you will be promoting to maximize efficiency and effectiveness at the same time.

2. Clearly define value proposition to the end-user: crystal-clear selling points vs. overused buzzwords. At the end of the day, it’s still human to human approach (H2H).

3. Be data-driven in order to have the calculate inputs (tools, campaigns, and manpower) as well as outputs (full funnel from acquisition to retention as well as ROI ) accordingly.

However, there are some clear don’ts:

Trusting your gut only or “I think twitter is slowing down” — we live in 2019, and by now all of us have access to very advanced yet easy-to-use tools where we can check or test some things before making any major decisions.
Not being open-minded: I do wholeheartedly believe in meritocracy, teamwork, and compound interest when it comes to marketing strategy — while one person can prepare a captivating presentation, only a good team can execute it.
Not seeing the full picture: most of the marketing and sales departments live in closed environments — I call them ECHO & EGO chambers — they do care about their own KPIs but not how it affects the company as a whole. While working on the strategy you have to foresee a way bigger picture.

Sometimes, they say that CMO means Chief Motivation Officer. What do you think about that? What is your role at ROKKEX?

I do disagree — I have seen different versions of CMOs, from positivity gurus and motivators to cold-blooded micromanagers. Here at ROKKEX we are team players, first and foremost — there is no single Chief Motivator, all of us motivate colleagues in different ways — be it mentorship on cybersecurity from CISO or big/small wins from legal department with regard to STO or just a good joke at the office that makes us all laugh hard!

When it comes to my role, in ROKKEX I oversee fundraising, business development, partnerships, and work side by side with a very talented marketing team.

At the very start of ROKKEX history, tell us as a marketing specialist what ROKKEX brand should be recognized for?

First and foremost, we are a cybersecurity company — that’s in our DNA and the slogan “Security First” is not a coincidence, it’s a full-time commitment.

Getting ready for Security Token Offering (STO), what marketing problems and challenges have you faced?

Few that stood out rather quickly:
1. Education: the majority of crypto enthusiasts and even serious investors don’t know the difference between ICO / IEO / IPO and STO — you need patience and relevant content to explain properly.

2. Scammers: that’s a never-ending problem — from the so-called influencers to promoters and negative trolls to bash your projects just because you don’t use their promotion services. One has to balance everything, however, sometimes we even pretend to believe some scam claims to have original content — we record/screenshot these conversations and create educational content how not to get scammed in this or any industry.

3. Post-ICO consequences / a.k.a crypto winter: we worked and focused on product throughout bear market versus marketing utopian promises with flashy white papers and so-called famous advisors, therefore, being honest, transparent, and going against upstream is relatively hard — often the feedback is “you guys are too good to be true — must be a scam!”.

4. Small Marketing budget! (lol)

Which companies or brands do you look up to for marketing inspiration? Why?

When it comes to brands, it’s Apple, Rimowa, IKEA, and Nike. I do follow Adweek for interesting commercial angles and brand-related news. Cannes Lions is always fun to watch. Finally, anything related to product and tech value proposition — Product Hunt is a must.

Is it important to develop a personal brand in cryptocurrency?

It’s a must — just look at those “Blockchain enthusiasts / ICO-Advisors! They grabbed this opportunity and made themselves experts via first-mover advantage. Add bullish market back in 2017, and you have perfect conditions to flourish your personal brand in cryptocurrency — earn commissions/tokens via advisory/consultancy work.

Meet ROKKEX Team: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Mindaugas Savickas

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Written by ROKKEX