JET8 ICO Analysis: A Decentralized Mobile Engagement Network

JET8 is a decentralized mobile engagement network aiming to connect audience with mega brands. The company has been founded in 2014, and now aims to bring the social media in the blockchain. This is done by tokenizing its existing social currency in the form of JET8 (J8T) tokens. These tokens are rewarded to social media influencers, and can be used as a form of a currency.

The JET8 ecosystem allows companies access to an existing user base of influencers to share branded content across social media. It has a track record of conducting campaigns with fortune 500 companies such as Pepsi, Coca Cola, Avon, Proctor and Gamble etc. Their J8T token will help them utilize blockchain technology to further scale the use of their platform in the Southeast Asian market and later globally.

JET8 started their public sale and participation to it is still possible. JET8 is NOT available through the crowdsale to residents of the U.S. or Mainland China.

Links:
Website — https://jet8.io/
Bitcointalk — https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2862213.0
Telegram (RU) — https://t.me/Jet8_ecosystem
Medium https://medium.com/jet8-token
Twitter — https://twitter.com/jet8app
Reddit — https://www.reddit.com/r/Jet8
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/jet8/
Youtube — http://bit.ly/JET8_videos
Github — https://github.com/jet8

Established company

Founded in 2014 in Singapore, JET8 has since established offices in Jakarta, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, Barcelona and Cape Town. In the past 18 months, JET8’s social applications have allowed over 30+ global brands to engage with more than 15 million influencers and reach over 1.8 billion consumers through branded selfies and videos.

This is a big head start compared to some existing ICO’s which often just have a white paper. They have validated the idea and gained good traction in the space. Hence, the risk of it completely failing is lessened.

Token economics

Pre-Sale Token Price: 1 J8T = $0.08
Public Sale Token Price: 1 J8T = $0.10
Presale Cap = $30,000,000
Total Hard Cap = $36,000,000
Public Sale date: Feb 28th 2am EST
Tokens Sold on Public sale: 450,000,000
Total Token Supply: 1,500,000,000

Utility of the token in the ecosystem

The J8T token would replace its already existing social currency. The tokens are used as a reward to influencers by engagement on their selfies. The user can decide themselves whether they want to add the themes, stickers etc. to their pictures and receive tokens with the content they’ve created. Compared to more traditional corporate marketing this is a way to get visibility to the brands with less nuisance by heading more towards peer to peer marketing. With these connects to the brands JET8 is looking to convert the audience into consumers of the brands.

The token would allow influencers to monetize selfies when users engage with them. They can use those tokens to purchase goods in the store or redeem them in other places like restaurants (they have already partnered up with Max’s Chicken, Goldilocks, Pizza Hut and others).

Competition

J8T is similar to other blockchain solutions such as Indahash. Indahash has done campaigns with companies like Fanta and KFC. Unlike JET8 however, Indahash does not have partners that will accept the token like JET8 does.

Idea

The idea of using influencers isn’t new. You can see how youtubers and instagrammers are being approached by brands to display their products or to just document a sponsored trip.

However, JET8 changes the influencer concept by allowing influencers of differing levels of reach to take selfies and get paid tokens for the engagement they get on various different social media sites.

As one of the early pioneers using blockchain in the influencer advertising market JET8 is in a good position. Nevertheless, as an investor it pays to think what might happen if for example Facebook or Twitter decides to enter this particular niche as well. JET8 focuses on the Southeast Asian region so they’ll initially have a leg up in on-boarding influencers onto their platform but as a global company that early advantage isn’t sure to last.

In response to Facebook in particular becoming a direct competitor we’ve asked the team how would they react. They responded by stating that Facebook would have to change their business model to share revenue with influencers which would be difficult since Facebook is a public company.

Other thing to consider is that it’s not clear how users will react to the selfie campaign long term. Similarly, the advertising strategy might not be viable once blockchain mania starts to cool off.

Team and advisors

TEAM
CEO Victor Zabrockis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victorzabrockis/

• Head of Product of FOTOKU — Free Gifts with Selfies
• Senior Internet & Technology Advisor of PAPERJAM.LU & INDEX.LU

CTO Santiago Corrales: https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiago-corrales-7142709/

• Programmer of TOTFAN Games and ADP

CMO Shannon Cullum: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannoncullum/

• CEO of MullenLowe Group and Saatch & Saatchi in various regions

CCO Mike Allen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelallen2010/

• Vice-President of Naspers China representative (JV with Titan Sports)
• Director of Touchline Media

CSO Joshua Thomson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-thomson-945121/

• Founder & CEO of Sports Initiatives
• Advisor of Sprii
• Director of International Business (NYC) of FC Barcelona

ADVISORS
Scott Kronick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottkronick/
Jon Matonis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatonis/

There are about 29 advisors listed on their website.

They also have quite few different kinds of developers. It might not be an all-star team but they do look competent enough to carry out their vision.

Strengths and Opportunities

JET8 has a valid concept and has brought it to market it has worked with fortune 500 companies and has shown its usefulness in content marketing.

It has done around 50 marketing campaigns for different companies. This is not a pipe dream but a real company with customers and engagements. They seem to have a high profit margin business.

Thanks to traditional advertising becoming less and less efficient, JET8 will be able to fill a much needed service to help brands engage with their audience better while the audience won’t have the experience of getting completely spammed.

The advertising industry is a huge market and there is plenty of room to grow. Thanks to the token being used in the system the value will go up as it will be used by more and more people.

The choice of having it being established in SEA (Southeast Asia) first is a very good one as SEA seems more responsive. A lot of people are trying to find different ways of generating income and even just a few dollars more does make a difference in their lives.

Even though the hard cap might seem a bit high, there is plenty of room to grow.

Weaknesses and Threats

Even though it is an established company there are still many uncertainties that it faces.

As stated previously, if Facebook or other big players started doing something similar it would leave little room for other companies. These kinds of big channels can also block the possibility to publish such branded content.

The marketing technique might not be as effective later as it loses its novelty. Similarly, the technique will turn rather useless once the blockchain enthusiasm vanishes. On another note, they’re not making a very convincing case for it having to be on a blockchain in the first place.

One possible threat lies in people engaging less with the content leading to the earnings dropping downwards and influencers feeling less incentivized to actually post branded selfies. Since the ROI is dependent on the engagement of the audience, it might later decrease significantly leading to the companies to look for other ways of advertising.

The competitors such as Indahash might also do a more appealing job for brands and they’ll choose to go with them more often than not. Brands might also be more eager to get into campaigns since they can lead to wider visibility than plain pictures.

The company has done well in Southeast Asia but there’s no way to know how they’ll do elsewhere. People might not be as inclined to use this kind of marketing in their content.

How likely and unlikely those different concerns are is hard to say. They are concerns and they are things that could break the project potentially.

Conclusion

Overall it looks like a good project that is already established. The team is good and they have plenty of connections with their advisors into different industries. The hard cap can be seen as a slight minus, as more modest amount would have been more attractive to investors. However, the influencer marketing industry is expected to grow to a $10 billion industry by 2020. If they continue to perform well, there should be plenty of room for them to grow in the market.

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice and is not intended to be used as such. We are not financial advisors. We can’t give you investment advice or other sorts of business advise, nor we are that any kind of service. Always do your own research. Investing in ICO’s is risky and by reading this report you agree to not hold EV Group liable in the event that you lose all your funds.

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