That time when Bitcoiners talked to the Wizarding World, and what marketers can learn from it
By ShareCrypto on The Capital
The crypto Twitter was in frenzy for a moment on May 15th, 2020. Not because of any controversy about a project or protocol, not because of any price movement, but because one of the most iconic fantasy novel writers of the 21st Century, J.K. Rowling, tweeted the following as a response to @La_Cuen’s tweet.
Rowling’s curiosity led to a moment (perhaps premature to say a “watershed” moment) for those involved in cryptocurrency and more specifically, Bitcoin, corner to reach out to a wider audience. How did we do? As with all things Crypto Twitter, it was a mixed bag. See for yourself and make up your own judgment! It’s a great source of entertainment too.
However, these are my thoughts on how marketers can learn from this experience.
Noise vs. Signal
Initially, I was incredibly excited. This is going to be a moment where the Bitcoin community takes the learning from the past ten years and explain Bitcoin in lay terms.
That was false. If you look at Google trends above, you’ll see the red, beautifully drawn arrow, pointing to May 15th. In fact, the real spike came several days before this event, which was the “Bitcoin halvening.”
Even then, it doesn’t appear that there’s a real “bump” in searches from either #Bitcoin or J.K. Rowling. Looking through popular communities like r/harrypotter, there was only one post on Bitcoin. An incredible disappointment, which in the marketing profession, something we’re used to.
We work incredibly hard to help our brand/company/product or community grow and even when the stars seem aligned, the results often do not reflect that. It’s critical for anyone, especially marketers, to separate the signal from the noise.
Listen, learn from, and articulate
As of this writing, J.K. Rowling received 2.9k responses to her question “I don’t understand Bitcoin. Please explain to me.” There’s a lot of good, bad, and ugly in the responses, but I’m not going to comb through each comment. The lesson here as marketers is to listen, learn from, and clearly articulate your message to your audience. In the 2.9k responses, there’s a lot of noise, jargon, complexity, and “too much information” (TMI). Especially on the first engagement.
In marketing, it’s never a “one and done” engagement for your target audience. The circumstance and “events” can be one and done, but always build your messaging and marketing strategy to continuously engage with your potential audience. Relating back to the tweet, that means treating opportunities as a nurturing relationship and reducing complexity, the use of jargon, and TMI with your potential audience.
The discussion helped answer Rowling’s initial question and appears to have further confused her. As a marketer, always start from the premise that you’ll “see” your potential customer again and help move them along their journey. Therefore, listen closely to what they are seeking and, more importantly, listen closely to where they are in their unique journey.
Listening helps marketers learn from potential customers. This knowledge will empower you to refine your marketing message and articulate that message to a particular audience. Most of the tweets missed the mark, further confusing Rowling, and possibly making her frustrated and/or less curious about Bitcoin in the future.
Effective messaging grow outwards
This tweet quickly manifested out of Twitter. In fact, articles from multiple credible outlets were published several hours/days after the event! Most successful marketing campaigns begin somewhere (in this case Twitter) but always grow outwards. This tweet by Soona shares Greg Maxwell’s response to Rowling.
At this moment, the messaging and conversation takes a life of its own. You may not like everything that has been or will be said about your marketing message or brand, however, this virality attracts new audiences beyond your existing network. An actionable way to facilitate this virality is to start this by yourself or work with others. Find opportunities to reinforce your communication and marketing channels by working on different mediums. A blog post referring to a podcast appearance? It could be.
Even after you’ve failed the first time, it’s far from over
A potential customer may not ever want to hear from you again after the first time, however, in many cases if you find a customer/product fit and an intent, there’s always an opportunity.
Rowling ended the conversation saying that she “cannot and will not ever understand Bitcoin” and that might be a failure on the Bitcoin community. However, this conversation might have opened up interest with her followers or her family members. In the future, the community may not engage directly with Rowling but she’s opened up an avenue to engage with Muggles.
It was great watching Bitcoiners engage with someone outside our immediate circle and this was a learning lesson for the community as a whole. I wouldn’t say we necessarily “blew it” but it could’ve been better.
This was fun to write, thanks for stopping by and reading my post! What are your takeaways from this episode? How would you have explained Bitcoin to J.K. Rowling?
ShareCrypto is a blockchain growth strategy firm. All opinions are ours.
