I understand that you and everyone at Maidsafe would feel the same way…it’s all about the Network of course.
If there were 2 teams, each with a nominal budget to sell what is essentially the same thing under the brands Safenetwork and Safecoin…I’d wager Safecoin would gain more traction, partly due to the Bitcoin effect and that of the tangibility of a coin that we handle everyday.
A coin that has apps, just sounds super cool to me.
What is the status of Safecoin. Is there IP in place since the competition, domain names taken out etc ?
Yeah, definitely. Bitcoin is a lousy name for the scene. Probably was right for the time to begin with. The money aspect is what the tech had to lead with. Thank goodness it did.
And safecoin can take a front-and-center place in the promotion, but the network has to have its own clear identity. It’s NOT the Safecoin network.
How can you use Safecoin brand to market an App designed to identify with, for example, genetic profiling, stamp collecting, astronomy, or even coin collecting.
It isn’t relevant and I think it’s confusing. It is ideal for a farming vault in a box, a wallet (that holds Safecoin!) or other related uses.
It’s not a matter of which will get more “traction”, but horses for courses. It’s no good putting a naked woman on the front of your App if you want to appeal to everyone, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, culture or interest. We know it works well, pornography certainly has traction! But that’s not a decisive factor for the purposes I’ve outlined.
We can and should IMO have both SAFEnetwork and Safecoin brands, and if the two can (as the names already do) convey something in common that’s good. I see why you say it might dilute the brand to have both, but the other way of seeing it is that together they will have a broader appeal.
In ten year time, it’ll be the same thing, maybe. But this is now. A new network architecture, an whole new, interrelated technology package. A whole frame of reference, really, that “safecoin” doesn’t begin to cover.
Well…we’ve met halfway, the dialectic method works
Edit: And I would expand on that by saying, in a Dev conference setting it could be an idea to have 2 representatives…one that explains the Engine and the other that explains the Lubrication, two personalities, two styles promoting the same protocol.
Sure! In this case, at least. this isn’t a brand in the traditional commercial sense. It’s a handle for people to hang on to, an image to communicate with and about, about something that is new in everyone’s experience. “Safecoin exists on the SAFE Network.” People think in identities about things like this. “Check out my sight on the Safecoin Network”? What a mess.
We talk about the SAFE Network as an identity. A visual image to go along with it is useful. What people do with it? We’ll see.
Blockchain has never had a face but it’s slowly getting one now that mainstream financial institutions (and others) recognize it for what it is and not bitcoin. Safe network is the focus not the coin. Find the best application for safe network and you have the start of a successful campaign.
If you were, and you might well have been… suggesting we use the Safecoin visuals but repurpose them as SAFE… and use them for both the coin and the network…
I could live with that and I certainly think it is worth considering.
There are many ways to measure brand awareness. (Surveys, website traffic, search volume, volume of mentions on social media, etc)
These can generally be measured before, during and after implementation of a branding campaign and can give insight into how well the campaign is progressing and the levels of increased exposure your brand is receiving.
Goals that can be measured can include percentage increases in general awareness, by region, age demographics, etc.
I am not certain if SAFE has a benchmark as of current and a stated level of increase they may be pursuing, but this may be something that can be addressed further as the competition continues…
Another thing that may want to be looked at is will the branding for the SAFE network be business facing or consumer facing? It is hard to market the network to the public as I view it as more of a protocol than a product. I think for the consumer, the product will be the apps running on the network. They may not even know that this is happening as they use an app unless there is some sort of consumer logo or seal that can be given to apps with SAFE as a backend…which may be another idea that can be kicked around…
‘Safecoin’ has no network in the name…just like Bitcoin.
Hey, I’m the same…heavily mentally invested in the Safe Network, it only occured to me during this thread about Safecoin as the face of the network.
We’ve been here for over 2 years now, we know a lot about the network and have had some intense discussions and you were passionate enough to pen a piece stating that Safecoin is not the network. Of course we have a passion for the protocol and are somewhat adverse to the greed that discussions around the coin can bring (maidsafecoin ?)
I shocked myself when I started typing about Safecoin as the public facing kind of jest at first, but something clicked…I thought about Bitcoin and the traction it has gained. If your running a business, you’d be mad not to hop on-board of free momentum that drags your business along for the ride.
Bitcoin is an interesting one, the coin and the chain…the banks want to separate the two and it’s not entirely obvious why at first look. When I first learnt about Bitcoin, it is was before blockchain was seen anywhere in discussion, but I did happen across an article stating that Bitcoin is ‘Triple Entry Accounting’ …there’s the clue.
Todays world runs on ‘Double Entry Accounting’ and can be viewd like this:
Triple entry changes everything and it puts the robber barons out of business…cause you cant cook the books, you cant pretend that your loaning money to someone and demand principle + interest. That is why I think the banks are trying desperately to rip bitcoin out of the protocol…it’s a great system for them without the triple entry component.
So in the case of Bitcoin we cannot trivialize the coin aspect of the protocol in relation to the underlying technology. I feel the same way about Safe, it started out without a coin…but i think we can agree, it’s much more boring protocol without Safecoin…it’s a lot more than money/tokens …it’s programmable Safecoin SD for which David hasn’t spilled the beans fully on yet. Once we find out the full potential of Safecoin…I really think it could be the public face of this project.
I’m backing Safecoin…I think her potential has been undersold…your shiny network aint going nowhere without that oil
But the SAFE Network needs a logo so it can be identified as a whole, too.
I do understand that safecoin will likely be a huge driver of the network. Probably the biggest. But when people start seeing the whole picture and want to talk about all the other need stuff, they’ll need to dig that the SAFE Network really does have its own identity.
I don’t think we’re far off in how we see things. It’s just that this is a SAFE Network Brand ID thread, and I DO think we need to brand the network as well as safecoin.
Here is a sample of the hundreds of conversations I have had over the last couple of years.
“What is that bitcoin stuff you are working on.” Well I’m actually working on project x that will run on The SAFE Network. Then I spend 5-50 minutes (depending on the audience) on how the network runs…they all fall asleep. Sometimes I’ll get how is that any different from TOR, IPFS, I2P, SIA, STORXJ, etc. I always start this way because I know “it” isn’t about the coin…
Then I mention SafeCoin and how it is very different from Bitcoin and they wake up. Then I mention people who contribute resources get paid and people who build apps and get paid directly from the network… no human decides. They always say “how does SafeCoin do that?”. Then they listen to every word I say about the network (exactly what I just told them before).
I agree with @chrisfostertv to seriously consider we already have a great “Brand” out there. I don’t think there will be any committee or artist who can brand the network that connects us all, since it will be used and seen in totally different ways for every person of the world. Although SafeCoin just happens to speak the language every target audience the brand is mentioned for.
Me personally, the SAFE Network isn’t going to be any different from the countless others out there until SafeCoin is working. Not because money is everything…I think money corrupts and is truly worthless. The reason is the one thing that no other network has or in foreseeable future will ever have is SafeCoin.
Bitcoin, I just have to keep referencing it…it’s has momentum that Safe just has to aspire to. When you go to a Bitcoin developer conference, your not discussing so much the spendable token…but what you can build on the protocol…it’s just a given. There is no public facing identity for the ‘Bitcoin Network’ it’s just Bitcoin…the public by and large have heard the name.
The bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer payment network that operates on a cryptographic protocol
The safecoin network is a peer to peer payment network that operates on a cryptographic protocol
And yes on the Dev side, I do not see any compromise in calling it the ‘Safecoin Network’ …it’s a network over which safecoin flows…a network for safecoin. I think it’s actually more descriptive because of the inclusion of ‘coin’ it brings the 2 elements together.
Joe Public has no concept of what’s under the hood with Bitcoin and does not care to hear about. I don’t see how Safe would be any different…you get great apps with a funky logo, who cares about the tech.
That is a fantastic piece of intel, thanks for bringing that in.[quote=“MrAnderson, post:57, topic:9424”]
The reason is the one thing that no other network has or in foreseeable future will ever have is SafeCoin.
[/quote]
Hallelujah brother, she is a beautiful thing and will be even prettier when David decides to spill the beans on her programmable parts…David?
I was sceptical at first about the points @chrisfostertv was making, but using the general Bitcoin/Altcoin hype does make sense and Safecoin should absolutely get it’s own identity and brand. With that being said, I think it’s too early for that. We’re not nearly at a point where the coin itself comes to life, so I’d say the branding of the Network itself is more important and time pressing right now.
As for the topic itself.
I think the team itself should consist of people with experience for this type of work, so most likely marketing I guess. While that brand wheel seems pretty straight forward, I think it would take me quite a while to apply this to the topic at hand and I even work with marketing on a daily basis
I might have this wrong, but wouldn’t it make more sense to go outside with the bounty for the logo? I’m not sure we have that many really good designer on this forum and really good quality should be the goal here, right? btw. no offence to any designer reading this I’m pretty sure there is some platform out there intended for exactly this kind of purpose, freelancing of brands/designs, etc. Of course this would need a good brand wheel, but I think we need this anyway.
