I guess it really depends where we are in the growth cycle. I think right now if we could get pewdiepie to mention it we would see huge growth from where we are now. I think at this point the target market are the kind of people that would think that was cool/funny. On the other hand as it gets bigger we might want to get more institutional (I really struggled to find a good word here) and disassociate with that to appeal to an audience that includes my mom for example.
I think there is a middle ground here. We as a community have like our own little contest to create and pick a mascot. Then when we hire a million dollar advertising agency later, they can take that mascot and make it look more corporate. I mean think of the logos for like legacy sports teams. Most of them have been updated multiple times to get with current style and target audience.
I still say we start with a manga or something. Write a story, create characters, then create the cuddly toys out of them. Forget memes go more megatokyo on them with a safe network twist. Look our masscot is ants, has always been but no human, especially individualistic privacy centered and probably many of them are of the libertarian persuasion. Not exactly the type to mesh personality wise with a social collectivist hive insect. Good example for a tech illistration as to how the SAFE network works bad example for a cuddly toy for empathizing on a personal level UNLESS we do something like the movie ANTs did where each ant was given a unique personality all their own. Not true for actual ants but more true for the SAFE network as each user will be unique identity even if they don’t know who they are. In fact we could play with that metaphor (if we were to do some story writing or turn it into a manga or comic) and have each character indeed have a double life. Then your cuddly toy could embrace your favorite character from the series all while sporting the maidsafe logo.
haha best idea yet! I really like the idea of trying to make the story some kind of analogy to how the SAFE network actually works. Like a story of an ant trying to build a house on his own and that’s not working out… but then he meets friends and they all pitch in and build the best ant house! lol ok I am not a pro story writer but just an example of how it might work as more then just an emotional response and actually have something cerebral about it.
Anything can be cuddly. I once saw somebody selling plushy versions of different microbes. So, with that thought, might I suggest we continue with ants?
Perhaps a cartoon version to make it more cute. This one is copyrighted, but something like this…
People change. Maybe it took 3 years to slowly change. Maybe some are just not anti now and realise it will take time to work. And this is not something we expect Maidsafe to do.
