A street team is a great idea and I’ve also considered this after many years playing in bands, promoting shows and undertaking door to door sales, however, I’m not sure the timing is right at the moment unless you live in the targeted areas.
It’s probably for this same reason that Electroneum haven’t marketed in any developing countries yet. I think a synchronised mass effort is needed and will happen but at the right time, perhaps when Electroneum start advertising Gig.Guru or when their distribution deal of 30,000 UK stores comes into effect.
I am sure they’lll launch an ambassador program in advance of targeting new regions as the company scales and the team grows. They clearly know the importance of on the ground marketing, flyering/postering and talking to people on the street, just like they’re doing in SA. I’ll be the first in line to sign up as an ambassador/sales rep/marketing person for the Portsmouth and Hampshire territory.
In fact, I think it would be prudent of Electroneum to run their first UK trial in Portsmouth. We’re the most densely populated city in the UK outside of London with around a quarter of a million people squeezed into a tiny island like sardines. I’ve lived here for 16 years since starting University and work at the Faculty of Business and Law designing and developing online courses and leading their media productions. Nearly every other house is occupied by students so it’s prime territory for marketing to that demographic. We also host the Great South Run which is the world’s premiere 10 mile race, and the Victorius Festival which crams around 130,000 people onto the seafront. Guerrilla marketing those events would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
I have senior contacts within our faculty and think our Business Services Development and Research Office team would be very interested in being part of such a trial - It would make for very good PR. It even has scope to become a PhD research project. Has anyone ever pre-emptively studied and documented mass adoption of something so specific? I imagine studies on mass adoption are always retrospective.
The university has the means to promote Electroneum across campus via it’s social streams, giant posters/banners, desktop screen savers in computer labs, info TV’s around buildings, student and local magazines, VLE announcements, interactive bus stops, freshers week goody-bags and pop-up tents/kiosks at events. Starting with campus coffee shops then spreading out to the bars, clubs, pubs, shops, newsagents, restaurants. I’ve been mentally planning this for about a year now but I wouldn’t attempt to initiate anything without Electroneum’s endorsement and support.
The only problem I foresee is not the student buy-in but the bottle neck of it not being easy to acquire more ETN. This is where more fiat-ETN gateways are necessary. Perhaps this will come from the 30,000 UK store distribution network that Richard previously mentioned, or by integrating it directly into the app, which was discussed in Tylers latest video with Richard. It was mentioned this would need to be approved by the FCA but it must be on the cards to enable remittance. In fact, I would speculate that this has already been cleared and is in development, yet Richard is having to put on a poker face. At the very least it sounds like they have OTC desk lined up for taking fiat payments with credit and debit cards so we’ll see how that pans out, but I think the in-app purchase would definitely be the best approach.
A good idea to encourage street teams would be the use of referral links that could be customised to have the name of a town, city, ward, street name or shop/business name. Let’s say your ref code was electroneum.com/portsmouth or just simply Portsmouth and it was clearly visible on a creatively designed flyer that was hand delivered through every letterbox in the city. I’m certain the prospective user would be more reassured at seeing their city’s name than a bunch of random numbers and letters and would then be more inclined to download the app. There’s a psychology to it that would make that work. People are drawn to words they know, trust or have meaning to them, such their city’s name or a brand name.
Whoa, that was a massive brain dump. Anyway, to summarise, I believe street teams are necessary and may be used as a strategy at some point but it might not be the most proactive/efficient use of time to start this right now. For the mean time I’d stick to referring friends and family until the time is right to hit the streets.
