I will be upfront with my feedback and say that I do not support this proposal.

For starters, it doesn't take into account any of the work and massive hours invested by community members into this very project. A large amount of work has already been done to present Hive as a space to develop on. We have secured multiple AMAs, speaking opportunities, sponsorships, provided materials, and presented to and in conjunction with multiple platforms. To pretend that nothing has been done is frankly insulting to those of us who manage these functions.

We already had a marketing company involved with Hive once and despite all their efforts, the impact was minimal. The impact of how much time managing and guiding them took, however, was unprecedented. We learned through experience that no external company can come in and treat Hive as a regular client, allocating hours to Hive as per their budget. The company we ended up working with emerged at a loss because the learning curve to market Hive while correctly representing it is very high. Everything had to be written and rewritten many times over, numerous people were assigned to the project and replaced, and in general it was far more hands-on than any other client, to my understanding. That relationship was not prolonged for the benefit of Hive and everyone else.

It is a fact that any marketing efforts will require the use of established Hive social media accounts. For security reasons, those accounts will always stay in-house and will never be passed on to external teams for management purposes. This means that they require the cooperation of account managers. This proposal does not even hint at the fact that other individuals on Hive will have to dedicate their time and effort to make the proposal a success.

We also already have several proposals out towards this end. One is Hive account@valueplan which is allocated to Hive promotional and marketing initiatives as well as sponsorships. $160k is about what Hive account@valueplan spent this year so far and as many know it's been an incredible amount of high-impact work and global representation. Next year we'll boost it further (this was our first year with such an account).

We have the capability to put together a portal/website in-house and due to our decentralized nature we should use that. There are more than enough frontend and backend developer, UX experts and designers. For anyone who wants proof, simply take a look at our dapps. Most of those teams were sourced from Hive itself.

Lastly, there are gaps in Hive marketing and I will be the first to admit them. The main gap right now is social media ads. The gap isn't because we don't know how to create them and set them but is a direct result of Hive being decentralized and not a company; we do not have a corporate credit card. It is a very simple gap to rectify and we have been working towards that and simply waiting for the bear market to end to launch the ads.

It is my position that any developer-focused marketing should be done in-house without (with due respect to your agency) hiring any marketing firms. We have the budget for it via Hive account@valueplan and we already have much of the work completed. I believe any engagement by your firm should be done at a hourly rate in a consultation capacity, if such engagement is warranted, and only for select segments of the proposed plan.

This feedback is not to diminish the credibility of your agency nor to insult your work. It's the honest feedback of someone who provided significant contributions towards growing the marketing function on Hive over the last two years.