Proposal description
Border-free love - YouTube Dash advertising campaign, 2 Million+ Views Over 6 Months
Help us to advertise Dash Evolution to 11,000 potential Dash users a day for 180 days!
Amount: 583.6 Dash
Time: Four months: (Four monthly payments of 145.9 dash each.)
Treatment document:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MHFQtqSOPBMdT2G-BQ90itjF4wDTxgt5
The storyboard (WIP):
Budget:
(Calculated at 1 Dash = 332 USD, 30 day moving average)
Proposal details
A. Background
1) We have already launched two successful Dash YouTube advertising campaigns.
The first ad, “Instant Private Cash” is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY6aYxJS-W4
The campaign report thread is here. We budgeted for a total of three months via two funding proposals. Because of the appreciation of Dash, we ran it from June 09 to September 15 when the campaign ended officially. There was, however, more money left in the account, so we ran the campaign for a further three weeks after the last report.
We believe that the campaign was hugely successful in spreading the Dash brand: There were 1,037,471 impressions. Since most of the message (Dash outperforming Bitcoin in terms of privacy and speed) is in the first five seconds, the message was broadcast 1,037,471 times. The ad has had a total of nearly 180,000 full views to date.
Our second ad, “Project Jet Plane” is here.
English version:
[video]vRSpkAGzqr0[/video]
Hindi version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B6bm1Cr66w
Spanish version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOSQpKmEsOw
Brazilian Portuguese version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrD1RhkL8Ak
We rolled out this campaign on November 8 2017. The reason for the delay was that Instantsend was disabled due to a vulnerability in the code. As the ad's main message is that Dash is lightning fast due to its Instantsend function, distribution commenced with the rollout of the Instantsend fix. Details are available on the campaign report thread, found here.
As of Monday,13 November 2017, this ad has received 393,133 impressions and 81,148 views across 4 languages, in the space of 6 days and spending $2,234 of $30,000
We gleaned a lot of information from these campaigns. Two facts we currently utilize are:
1) By far the most people interested in cryptocurrencies are male (90%). For true market penetration we need to target female users. Our currently proposed ad "Border Free Love" will appeal to both males and females, and target the remittance industry.
2) India is the most open English-speaking market for cryptocurrencies. (30%) of our audience. For this reason we have translated Project Jet plane into Hindi. India is also the world’s biggest recipient country for international remittances: More reason to target the remittance industry!
2) The international remittance industry
We firmly believe that the remittance industry is one of the most important markets where Dash can make an impact on people's lives. Point of sales use cases are being successfully demonstrated all the time, but impact is limited in developed countries where contactless cards and authentication methods such as Apple Pay are used on a daily basis.
Remittance is a multi-billion dollar industry, relied on by millions of consumers to maintain their families overseas. Overall global remittances totaled $582 billion in 2015.
However, in many cases waiting times are long and fees can be very high for people who have to make the most of every dollar.
That's where Dash comes in, and our commercial will point this out to average consumers who will benefit from Evolution.
3) Ogilvy and Mather
Ogilvy & Mather is one of the largest international advertising agencies. They have been contracted by Dash Core via a proposal to the DAO to develop a corporate image and brand for Dash.
Pieter_Eralith inquired regarding their role with Ryan Taylor (@babygiraffe) at the London Dash Conference, and the takeaway message was that that while they will be in charge of branding and corporate image, independent companies may still offer proposals for advertising campaigns.
If our proposal is successful, we want work closely with the relevant people at Ogilvy to make sure that our ad is 100% compliant with the official Dash Evolution corporate identity.
4) Production Partners
This is the biggest project that Eralith Studios will undertake to date. While our first ad was very simple and was done 100% in-house, our second ad (Project Jet Plane) was significantly more complex. We made extensive use of local freelancers for that project. Our third commercial, Border Free Love, will be of true Hollywood-grade production value. It will be shot on the Arri Alexa camera, and will incorporate live action actors as well as computer generated VFX. For this reason we decided to tap into the Cape Town film industry, and have partnered with two established media companies.
4a) Polycat Studios
Polycat is a highly successful VFX studio based in Cape Town, with access to a cutting-edge render farm. They specialise in hyperrealistic animal animation and VFX.
Polycat will be responsible for the execution our VFX production design, and animation of animal characters under our direction.
DEMO REEL:
[video]y5i5RNB9rBQ[/video]
4b) Conduit Productions
Conduit Productions is a veteran production studio that has been producing live action and animated commercials for global clients for over a decade.
Conduit will be in charge of shooting the live action portion of Border Free Love.
DEMO REEL:
https://vimeo.com/222198974
B: The ad: Border free love
1) The target audience
Our target audience for this project, will be customers of international remittance corporations such as Western Union, who need to send money to their dependants on a regular basis.
2) The message
Evolution will commence rollout in the coming months. We want to produce a showstopping ad that is 100% relevant to the consumers who will benefit from Evolution’s borderless transactions and ease of use. Touchpoints are:
3) The story
A young man needs to send money to his family in another country. He looks at the long queue outside the not-quite-Western-Union remittance office and shakes his head.
Looking down at his phone, he swipes the lockscreen of his wedding picture. The Evolution app appears. He taps InstantSend to send $200 worth of Dash to his wife’s account.
A blue swallow with the Dash logo on its chest emerges from the screen with a magical pop. It salutes him and swiftly flies into the distance. When it reaches the clouds, it is joined by two scruffy pigeons with the Dollar and Euro logos. They approach a digital force field with holographic border signs displayed on it. The pigeons smash against the force field, and the Dash bird flies through as if it does not exist.
A drone shot of the family home is seen from above. The Dash bird descends through the wife’s living room window. It chirps a greeting, then dives into her phone, which pings with the receipt of the $200. She smiles as the camera zooms out to reveal her pregnant belly.
After the emotional conclusion of the ad, a bonus scene is shown where the Fiat birds stumble out of the remittance office with their feathers plucked, beat up and exhausted.
Working taglines:
Dash: “Border-Free Digital Cash with almost zero fees.”
Dash: “Border-Free Digital Cash in a Heartbeat”
Dash: “Send cash in a heartbeat”
5) Distribution
We consider the work we create in service of the DAO, to be the property of the DAO and fair use for all Dash marketing associates. Although we handle distribution through YouTube, we are completely open for DAO marketing associates to redistribute our content. Be it through blogs, network television or public screenings. We encourage all associates to share their stories of how our content works for them.
Our distribution target for this campaign is a total of 2 Million views across all languages, over 6 months. At a standard CPV (Cost Per View) of $0.05, This comes down to a campaign total of $100,000 at 11,100 views per day. Based on previous average CPV of ~$0.04 we expect the campaign to overperform the standard CPV around 20-25% for a total of around 2.4 million views.
6) Budget breakdown
Live action shoot & Processing: Includes the shooting of all live action footage, and delivery of processed raw camera data to the VFX studio.
VFX Production: Includes all computer generated footage, including full animation pipeline and final colour grading. Also includes on-set VFX supervisor to oversee live action integration.
Sound & Foley: Includes all custom sound effects and foley (handmade noises and sounds)
Music Composition: Includes custom orchestral music track
Production Fee: Eralith Studios’ fee while overseeing all production, final editing, and distribution during and following the 4 month production duration.
7) Milestones
As we are partnered with other production companies, we will be able to finalize the production schedule once our funding is secured. The rough milestones are as follows:
1-10 Dec 2017:
VFX: Commence creation of 3D assets.
Live Action: Commence location scouting and actor casting
10-30 Dec 2017:
Industry breaks for holiday season
Jan 2018:
Live Action: Shoot entirety of live-action footage
1 Feb - 14 Mar 2018:
VFX: Produce and render entirety of VFX portion
Audio: Compose music and Foley
14 Mar-Early Apr 2018:
Post-production: Final application of Evolution corporate identity, including VFX app screen replacements and localization.
April 2018:
Assuming Evolution rollout has commenced, YouTube distribution will commence.
Working with the Dash DAO throughout 2017 has been an honour and a great pleasure. We thank you for your consideration and wish all of you a happy and prosperous 2018!
-Thomas and Pieter
Help us to advertise Dash Evolution to 11,000 potential Dash users a day for 180 days!
Amount: 583.6 Dash
Time: Four months: (Four monthly payments of 145.9 dash each.)
Treatment document:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MHFQtqSOPBMdT2G-BQ90itjF4wDTxgt5
The storyboard (WIP):
Budget:
(Calculated at 1 Dash = 332 USD, 30 day moving average)
Proposal details
A. Background
1) We have already launched two successful Dash YouTube advertising campaigns.
The first ad, “Instant Private Cash” is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY6aYxJS-W4
The campaign report thread is here. We budgeted for a total of three months via two funding proposals. Because of the appreciation of Dash, we ran it from June 09 to September 15 when the campaign ended officially. There was, however, more money left in the account, so we ran the campaign for a further three weeks after the last report.
We believe that the campaign was hugely successful in spreading the Dash brand: There were 1,037,471 impressions. Since most of the message (Dash outperforming Bitcoin in terms of privacy and speed) is in the first five seconds, the message was broadcast 1,037,471 times. The ad has had a total of nearly 180,000 full views to date.
Our second ad, “Project Jet Plane” is here.
English version:
[video]vRSpkAGzqr0[/video]
Hindi version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B6bm1Cr66w
Spanish version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOSQpKmEsOw
Brazilian Portuguese version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrD1RhkL8Ak
We rolled out this campaign on November 8 2017. The reason for the delay was that Instantsend was disabled due to a vulnerability in the code. As the ad's main message is that Dash is lightning fast due to its Instantsend function, distribution commenced with the rollout of the Instantsend fix. Details are available on the campaign report thread, found here.
As of Monday,13 November 2017, this ad has received 393,133 impressions and 81,148 views across 4 languages, in the space of 6 days and spending $2,234 of $30,000
We gleaned a lot of information from these campaigns. Two facts we currently utilize are:
1) By far the most people interested in cryptocurrencies are male (90%). For true market penetration we need to target female users. Our currently proposed ad "Border Free Love" will appeal to both males and females, and target the remittance industry.
2) India is the most open English-speaking market for cryptocurrencies. (30%) of our audience. For this reason we have translated Project Jet plane into Hindi. India is also the world’s biggest recipient country for international remittances: More reason to target the remittance industry!
2) The international remittance industry
We firmly believe that the remittance industry is one of the most important markets where Dash can make an impact on people's lives. Point of sales use cases are being successfully demonstrated all the time, but impact is limited in developed countries where contactless cards and authentication methods such as Apple Pay are used on a daily basis.
Remittance is a multi-billion dollar industry, relied on by millions of consumers to maintain their families overseas. Overall global remittances totaled $582 billion in 2015.
However, in many cases waiting times are long and fees can be very high for people who have to make the most of every dollar.
That's where Dash comes in, and our commercial will point this out to average consumers who will benefit from Evolution.
3) Ogilvy and Mather
Ogilvy & Mather is one of the largest international advertising agencies. They have been contracted by Dash Core via a proposal to the DAO to develop a corporate image and brand for Dash.
Pieter_Eralith inquired regarding their role with Ryan Taylor (@babygiraffe) at the London Dash Conference, and the takeaway message was that that while they will be in charge of branding and corporate image, independent companies may still offer proposals for advertising campaigns.
If our proposal is successful, we want work closely with the relevant people at Ogilvy to make sure that our ad is 100% compliant with the official Dash Evolution corporate identity.
4) Production Partners
This is the biggest project that Eralith Studios will undertake to date. While our first ad was very simple and was done 100% in-house, our second ad (Project Jet Plane) was significantly more complex. We made extensive use of local freelancers for that project. Our third commercial, Border Free Love, will be of true Hollywood-grade production value. It will be shot on the Arri Alexa camera, and will incorporate live action actors as well as computer generated VFX. For this reason we decided to tap into the Cape Town film industry, and have partnered with two established media companies.
4a) Polycat Studios
Polycat is a highly successful VFX studio based in Cape Town, with access to a cutting-edge render farm. They specialise in hyperrealistic animal animation and VFX.
Polycat will be responsible for the execution our VFX production design, and animation of animal characters under our direction.
DEMO REEL:
[video]y5i5RNB9rBQ[/video]
4b) Conduit Productions
Conduit Productions is a veteran production studio that has been producing live action and animated commercials for global clients for over a decade.
Conduit will be in charge of shooting the live action portion of Border Free Love.
DEMO REEL:
https://vimeo.com/222198974
B: The ad: Border free love
1) The target audience
Our target audience for this project, will be customers of international remittance corporations such as Western Union, who need to send money to their dependants on a regular basis.
- We will appeal to family-oriented individuals and target users on YouTube with confirmed marital status, since married people are more likely to make use of remittances.
- The commercial will be shot in English.
- We will specifically target the following receiving countries (the 7 largest remittance markets) with localization: India (Hindi), the Philippines (Tagalog), Mexico (Spanish), France (French), Nigeria (English), Egypt (Arabic), and Pakistan (Urdu).
2) The message
Evolution will commence rollout in the coming months. We want to produce a showstopping ad that is 100% relevant to the consumers who will benefit from Evolution’s borderless transactions and ease of use. Touchpoints are:
- Traditional remittance companies charge high fees, and transactions take time. There is a lot of paperwork involved to send money overseas. By contrast, Dash transactions are extremely cheap and are instant. Dash is truly border free.
- The storyline is designed to appeal to the emotions of consumers. It is not money we send home to our families, it is love.
3) The story
A young man needs to send money to his family in another country. He looks at the long queue outside the not-quite-Western-Union remittance office and shakes his head.
Looking down at his phone, he swipes the lockscreen of his wedding picture. The Evolution app appears. He taps InstantSend to send $200 worth of Dash to his wife’s account.
A blue swallow with the Dash logo on its chest emerges from the screen with a magical pop. It salutes him and swiftly flies into the distance. When it reaches the clouds, it is joined by two scruffy pigeons with the Dollar and Euro logos. They approach a digital force field with holographic border signs displayed on it. The pigeons smash against the force field, and the Dash bird flies through as if it does not exist.
A drone shot of the family home is seen from above. The Dash bird descends through the wife’s living room window. It chirps a greeting, then dives into her phone, which pings with the receipt of the $200. She smiles as the camera zooms out to reveal her pregnant belly.
After the emotional conclusion of the ad, a bonus scene is shown where the Fiat birds stumble out of the remittance office with their feathers plucked, beat up and exhausted.
Working taglines:
Dash: “Border-Free Digital Cash with almost zero fees.”
Dash: “Border-Free Digital Cash in a Heartbeat”
Dash: “Send cash in a heartbeat”
5) Distribution
We consider the work we create in service of the DAO, to be the property of the DAO and fair use for all Dash marketing associates. Although we handle distribution through YouTube, we are completely open for DAO marketing associates to redistribute our content. Be it through blogs, network television or public screenings. We encourage all associates to share their stories of how our content works for them.
Our distribution target for this campaign is a total of 2 Million views across all languages, over 6 months. At a standard CPV (Cost Per View) of $0.05, This comes down to a campaign total of $100,000 at 11,100 views per day. Based on previous average CPV of ~$0.04 we expect the campaign to overperform the standard CPV around 20-25% for a total of around 2.4 million views.
6) Budget breakdown
Live action shoot & Processing: Includes the shooting of all live action footage, and delivery of processed raw camera data to the VFX studio.
VFX Production: Includes all computer generated footage, including full animation pipeline and final colour grading. Also includes on-set VFX supervisor to oversee live action integration.
Sound & Foley: Includes all custom sound effects and foley (handmade noises and sounds)
Music Composition: Includes custom orchestral music track
Production Fee: Eralith Studios’ fee while overseeing all production, final editing, and distribution during and following the 4 month production duration.
7) Milestones
As we are partnered with other production companies, we will be able to finalize the production schedule once our funding is secured. The rough milestones are as follows:
1-10 Dec 2017:
VFX: Commence creation of 3D assets.
Live Action: Commence location scouting and actor casting
10-30 Dec 2017:
Industry breaks for holiday season
Jan 2018:
Live Action: Shoot entirety of live-action footage
1 Feb - 14 Mar 2018:
VFX: Produce and render entirety of VFX portion
Audio: Compose music and Foley
14 Mar-Early Apr 2018:
Post-production: Final application of Evolution corporate identity, including VFX app screen replacements and localization.
April 2018:
Assuming Evolution rollout has commenced, YouTube distribution will commence.
Working with the Dash DAO throughout 2017 has been an honour and a great pleasure. We thank you for your consideration and wish all of you a happy and prosperous 2018!
-Thomas and Pieter
Show full description ...
Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
Submit comment
Our YouTube channel Dash Ads now has 1,043,291 views.
We brought the Dash message more than a million times!
Hi folks! Our Team at Eralith Studios is getting ready to break for Christmas as our suppliers are sending in the last available updates. Here’s the rundown for those interested:
-Our agreements with our partner studios have been finalised.
-Our concept artist is scheduled to finish up on the photorealistic renders of our bird characters between the 18th and 30th of December.
-The VFX studio, Polycat, will commence production of the VFX sequences on the 2nd of January. They are slated to finish their shots in mid-February.
-Our live action supplier, Conduit Productions, has taken us location scouting. We are currently sanding down our location shortlist and working out shoot day logistics.
-Casting of our lead actors will commence in January.
-The live-action shoot is earmarked to take place on the 28th of January.
Thank you for continued support, and Merry Christmas!
We are rooting for your proposal!
Just a short PSA:
Eralith's YouTube DashAds channel now has 513K views.
That means we have served the world with the message that Dash is instant digital cash more than 500,000 times!
We like to believe that we have played a small role in helping to bring Dash to where it is to today, and would like to thank the MNO's who voted for our previous proposals who made it possible.
You guys and gals rock!!
:-)
Although I would like it to end with a positive image and the sparrow dropping in and taking a bow or winking at the audience then taking off again.
Thanks for the feedback. We are still in the process of refining the storyboard, and so character performance is definitely something that can still be experimented with.
Thanks for your proposal, I was about to vote before a few glaring issues caught my eye.
1.You want to be paid $220k on current prices for making an ad where as there are many similar ad options for available starting $1.5k a minute going all the way up to $8k a minute. I could not find any asks beyond that.
This is almost 20 Times the amount at the highest end for making this. Can you justify why Dash should pay a fortune for this and why wouldn't you offer us something reasonable like in the $15-20k region(which is also a good price)?
2. You have taken the value of dash to be $330 where as the price on submission was more than $500. Moving average is just an arbit number.
This an extra $125000 that you will be pocketing that no one has questioned, is this something you knew about or is this an honest mistake?
$125k is too big to ignore or use in some random extras.
I really liked your previous campaign but this looks like a cashgrab
Mason brothers produce an excellent show for 20 dash, video is relatively cheap with current technology, could you explain why this should cost us 10-20 times of other options.. Await your answers
Wixam
Using the SMA 30 is standard practice.
Our production cost is budgeted at about $94 000.
Please follow this link for the average production cost for a Hollywood movie:
http://hollywood-movies.yoexpert.com/movies/what-is-the-average-movie-budget-for-a-hollywood-m-1403.html
It is about $140 000 000 for 110 minutes. That equals about $21 200 per second. A 45 second clip would therefore cost about $954 000.
Our production cost is exactly 10% of what it costs to make movies in Hollywood. We can do this because we work with South African prices.
Thank you for your comment. We would be happy to delve into your queries.
As you can see on the budget sheet provided, we are spending more than half of the budget on distribution alone. The 301.207 Dash will be used to pay for the YouTube campaign. We are estimating a view count of over 2 million people on this ad, and so we have decided to up the production quality of this commercial to be on par with a hollywood feature film. I would ask that you go through our proposal thoroughly and go look at the showreels of the FX and live action studios that we will be working with to see the kind of quality the dash community is paying for. We at Eralith Studios are only taking a production fee of 53.102 Dash over the course of 5 months.
I have never heard of a live action and FX studio producing hollywood standard work for $15 - 20k a minute. I would ask that you please cite these places, as that would mean some stiff competition for the entire animation industry in Cape Town :P
As for your second question. We are basing our budget on the month average of dash (at the time of posting that was 332 USD). In the past any extra revenue from a proposal has been used to buy longer ad run times on YouTube, or has simply been used to upgrade Eralith infrastructure and help kickstart future projects.
I hope this answers your questions.
Thomas - Eralith
-This isnt sufficient to explain away an extra $125000 that you are getting.
Wixam
As stated many times already (including in the proposal) we have based our budget on a 30 day moving average. This is done to ensure that a potential drop in Dash will not interrupt or otherwise halt production halfway through. This has happened to us before, forcing us to delay the release of a past production by nearly 2 months because of the damage. We had no way of knowing that dash would spike as much as it has in the last 20 days, and similarly, we have no way of knowing whether or not Dash will drop again in the coming months of production. We have no illusions of a stable and reliable Dash in the coming months, and we will not risk compromising a production of this scale, because of the risk of too much leftover funds. By their very nature cryptocurrencies climb and drop at unheard of speeds, and that is what has happened here.
Our Jet Plane ad just broke 200K views!
https://youtu.be/vRSpkAGzqr0
I am sure it is because the Dash pilot in the ad looks like you! ?
I love your guys' talent and artistic expression. Your unique vision and storyline advertising is a standout in your field.
from Yesterdays interview? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4chQrvNF5lg
We are absolutely going to make use of the Ogilvy style kit. I discussed this subject with Ryan Taylor personally in London, and that's what's echoed in the video; we are acting in a decentralised capacity, but making use of a single corporate identity resource.
Voting yes, of course :)
I’d like to add, you had me completely hooked until the end. I think a better conclusion than simply going to Dash.org could be made. Expand upon Dash.org and tell the users why to go there, it can be as simple as saying “buy Dash today and send money the easy way, visit Dash.org to get on board” some type of catch phrase. That is the buy or not to buy moment that is a very critical part of the ad.
Just my 2 cents I’d like to add to the great animation you guys made. I wish you guys best of luck!
The storyboard is not yet set in stone, we are still refining it.
Thanks for the note!
We crammed the whole message into 5-10 seconds in our first ad, but the message was simple and text based. It assumed a huge amount of background knowledge from the respondents.
The ad is here:
https://youtu.be/YY6aYxJS-W4
In our second ad, we wanted the message to be much stronger, with an emotional appeal. Even though the ad is much longer, *its view rate is significantly higher than that of the first ad: 20% vs 15% for the first ad.*
Which shows that the content of the ad itself is an important factor in driving view rate.
We believe that "Border Free Love" will be compelling, hooking viewers to watch the whole thing. Obviously, we will get as much of message as possible in the first few seconds: The man looks at the long row at the remittance office but chooses to send Dash instead.
We’re completely open to cutting new 5 second sting ads from this main script, such as the scene with the dollar and euro bird flopping down. Maybe accompanied by a text banner or a voiceover. Ads such as those run great as in-video ads for longer youtube videos.
The focus of this campaign is to provide the DAO with a flexible, hollywood-grade campaign that blows anything other coins are doing out of the water.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/2017/11/17/bitcoin-emerges-as-crisis-currency-in-hotspots-such-as-zimbabwe (an interesting read regarding Africa)
While there isn’t a single end-to-end exchange solution that covers all territories, we believe that remittance is a crucial enough point of ingress into the market that early adopters will embrace Evolution enthusiastically.