[BIP-314] - Funding Proposal For Beethoven X DAO - Marketing

PR with Payloads

https://github.com/BalancerMaxis/multisig-ops/pull/225

Service Provider Name: Beethoven X DAO - Marketing

Core Contributor(s): JediRasta, Naly, Jeff, Vee, Skly, Tom, Josey, Ardordo

Pledge to abide by the DAO's Code of Conduct (or link to your own): Yes

Pledge to abide by the Accountability Guidelines: Yes

Introduction & Domains of Operation:

After a three-month trial contract facilitated by Balancer Labs, the Balancer community passed BIP-254 to fund Beethoven X DAO as an official Service Provider from May 1, 2023 - July 31, 2023.

Shortly after the ratification of BIP-254, Orb Co. relinquished its responsibilities of all marketing-related work and has since released all marketing personnel. These actions created a void wherein a critical service essential for the Balancer ecosystem ceased to exist almost overnight.

In order to ensure a smooth transition and mitigate any harm to the Balancer brand, Beethoven X contributors have activated significant resources to allow us to step in to fill the gap in the domain of marketing/content and are now running the marketing efforts at Balancer.

April 26: https://forum.balancer.fi/t/rfc-balancer-marketing-analysis/4705/14?u=jedirasta26 May 4: https://forum.balancer.fi/t/beethoven-x-marketing-update/4731?u=jedirasta26 May 19: https://forum.balancer.fi/t/bi-weekly-marketing-update-beethoven-x/4797?u=jedirasta26

As our initial budget did not account for the significant amount of additional work we’ve undertaken over the course of the last month, this proposal seeks to amend BIP-254 in the following ways:

1. Increase funding for marketing/content-related efforts from $15k to $30k per month starting June 1.
2. In an attempt to answer community concerns around having service providers that are “too big,” we will split marketing and technical services into two distinct service provider proposals moving forward. Passage of this proposal would additionally remove the marketing budget from BIP-254.

Key Objectives & Success Metrics:

Over the past 3 months, the marketing efforts to support Orb were focused on the following key areas:

• Developer Landing Page
• Content and Education
• Social Media Presence

However, in light of the transitions of the Orb marketing team, our efforts over the past month have shifted focus and have been put towards building a foundation to adequately fill the role previously occupied by Orb. To achieve this we have established the following:

• We have defined a strategy for content creation that is focused on highlighting current developments in the Balancer ecosystem.
• We are attending weekly meetings with @Solarcurve and Maxis to make sure that content is relevant and closely aligned with BD efforts.
• We have created a notion-based system to organize, develop, and schedule content coming out on social media channels and share with all relevant contributors.
• We established a baseline cadence for content coming out on Twitter.
• We have built a base layer of visual assets to support all of the content copy.
• We have begun to develop a distinctive voice/style to authentically represent the Balancer brand.
• We have been working closely with Balancer’s lead designer @uxui to develop an aesthetic for the Balancer brand/social media presence.
• We have connected with the Balancer community contributors to begin to define a working relationship, support their contributions and build a framework for future collaboration.
• We have continued to work on the developer landing page.
• We have furthered our relationship with Aura to closely align on the Balancer brand direction and over-arching marketing strategy.

Now that a baseline has been built, our focus moving forward is to showcase Balancer as a highly relevant and flourishing ecosystem. Leveraging our current expertise and familiarity with the ecosystem/tech alongside support from key contributors from the Balancer DAO we aim to achieve this by working on 4 key areas:

1. Social Media
2. Core Growth Pillars
3. Brand Development
4. Long-Term Initiatives

Below we have outlined the intention for these initiatives with relevant KPIs for their measurement/success.

1.Social Media: Twitter is the main point of visibility for the content coming through Balancer and as such it will remain a major priority for our marketing efforts. To continue to build relevancy for the Balancer brand and increase our reach we will be working on the following:

• Consistent threads focused around the core growth pillars identified with BD.
• Building rapport with key partners in the space to increase network effect.
• Refining Balancer's visual style and tone of voice.
• The inclusion of visual forms of educational content.
• Community initiatives and a focus on increasing engagement.

KPIs: To measure growth across Twitter we will use the following metrics on a bi-monthly basis. Our hope is to see these figures trend upward over time.

2.Core Growth Pillars: Re-establishing “relevancy” has been identified as an area that will be critical for the future growth of Balancer’s ecosystem. The following narratives have been outlined as highly relevant to Balancer's success:

• ve8020
• LST’s
• Boosted Pools
• Building on Balancer

With these core growth pillars identified, our goal is to curate content focused on bringing these pillars to the forefront of users' attention. We aim to achieve this in the following way:

• Focus marketing efforts around highlighting the vast benefits of the ve8020 model. Showcase successful case partner studies with statistics and growth metrics, as well as build out a ve8020 initiative pack to further educate, onboard, and align new participants.
• Continue to highlight the unique technology that sets Balancer apart for hosting and facilitating the growth of Liquid Staked Tokens.
• Showcase the power and effectiveness of Boosted Pools for facilitating ecosystem-wide growth.
• Provide content and material for builders to onboard into the Balancer ecosystem.

KPIs:

• Ve8020: With a push for the adoption of ve8020 we would like to see the number of protocols adopting this governance model increase over the rest of the quarter. Currently, 8 protocols have embraced the initiative, we would like to see this number increase to 15+ protocols by Q3.

• LST dominance: Since Shapella, we have seen LST liquidity on Ethereum rise week after week, with total ETH staked up over 4 million since April. Throughout the next quarter, we expect this to continue to increase with Liquid Staked protocols directly impacted by an influx of capital. With an innovative tech stack tailored to facilitate the growth of Liquid Staked liquidity, Balancer is uniquely positioned to become the dominant hub for these YB asset types. The goal is to see every LST hosted on Balancer increase in % by the start of Q3.

• Building on Balancer: At the start of our service provider contract we had begun work on a developer-focused landing page. However, during the transition of Orb this project has seen less attention as our focus shifted to building a baseline for operations. With a baseline now in place, the goal for the next 3 months is to have completed a beta version of the Landing Page for the community to test out.

3.Brand Development: One of the major areas identified as having potential for improvement has been the overall design and UX for Balancer. Working closely with lead designer Pon, we have been exploring different avenues for how this could be achieved.

Over the coming months, we hope to bring to life all of the conceptual work we have done by working on the following:

• Curate and present to the community 2-3 refined brand aesthetics with UX/UI prototypes.
• Build out the Balancer developer landing page integrating new brand aesthetic.
• Incorporate new look and feel into Twitter and content-related efforts.

4.Long-Term Initiatives

Below we have outlined 2 long-term marketing goals.

1.Education (Balancer Media Hub)

The Balancer Media Hub aims to create a central hub dedicated to curating high-quality, engaging content for the Balancer ecosystem. Articles, Videos, and Podcasts, all on one site. With a tech stack uniquely positioned to educate users on a plethora of different DeFi topics, the Balancer Media Hub has the potential to onboard the next wave of DeFi participants. The primary motivations for the development of the media hub are to:

• Facilitate the widespread adoption of users into Balancer/DeFi
• Create a space where educational content is accessible, fun, and engaging.
• Continue to push the evolution of the Balancer marketing department
• Build a foundation for the community to contribute to the growth and education of Balancer.
• Make sure that we stay not only relevant but “ahead of the curve” moving into the future.

2.Community Development

We are strong believers in grassroots movements and want to encourage community contributions in our marketing efforts. Our aim would be to foster community content creators to contribute towards the larger efforts of education in DeFi. By incentivizing users with innovative financial gamification mechanisms, we could create an initiative that would provide a platform for community members to showcase content relevant to the ecosystem in the following ways:

• Serve as a space of development for engaged community members and a space of inspiration for aspiring members.
• Introduce structures of gamification that add to participation and interaction within our community dynamic.
• Provide a framework for engagement that would have an effect on both visibility and education.
• Create a network of trust which allows the community to thrive.
• Potentially integrate into the Balancer Media hub to help scale community contributions

Deprioritization of PR and Live Events:

This is an area that previously received a significant amount of resources from the Orb marketing team. While we value the potential upside this type of marketing can bring, we feel that the cost-benefit doesn’t justify the continuation of these efforts. For the time being, we have chosen to sunset these domains for our marketing strategy and will instead focus on the areas described above. This means that we will not be actively pursuing PR-related activity or officially organizing/attending live events as part of our service provider contributions.

Length of Engagement & Budget:

For the services described above, we are requesting an increase in the current funding outlined in BIP-254 for marketing-related efforts from $15k per month to $30k per month starting from June 1, 2023, until July 31, 2023.

As part of this proposal, we would also like to make a formal revision to BIP-254. Presently, we offer both technical and non-technical services to the Balancer ecosystem under one service provider proposal. If accepted by the Balancer community, the passing of this proposal would split our services into 2 distinctive proposals; one service provider contract for technical services and another for marketing services. Moving forward this would mean that we will always request marketing budget changes/renewals separately, and any complaints/objections for marketing services would be treated as separate issues from the technical services provided.

As these funds will be used to cover contributor salaries, we request that this amount be made available in a liquid form. If approved, $30,000 USDC or BAL equivalent would be sent to the below ETH address around the first of each month.

ETH Address to Receive Funds: 0x811912c19eEF91b9Dc3cA52fc426590cFB84FC86