Ep 12 - Marketing Trends for Blockchain and Cryptocurrency with Jay Kurahashi-Sofue, Nicole Tay, and Tony Pham

We sat down with three industry leaders to learn how to best leverage marketing in the Crypto space, how to navigate the new and fast-changing nature of the industry, and what trends we can expect to see for blockchain and cryptocurrency in the future.

In this episode, Jay Kurahashi-Sofue, Nicole Tay, and Tony Pham discuss how marketers have been approaching messaging in a fast-changing space and effective marketing strategies for companies on a budget. We'll also talk about some of the most common challenges marketers face when trying to engage audiences about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

Here’s What We Discussed: 

• [00:18] Our speakers introduce themselves and share their backgrounds 
• [04:27] Jay explains what ICO is and how it functionally works 
• [07:25] What is your model for effective marketing in the Crypto space and how can successful marketing be gauged?  
• [13:47] Nicole shares her strategy for using education as a way to bridge the gap between the industry and her audience 
• [19:40] Our speakers share the most interesting trends their following at the moment
• [27:39] The most common challenges to engage new crypto users 
• [37:49] What marketing strategies do you recommend for bootstrapped (or pre-seeded) startups? 
• [44:30] Tony shares how he approaches PR 
• [47:10] The panel shares their thoughts on E-Commerce opportunities, options, and  wider acceptance of cryptocurrency 

About Our Speakers

Jay Kurahashi-Sofue, VP of Marketing at Ava Labs – Jay is the VP of Marketing at Ava Labs, a blockchain organization building Avalanche. Prior to Ava Labs, he was the Head of Marketing at Fluidity and AirSwap and also was a strategist at Ogilvy, where he co-founded its first blockchain marketing group. Jay is also the co-founder of BlockMarketers, a virtual and in-person community for marketing executives in the blockchain industry. Outside of Ava Labs, Jay is a photographer and music producer.

Nicole Tay, Head of Marketing at Skynet Labs – Nicole is a storyteller with a passion for blockchain technology. As a guiding principle, she leads with diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in maximizing the potential of decentralized technology to decentralize power.

Nicole is a graduate of Wellesley College and received her MPH from Columbia University in Epidemiology and the Social Determinants of Health. In her spare time, she writes and directs short films.

Tony Pham, Head of Marketing at Kadena – Tony is the former Head of Marketing at Kadena, a blockchain technology company that came out of J.P. Morgan’s Blockchain center for Excellence. Tony’s responsibilities at Kadena included brand communications, product marketing, and engagement strategy. He started his career in Silicon Valley by managing community and product marketing at Slide (acquired by Google), followed by his role as the first VP of Marketing at Life360 (IPO on ASX). He has won a web award and spoken at industry-leading conferences including Mobile World Congress (Barcelona,) SxSW (Austin), and Marketing 2.0 (Paris.)

About Our Moderator

Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.

 

Quotes

“I think in the crypto space, they love to attach names and rebrand things. But at the end of the day, when you look really far down into what it is exactly is, it's just a simple mechanism with the only difference being the blockchain as the piece of technology underneath it all.” – Jay Kurahashi-Sofue

 

“The way that I try to stay really consistent when [marketing a decentralized internet] is using diversity, equity, and inclusion as my basis for how I approach marketing. At the end of the day, I fully believe that diversity, equity, inclusion, and access is exactly how we optimize the potential of decentralized tech to decentralized power.” – Nicole Tay

 

“The cool thing about DAOs is that it's the full embodiment of when communities have that level of self-determination to set the rules and the standards for how they wanna operate and also for that community to be running completely autonomously.” – Nicole Tay 

 

“[The challenge with engaging new crypto users is] in addition to helping people understand, it's the helping them figure out for themselves why they should care at all.” – Tony Pham

 

“The foundations of an early stage company have to be laid out first. Regardless of how much money you have as an organization, I always like to come into a preseed company and make sure that all the organic channels are as optimized and as discoverable as possible.” – Jay Kurahashi-Sofue

 

“There are so many projects out there right now, that it's really important to be able to distinguish yourself as being credible, reputable, legitimate. One way of doing that is to pay attention to what teams are collaborating and cooperating with each other.” – Tony Pham 

 

ABOUT RUCKUS

We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts! 

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