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You know a film has made its mark when its marketing budget has recovered within the first weekend of its release. Greta Gerwig’s cotton candy-coloured Barbie achieved this and became a summer blockbuster. Unless you are living under a rock, there is no way you have not come across an ad or a product with the pink hue of Mattel dolls.
It all started during the CinemaCon in 2022. The makers released a solitary image of Barbie seated in her Corvette within the enchanting world of Barbie’s land at São Paulo’s CCXP. It turned out to be one of those instances that gained independent momentum, capturing the imagination of its own accord.
What followed was a frenzy. The world saw a fuchsia Xbox (geared towards STEM Barbie), a Malibu Airbnb house, Barbie-themed enhancements on Google search results, a Balmain cropped hoodie priced at $1,350, a line of Barbie Crocs, Burger King’s pink burger and more. The film has additionally spurred a surge of moviegoers donning matching costumes, further attesting to its cultural impact.
Like Barbie, there have been some seriously cool flicks that showed us how it is done – they didn’t just rely on the movie being great but also built up excitement way before it even hit the big screen.
Here are six Hollywood movies that totally nailed this marketing game :1. The Dark Knight:Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ stands as a prime example of a movie with an unforgettable marketing campaign. Capitalizing on the enigmatic portrayal of the Joker by Heath Ledger, the marketing team used the viral ‘Why So Serious?’ campaign. Mysterious clues, teaser websites, and scavenger hunts intrigued and engaged fans.
The makers kept Joker cards in the comic stores that gave them clues for the website whysoserious.com. On the website, these fans could erase the pixels, which led to the unveiling of the first public image of Joker.
In San Diego city, people found ‘Jokerized’ dollars with clues that brought fans to a place where an aeroplane skywrote a phone number. Upon dialling the phone number, it gave a conspiracy theory. A newspaper called ‘The Gotham Times’ was also published with clues. The Joker cake containing a phone number was another hit.
The idea behind giving clues in various forms was to gather the fans in Chicago and New York, where they would see Bat Signal lit up on the city skyline. On the batwings was written ‘HA HA HA’, Joker’s main words.
The immersive campaign saw 11 million participants from 75 countries. The movie went on to make over $1 billion at the box office.
- Avatar: The Way of Water :James Cameron’s groundbreaking sci-fi epic, Avatar, relied heavily on its mesmerising visuals. If Avatar’s marketing saw partnerships with companies like Coca-Cola, LG, and McDonald’s and the video game trailer, the sequel ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ went one step ahead in highlighting the film’s cutting-edge 3D technology and immersive experience.
The Mercedes-Benz took a leaf from the movie and launched the Vision AVTR, a sustainable vehicle powered by organic battery technology. The vehicle was there at the sequel’s Hollywood premiere too.
LG unveiled an anamorphic 3D billboard in ultra-high definition showing scenes from the mesmerizing world of Pandora at Times Square. Amazon Alexa’s Avatar theme had visuals and sounds from the picture synced to timers, alarms, and the weather. L’Oréal’s NYX unveiled bioluminescence shades and light-catching pigments. Kellogg’s launched Avatar-themed packages and a special line of Pandora Flakes, and a Kashi bar.
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Inception :Christopher Nolan makes a second appearance on this list with his mind-bending film Inception. As part of its campaign, the makers launched an online viral game in which users were to solve spinning top mysteries. The game unlocked the official trailer. It even led to online discussions and fan theories. The movie made $828.3 million at the box office.
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Psycho :Psycho is a genre-defining horror movie that is known for many things including the shower scene and the unexpected murder of the main character. But very few know or remember its brilliant marketing tactics.
Alfred Hitchcock did everything from revealing the shocking twist. He even prevented the Paramount Studio executives from reading the script and his main cast, Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh. Although the movie is a book adaptation, Hitchcock put himself in the trailer and gave the tour of Bates Motel, giving the movie a true story vibe.
Once the movie was released, Hitchcock distributed manuals with trigger warnings and possible health issues like a heart attack. He kept nurses and police stationed outside theaters. To ensure audiences do not spill the twist, he would announce, “This, of course, is to help you enjoy Psycho more. We really have only your enjoyment in mind”. The movie made more than $40 million, a sum considered huge in the 1960s.
- Deadpool :Deadpool shattered conventions not only within the superhero genre but also in its marketing approach. The marketing team used irreverent humor and self-awareness to create a distinct identity for the film. From hilarious billboards to Ryan Reynolds’ involvement in numerous promotional stunts, the movie embraced its R-rated nature and left audiences eagerly anticipating its release.
Some of the promotions included Ryan Reynolds wishing everyone a happy Chinese New Year, scoring a goal with Manchester United players cheering him and taking over a taco truck and Fox’s Snapchat. Deadpool made $785 million at the box office.
Behind every successful Hollywood blockbuster lies an equally impressive marketing campaign. These five movies showcased the diverse strategies that filmmakers and marketing teams can employ to capture the audience’s attention and generate excitement. From viral campaigns to immersive experiences and clever trailers, these movies set new standards for how movies are marketed, forever leaving their mark on both the film industry and pop culture.
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Best Buy is like a 57-year-old grandpa who consciously redefines the generational gap. We can totally imagine him sharing his breakfast with early-rising boomers, having tea with millennials and playing Call of Duty in a basement.
This grandpa has witnessed the demise of his contemporaries (the likes of Circuit City, Sports Authority, and Toys ‘R’Us), the rise of his digitised version, and most recently COVID-19 pandemic. But his mantra seems to be YOLO. He is super practical in life but also believes in winning hearts. It is complicated.
With Grandpa entering the good books of the White House, his story has become only more interesting. Best Buy will help the White House identify devices less vulnerable to cyberattacks along with two internet giants, Amazon and Google.
If Best Buy’s founder, Richard M. Schulze, a Minnesota high school dropout, were told about the aforementioned development, he probably would not have believed it.
After working as a salesman in the Air Force, he started ‘Sound of Music’, a music store with Gary Smoliak in 1966. The store sold stereos, speakers, vinyl records and other music-related products.
He was unafraid of taking mortgages and draining personal savings. This very boldness and risk-taking attitude would become the foundation of Best Buy. It is seen in all their marketing tactics and growth too.
- The Swift Rise of Best BuyBest Buy was a go-getter from the word go. The company made $1 million in revenue and $58,000 in profits. It also acquired Kencraft Hi-Fi Company and Bergo Company in the first year. Three years into the business, Schulze opened three more stores and listed his company publicity on the NASDAQ exchange.
Once the company went public, there was no looking back. It hit the $1 billion mark by 1992. As of 2023, the company runs more than 1,000 retail stores across the United States, Canada and Mexico, with an average annual revenue of $42.9 billion, according to Investopedia.
And yet there were several times when it felt like the company would shut the shop. Here are some key milestones and lessons on how they managed to stay afloat on a bumpy ride.
- Tornado SaleThe first one came in 1981 when a Tornado destroyed the Roseville store. However, seeing the undamaged goods in the storeroom, Schulze announced the famous ‘Tornado Sale’. He used whatever money he had left to advertise the deal. Against expectations, the company made more money in four days than in a month. He saw how people rushed to the parking lot seeing the heavy discounts. It gave him the idea to open a grand superstore in Burnsville under the Best Buy name in 1983.
“The first year’s volume was $28 million, which was more revenue than the entire Sound of Music chain was generating. At that point, we knew the strategy we were building would work, and we immediately wanted to convert the rest of the Sound of Music stores into these Best Buy superstores,” Schulze said in a 2016 interview. Now his stores had computers and other electronics as well.
- Concepts II, III & VThe Tornado move paid off. Best Buy found itself on New York Stock Exchange in 1985. Riding on this success, the music company approached Circuit City to sell the company in 1988. However, the latter turned down the offer. Around the same time, Detroit-based Highland Appliance started offering lower prices than Best Buy to attract more sales.
In the words of legendary Sylvester Stallone, Schulze took this rejection “as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.” and gave birth to Concept II.
Often touted as a revolutionary concept, this idea put the customer in control of the process. Under this, the company transitioned from commission-based sales to salaried employees. It shifted the primary motivation of salesmen and allowed customers to pick their products.
“It was revolutionary at the time. We lost vendors, and many people thought we’d go under at that point. But Dick was incredibly determined,” said Randy Zanatta, a former employee and now co-founder of Golf Galaxy.
Another significant change was moving all the stock from the storeroom to the sales floor, giving more options and transparency to the customers.
There was but a minor setback.
Giants like Sony, Whirlpool and Maytag stopped supplying their products to Best Buy, fearing the salesforce will not aggressively sell them to the customers. However, seeing the success of Concept II, they returned soon.
Best Buy launched ‘Concept III’ stores in several new markets, such as Los Angeles and Washington, DC in 1994. Concept IV stores covered New England in 1998.
The company introduced simple measures to cement the customer-first ideology through the ‘Concepts’. It focussed on adding touchscreen kiosks giving product information, demonstration areas for stereo systems and video games, introducing product categorization, and cash registers at regular intervals.
A year later, the company achieved a major milestone. Best Buy was added to Standard & Poor’s S&P 500.
- Geek SquadThe 2000s saw Best Buy play on the front foot to diversify its operations, Geek Squad being the most significant acquisition.
The company launched Redline Entertainment, an independent music label and action-sports video distributor. They also acquired Magnolia Hi-Fi, Inc., an audio-video retailer; Musicland Stores Corporation, a retailer that sold home-entertainment products and the Canada-based electronics-chain Future Shop Ltd.
The year 2002 saw three big changes:
- Best Buy opened the first Canadian Best Buy-branded store in Mississauga, Ontario.
- Brad Anderson succeeded Schulze as Best Buy CEO.
- Best Buy acquired Geek Squad, a 24-hour residential computer repair business.
Geek Squad would now help Best Buy offer their customers solutions along with the gadgets. Customers got the much-needed tech support at home. It meant a long-term and more personal relationship with the customer. By 2004, Geek Squad covered all bases with 24/7 services, from appliance repairs to car, home theatre and smart home installations. This helped Best Buy triple its stock in 2013.
- Amazon & The Great American ComebackIt is difficult to survive in a retail world, which has undergone a dramatic shift. E-commerce has been the buzz for some time now, and it is not going anywhere. Brick-and-mortar stores are almost obsolete.
Everything is about convenience. A few taps are all that is needed for giant genies like Amazon to dictate our shopping choices. It has become a norm, albeit with a few exceptions.
Best Buy, America’s largest consumer electronics retailer, is probably the only one to survive the Retail Apocalypse. It is the phoenix in the retail verse if you will.
As Amazon gained a stronghold in the market, Best Buy’s stock dropped from $50 to $11.29 in 2012. The company lost nearly $1.7 billion in one quarter alone.
The company initially slashed its prices to meet online ones and found some success but not the solution. Best Buy observed a pattern in their customers. Although the stores saw an influx of people, they were only for browsing the products. They would go home and order online.
Under Hubert Joly’s leadership, the company rose from the ashes.
“Our goal is not to be lower than the competition. It’s to offer a very compelling set of customer promises with the assortment, the advice, the convenience, and the service. So our goal is simply to eliminate price as an obstacle to buying,” New York Times quoted Joly in a 2013 article.
Joly started by visiting stores and understanding the challenges of the employees, including a non-smooth search engine. To retain employees, he bought back employees’ discounts.
Realising that customers needed extra knowledge besides the information from salesforce, the company introduced an adviser program. Under this, customers could get free in-home consultations on product types, the latest technologies and installation processes. This way, they could take an informed decision before purchasing anything.
“Best Buy has come through the valley by making investments around the customer experience,” said Peter Keith, a retail analyst with Piper Jaffray.
It went one step ahead and partnered with Samsung, Apple and Microsoft to feature their products in the stores. The companies can set up their kiosks too. This model generated more revenue for Best Buy. In a sweet twist, Amazon also set up kiosks for its Alexa gadgets in Best Buy stores.
Joly also cut costs through an improved streamlining process after he noticed a rise in damage to several flat-screen TVs in warehouses.
“We were breaking $200 million worth of TVs every year,” he says. “By improving packaging, we reduced that [number] by 50 per cent,” Joly told Harvard Business School.
- What Makes Best Buy StandoutCollaboration & DiversificationBest Buy made history by becoming the first third-party retail seller of Apple’s iPhone across 600 stores.
With Magnolia Hi-Fi, the company integrated audio and video retailers directly into its showrooms. It bought Pacific Sales Kitchen and Bath Centers and started stand-alone showrooms for kitchen and home appliances. Both brands cater to high-end customers willing to pay top extra if it means premium products and excellent customer service.
In recent news, Best Buy has partnered with Atrium Health to sell devices and handle installation so that patients can get hospital care at home. Best Buy has also acquired GreatCall, which caters to senior citizens and Critical Signal Technologies and Current Health, a United Kingdom-based company that deals with remote patient monitoring and telehealth.
Other acquired or partnering companies include the Chinese appliance retailer Jiangsu Five Star Appliance, Speakeasy, Carphone Warehouse, mindSHIFT Technologies and more.
These developments are proof that Best Buy does not shy away from embracing change and competitors while sustaining its original principles.
- Building Human Connections“We want to make it easy for customers to learn about and enjoy technology, and to be a trusted adviser and solution provider for customers around their technology needs in pursuit of their passions. We touch people’s lives. I’m not selling you a TV, I’m working with you to make sure your family is entertained. I’m not selling you a thermostat, I’m helping you save the planet and save money,” said Joly at the time of the 50th anniversary of Best Buy.
Joly’s focus on customer needs redefined the company’s purpose as “enriching people’s lives through technology by addressing key human needs.”
The employees were even asked to think of their friends and be one while interacting with the customers and putting their needs first. Geek Squad imparted expert knowledge to Best Buy employees. Now, they had the perfect combination of human touch with in-depth knowledge.
- LeadershipWhether it was a sex scandal of a former CEO, the 2000 infamous lawsuit or being pulled up by Greenpeace for unethical deforestation, Best Buy has always returned stronger post turbulence. Leadership is a major reason behind this.
In times of crisis, Schulze never refrained from approaching outside consultants, reexamining his strategy or making risky decisions. Joly was named one of the “Best-Performing CEOs in the World” by Harvard Business Review in 2018.
Bradbury H. Anderson (2002-2009) rose from salesperson to CEO at Best Buy Company. Anderson also focussed on ‘customer centricity’, creating new stores based on the shopping patterns of local communities. Forbes labelled Best Buy as boldly “reinventing itself while at the top of its game” under his leadership.
ConclusionBest Buy’s adaptability and customer-centric approach have been the keys to its survival and success in the ever-changing retail landscape. This emphasis on leadership and human connections has allowed Best Buy to overcome challenges, reinvent itself, and build long-term relationships. From its inception as a music store to becoming a tech retail giant, Best Buy has consistently evolved. The company’s ability to identify customer needs, implement innovative strategies like Concept II, and establish partnerships with tech giants has helped it stay relevant and competitive, even in the face of e-commerce giants like Amazon.
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By: Ermos Kyriakides
The market is bleeding. There is blood on the streets. People are panicking. If you want to read my thoughts on how I think this will play out, check out one of my previous blog posts “There’s Blood On The Streets — What Now For Cryptocurrencies?” which you can find here (still applies today).
Despite the bleeding market, not everything is doom and gloom. The technology that will revolutionize our lives still exists and is thriving. There are a number of projects that have progressed significantly during this downturn and the positive news have been overshadowed.
In this post, I will be talking about 3 coins that have had important developments over the past few weeks. You should definitely keep an eye out for these once the market recovers.
Binance Coin (BNB)
The Binance Exchange was launched mere months ago (July 2017). Since then, it has managed to solidify itself as one of leading Cryptocurrency Exchanges out there, in terms of, professionalism, trading volume, security, user experience and so much more. It also runs very successful competitions and is pro-active to project forks and airdrops — something not many exchanges can boast.
Binance not only runs a very successful exchange but has also launched a number of other platforms, such as, the Binance Labs (a blockchain technology incubator), Binance Info (a Codex), and others which make up the Binance Ecosystem.
A little known fact is that Binance, has its own coin called the Binance Coin(BNB). BNB can be used by participants to reduce transaction fees, used as trading pair and also as a currency on their various platforms. BNB is about to become much more important.
On March 13th, during this market turmoil, Binance unveiled plans to launch the Binance Chain.
As a public blockchain, Bianance Chain will mainly focus on the transfer and trading of blockchain assets, as well as provide new possibilities for the future flow of blockchain assets. Binance Chain will focus on performance, ease-of-use, and liquidity. Binance Coin (BNB) will be upgraded to exist on its own blockchain mainnet, becoming a native coin. At the same time, Binance will transition from being a company to a community.
In other words, Binance is aiming to launch their own Decentralized Exchange (DEX) aiming for the likes of Ethfinex, IDEX and others. You might be wondering, why Binance would want to launch a competitive product to their own Centralized Exchange. In their own words — “Centralized and Decentralized exchanges will co-exist in the near future, complementing each other, while also having interdependence”. You can find more information about the Binance Chain here.
Details on what exactly the Binance Chain will look like are vague, but if they follow a similar approach as other DEXs, expect BNB holders to receive dividends based on transaction volume on the exchange and potentially a reduction in fees. Once the markets turn around, BNB’s true investing potential will surface.
The Binance Coin (BNB) can be, unsurprisingly, purchased on Binance.
Aragon (ANT)
“Aragon is a project that aims to disintermediate the creation and maintenance of organizational structures by using blockchain technology. We want to empower people across the world to easily and securely manage their organizations. We provide the tools for anyone to become an entrepreneur and run their own organization, to take control of their own lives. By making it possible for everyone in the world to organize, we are enabling a borderless, permissionless and more efficient creation of value. ”
Aragon is building a platform where anyone can launch a DecentralizedAutonomous Organization (DAO). In short, in a DAO everything is recorded on the blockchain. This includes, the structure of the company, voting rights, roles, accounting and more — this makes the organization fully transparent.
While the market has been bleeding for the past few months, Aragon has continued to work relentlessly and recently released The Architect —Aragon Core v0.5 on the Rinkeby Ethereum Testnet. Aragon plans to release The Architect on the Ethereum Mainnet in the next couple of months, subject to a second external independent audit and bug bounty campaign.
The Architect is a huge step forward in Aragon’s roadmap (and the cryptocurrency space) and will unshackle a number of Decentralized Applications (dApps) relying on Aragon; i.e. Auctus, district0x and more. You can find more information on The Architect here. Although this release has gone largely unnoticed in the cryptocurrency community, once the market starts to recover, the importance of this release will become very apparent.
Besides the exciting release of The Architect, they have also published a brilliant video highlighting how Blockchain and DAOs will empower the future which I urge everyone to watch.
You can purchase Aragon (ANT) on Bittrex, Liqui.io and others.
OmiseGO (OMG)
OmiseGO is building a decentralized exchange, liquidity provider mechanism, clearinghouse messaging network, and asset-based blockchain gateway. OmiseGO is not owned by an single one party. Instead, it is an open distributed network of validators which enforce behavior of all participants.
Over the past few weeks OmiseGO has had a wave of positive news which I expect to be fully appreciated once the dark clouds over the cryptocurrency market have gone away. These include:
- Cosmos Hard Spoon — Essentially this is a new blockchain which takes into account the state of an existing chain. Quoting Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum Co-Founder): “A hard spoon is a meta-protocol on top of a blockchain creating a token that inherits the blockchain’s underlying token’s balances.”. You can find more information about the hard spoon, here.
- Massive Partnership — On the 5th of April, Omise & OmiseGO signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ShinhanCard, an affiliate of the Shinhan Financial Group, a major player in South Korea’s banking and payments sector. For more information, check out their official announcement, here.
- OmiseGO eWallet SDK— The OmiseGO team has shared the repositories for the OmiseGO eWallet, in addition to a number of SDKs. This will enable eWallet providers to start the on-boarding process and brings us one step closer to the full white label wallet release. You can find more information on these news, here.
If you want to read more about OmiseGO, the team has created a brilliant guide, which you can find here.
OmiseGO (OMG) can be purchased on Binance, Bittrex, Ethfinex and many more.
To conclude, these are just 3 projects out of many, with significant developments that have gone under the radar due to the market conditions. We should all keep an eye out on these projects, as when things start to turn around (and they will) these projects will have hit their roadmap milestones and be in prime position to “capture the bounce”
By our friend Ermos Kyriakides. You can follow his Blog at https://medium.com/@ermos.k and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ermos_k.
Link to original blog here.
3 Coins To Watch Once The Market Turns Green Again
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By: Ermos Kyriakides
I am pleased to announce that after the highly successful “Real World Applications of Cryptocurrencies” series, I will be complementing it with the launch of a new series titled “Hot or Not — An ICO Review” where I will be reviewing upcoming ICOs.
For the first post of my new series, I will be reviewing Wemark— a blockchain-based marketplace for digital content.
Value Proposition Wemark is developing a blockchain-based distribution system for digital content, implementing our concept of the “distributed marketplace”. Distributed marketplaces allow creators to license their content directly to customers, keeping them in full control of the rights to their content.
In other words, Wemark is building a platform that will empower content creators — without the need of middle-men. Their first use-case will be creating a marketplace for stock photography; an industry that will exceed $4B by 2020.
There are a couple of problems with the current centralized solutions (Shutterstock, Getty Images, etc.). First and foremost, most content creators work with agencies and have to give up rights on their content in order to monetize it. Secondly, these agencies (and centralized platforms) take a huge cut from content creators (up to 85%), leaving them with very little. Unfortunately, as there isn’t enough competition, players in the space are monopolizing it and have free reign to do as they like.
Wemark aims to solve this issue by giving creators back their rights and control over their content with addition to minimizing fees (the proposed fee currently stands at 15%).
Customers will be able to license curated, commercial photos directly from leading photographers. Innovative discovery collaboration, and curation tools also improve the ability for customers to find and manage the content that they need.
As a matter of fact, Wemark has already launched their stock photography platform a few weeks ago, featuring over 3,000 contributors and 40,000 photos, including some of the industry’s leading content providers.
This is a space that certainly requires an overhaul. I believe that Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies will be able to revolutionize this industry, so Wemark is off to a good start.
Wemark Token & ICO Overview Before moving on, I would like to get a few terminologies out of the way, in order for everyone to be able to follow my posts.
- Initial Coin Offering (ICO) —Taking an extract from Wikipedia: An ICO is a means of crowdfunding centered around cryptocurrency, which can be a source of capital for startup companies. In an ICO, a quantity of the crowdfunded cryptocurrency is sold to investors in the form of “tokens”, in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies.
- Platform— Provides the utility and functionality to create Decentralized Applications (dApps) running on top of it. Wemark is an example of such dApp.
- Symbol— A unique identifier of a token. Usually this is consistent across exchanges, charting sites, etc.
- Total Supply — The total amount of tokens/coins that will ever exist.
- Soft Cap — The minimum amount that an ICO needs to raise. Typically, if the soft cap is not reached, the ICO is cancelled and funds are refunded.
- Hard Cap — The maximum amount that an ICO will be raising. The ICO ends immediately once the hard cap reached and will stop raising further funds.
- Rate— The cost of 1 token during the ICO.
Below you can find a graphic providing details about the ICO and some information about the Wemark Token. In order to participate, follow the link here.
Token Use Wemark is introducing a dedicated token to power a direct economy for digital content. Wemark Tokens (WMK), are intended to serve as native payment system for the network, and reward all the relevant parties for creating, distributing and promoting digital content.
The Wemark Token (WMK) has a very straight forward and easy to understand use-case; it will purely act as a currency on the Wemark platform.
In addition, since creators are getting paid in WMK, they could become vested in the platform, as their earnings could increase as the Wemark Platform gets adopted further; a much better relationship than what content creators currently have with agencies.
Team & Advisors Wemark was established in 2015, has its headquarters in San Francisco, USAand Research & Development (R&D) office in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Wemarkfounders consist of:
- Tai Kaish (CEO)—Has been in the digital marketing space for over a decade. Founder and former CEO of Underline; a digital marketing agency specialized in start-ups, Israeli brands and online businesses (notable clients include Leumi Bank, Discount Bank, Weizmann Institute, TrustWare and the Trump Foundation). Besides his full-time occupation, Tai guest lectures and mentors, marketing and entrepreneurship, at the IDC Herzliya international school.
- Pavel Elkind (CTO) —Over a decade of software engineering and management experience. Former R&D Director of Linkury; leading ~20 employees in various teams. Additionally, Pavel was a guild member of the NFX Guild; a seed and series A venture firm based in San Francisco. Prior to that, he was an R&D Manager in Unit 8200 of Israeli Intelligence Corps.
- Roy Meirom (VP Business Development) —Serial entrepreneur that has been involved in a number of different roles and industries, ranging from being a founder, a director, an international delegations coordinator and much more.
Wemark has an excellent board of advisors, consisting of industry experts in a number of relevant areas. Some notable advisors are: Lars Perkins (Former CEO & Founder at Picasa, Director at Google), Lee Torrens ( Marketplace Director at Canva), Michael C. Lesser (Former General Counsel / VP at Shutterstock), Keren Sachs (Former Director of Content Development at Shutterstock). You can find all of them here.
Despite the fact that the founders do not have any experience in the space, they have a proven track record of setting up and launching successful businesses in a variety of industries. Additionally, the board of advisors behind Wemark will help offset this, as they are huge names in the space.
Partnerships & Investors Wemark has already secured Venture Capital (VC) backing from Sarona Ventures, NFX and Elevator. This indicates that Wemark has considerable potential for rapid and profitable growth as VCs wouldn’t have backed them otherwise; a major positive point.
They also have partnerships with names like GuruShots, Solume.io, Deloitte, and more, but details about these partnerships are unknown.
Verdict — Hot or Not? Taking into consideration all points above, in my opinion, Wemark has done a good job in identifying an issue with the current centralized approach for digital content contribution. Moving the digital content marketplace to the decentralized world benefits both, the creator and consumer. The creator gets a bigger slice of the pie, and due to this, can price more aggressively, which in turn, benefits the consumer. The Wemark team and advisors look more than capable of pulling this through and having already secured backing from VCs, this gives further confidence of success to potential ICO investors.
I would classify Wemark:
Hot Wemark’s ICO goes live on the 7th of May — For more information and participation details, follow the link here.
By our friend Ermos Kyriakides. You can follow his Blog at https://medium.com/@ermos.k and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ermos_k. Link to original blog here.
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By: Ermos Kyriakides
My previous blog post marked the launch of my new blog series “Hot or Cold — An ICO Review” which featured Wemark— a blockchain-based marketplace for digital content, which you can find here. As a follow-up, I will be discussing the PowerAgent ICO which will be launching on the 1st of June.
Value Proposition PowerAgent is a digital contract platform for creating, managing, tracking, and protecting professional athlete contracts. The platform allows users with zero knowledge of smart contract programming to create an enforceable digital agreement.
It links all parties involved in the athlete contract negotiation and agreement, between the sporting club to the athletes and registers the entire contract process, from deployment to payment, displaying it in an at-a-glance, user-friendly interface, and guaranteeing autonomous payments when all contractual agreements have been met.
PowerAgent is a blockchain powered platform geared towards sports clubs, athletes and managers. It will offer a variety of smart contract templates, as well as, enable users of the platform to create their own templates, which they can sell on the marketplace. Examples of such templates could be professional services contracts, endorsement contracts, appearance contracts and many more. In essence, PowerAgent will empower all parties to create, manage, track and complete an agreement which will have a “legally binding contractual effect” (more on this later).
PowerAgent will be built on a “private permissioned Hyperledger blockchain”, however, details on why they decided to take this route are unknown.
Users of the platform will receive a digital profile upon registration. These profiles will have to be Know Your Customer (KYC) verified by a PowerAgent partner. According to PowerAgent “a verified digital platform will be evidence that clubs are able to do business in the real world” (more on this later).
Unfortunately, I can’t get a deeper understanding of the project as their whitepaper is not available yet; less than a month away from their ICO. As it stands, there are a few issues at hand:
- Although their website states that smart contracts are legally binding, this is a grey area in which research is still on-going. Although this might be the case in the future, Clifford Chance (one of the ten largest law firms in the world) argues that “no smart contract solutions have yet significantly displaced traditional ways of contracting, but that is bound to change. The technological and legal hurdles to implementing a fully-fledged, mature smart chain solution remain daunting”. You can find more information about the matter, here.
- Introducing a PowerAgent partner that will carry out the KYC checks, makes the platform centralized. There is no guarantee that the PowerAgent partner carrying out these checks is impartial or fully transparent which could lead to athletes or sport clubs being incorrectly barred from the platform.
- Their website talks only about the financial aspects of the smart contract; there is no mention on how the finer details of the smart contract will be held.
It’s unfortunate that there are a few question marks lingering, as this is an industry that could certainly do with a face-lift using the blockchain and cryptocurrencies —a gap PowerAgent has identified.
PowerAgent Token & ICO Overview Below you can find a graphic providing details about the ICO and some information about the PowerAgent Token. Terminologies on what an ICO is, what the total supply is, etc. can be found in my previous blog post, which you can find here.
The token breakdown looks fairly standard, however, there is a big lingering question which I haven’t found an answer for… Why do they have/need a hard cap of $39,000,000?
Token Use Any participant who would want to use digital verification, smart contracts, cryptocurrency enterprise services and the arbitrage system, they would need to acquire POWA tickets and use them on the platform. The POWA token will also be a means for payment exchange within the network and will be favored due to it not having any transaction fees, when used within the platform.
In essence, the PowerAgent Token (POWA) provides access to the platform’s services, including, digital verification, creation of smart contracts, enterprise services, etc. In addition, it will be used as a currency for participants to transact with “and will be favored due to it not having any transaction fees”.
Team & Advisors Unfortunately, there are no details about the team and/or advisors on their website. The only thing I could find, is that PowerAgent seems to be based in London according to their LinkedIn profile.
In my opinion, this is a huge red flag. It would be understandable if the team and/or advisors remained anonymous if they were building a privacy coin but, in this case, PowerAgent is not building a privacy coin and therefore there is no excuse not to disclose their team and advisors.
Partnerships & Investors I would firstly like to point out that having partnerships or existing investors does not necessarily make or break an ICO. There have been numerous ICOs that have not had any partnerships and/or investors that have produced exceptional results. Being backed by Venture Capitalists (VC) indicates potential for rapid and profitable growth.
Having that in mind, PowerAgent doesn’t seem to have any partnerships or existing investors.
Verdict — Hot or Cold? PowerAgent has identified a gap in the market which could definitely be revolutionized by the introduction of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. However, taking into consideration all points above, in my opinion, PowerAgent has a significant number of red flags to make this a worthy (and safe) investment.
I would classify PowerAgent:
Cold PowerAgent’s ICO goes live on the 1st of June— For more information and participation details, follow the link here.
Drop me a comment or message with ICOs you want to see in “Hot or Cold”next!
By our friend Ermos Kyriakides. You can follow his Blog at https://medium.com/@ermos.k and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ermos_k. Link to original blog here. The post Hot or Cold: PowerAgent ICO appeared first on Vola | A Membership that actually pays.
By: Ermos Kyriakides In light of many projects migrating from Ethereum to NEO (i.e. ProjectICO, Narrative, Guardium, and more) for their ICO ...
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By: Ermos Kyriakides
As mentioned in one of my previous posts, despite the bear market, not everything is doom and gloom. The technology that will revolutionize our lives still exists and is thriving. Alongside it, there are coins that you can earn passive income with, regardless if the market is green or red.
In Part 3 of my series, I will highlight another 3 Cryptocurrencies that allow you to earn a passive income. If you haven’t got the chance to read my previous ones, here are some convenient links: Part 1 | Part 2
Ontology (ONT)
Ontology is a diverse, integrated, distributed, trust network and the infrastructure for building a trust ecosystem. Ontology encourages trust cooperation and allows projects of all shapes, sizes, and technologies with different business scenarios and compliance requirements to pass through Ontology’s chain networks and take advantage of the distributed trust network how they see fit.
Unlike all other coins I have discussed in the past (with the exception of VeChain Thor), Ontology is still very much a work in progress but one with huge potential and this can be seen by how well it’s performing even in this bear market. Just to give you an idea, it was launched on Binance at ~1.30$and at the time of writing stands at ~7.42$ (a ~570% increase) as a time where the total cryptocurrency market cap has dropped by more than 13%.
Ontology will use a consensus mechanism called Verified Byzantine Fault Tolerance (VBFT).
VBFT is a new consensus algorithm that combines PoS, VRF (Verifiable Random Function), and BFT. With VBFT, Ontology nodes first apply for participation in network consensus through placing stake. Then, by using a verifiable random number, several nodes are selected from among all the consensus nodes. The selected nodes take the responsibility to propose, verify, and vote for new block(s).
The consensus mechanism is central to the passive income “piece” of Ontology. You can find more information about VBFT, here.
The Ontology network will feature a dual token mechanism that are bound together — ONT (the cryptocurrency coin of main chain services) & ONG (the utility token of main chain operations). By owning and holding ONT; you will passively earn ONG.
The Ontology Governance Model, which allows the ‘passive income’, is compromised by the “Triones Economic Model which uses ONT/ONG and combines the VBFT consensus algorithm and a consensus management smart contract”. You can find more information about the “Triones Consensus System Economic Model”, here.
In order to earn ONG, you will simply need to hold ONT in your wallet and ONG will accumulate over time. There is very little effort involved on your part. To get an idea on how much ONG you will generate, you can check this calculator.
You can purchase ONT on Binance, Huobi, KuCoin, Gate.io and many others.
Decred (DCR)
Decred is a cryptocurrency that solves blockchain governance. It allows users to seamlessly transition form one set of consensus rules to another. This is a complex problem, as demonstrated by the difficulties experienced in Bitcoin governance. Decred uses an innovative hybrid proof-of-work (PoW)/proof-of-stake (PoS) system similar to proof-of-activity (PoA) to solve this problem and gives users of the currency decision-making-power about the set of consensus rules to activate.
Decred has implemented a hybrid consensus mechanism, combining Proof-Of-Work (PoW) and Proof-Of-Stake (PoS) thus eliminating one of the biggest issues with PoW— miner centralization (Jimmy Song has an excellent piece on this).
This hybrid designs allows each block to be mined just like Bitcoin (PoW), as well as, allow stakeholders to vote (PoS) on a couple of things; the validity of the freshly mined block and any proposed features or changes to the network. Voting is enabled by purchasing voting tickets, which temporarily locks voters’ DCR. The voter’s reward received, currently stands at 30% of the total reward; check here for the latest reward figures. You can also find more information about this hybrid design, here.
Very briefly, to earn passive income with Decred you must follow these steps:
Set-up and fund a Decred wallet
Pick a voting pool (also known as a stake pool) and sign up on the pool’s website. More information on stake pools can be found here.
Purchase voting tickets
You can find a detailed guide on how to set-up Decred staking and earn passive income, here.
DCR can be purchased on Bittrex, Poloniex, Cryptopia and a few others.
Storj ( STORJ)
Storj is a protocol, cryptocurrency, and suite of decentralized applications that allows users to store data in a secure and decentralized manner. It uses Bitcoin-inspired features like transaction ledger, public/private key encryption, and cryptographic hash functions for security. Storj nodes, or average computers running the software, sell resources to store and transfer information and earn STORJ (or other cryptocurrencies) in exchange for their services.
Essentially, Storj is the open-source, decentralized, blockchain-basedcounterpart of Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. Traditional centralized solutions have a number of drawbacks (privacy, security, outages, etc.) which Storj solves using the blockchain and peer-to-peer networks.
Unlike all other coins part of this post (and previous posts in this series), with Storj, you need to contribute resources for something in return. Contribution to the Storj network comes in the form of storage space and bandwidth. Given how easy it is to set-up and get started with Storj, if you have unused storage space and/or bandwidth, this essentially becomes passive income.
A tutorial on how to setup and start contributing your unused resources on the Storj network, can be found here.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to calculate the Storj payout as there are numerous factors that affect the payout, such as:
How many people will upload to the network in the future (and how much)
How many people and how much will they download the files again
Quality of the node contributing resources
Having said that, there are details on how the calculation works and how payments are made, here.
If you would like to see a blog post discussing coins similar to Storj (i.e. contributing unused resources for something in return), please feel free to drop me a message or a comment below.
You can purchase STORJ on Binance, Huobi, Bittrex, Gate.io and many others.
By our friend Ermos Kyriakides. You can follow his Blog at https://medium.com/@ermos.k and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ermos_k. Link to original blog here. The post 3 Cryptocurrencies To Earn You Money While You Sleep — Part 3 appeared first on Vola | A Membership that actually pays.
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