now looking to build a new decentralised brand advocate network using block-review.com as basecamp steem! :)

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last week I pushed out a really early layout design for block-review.com in expectation of the second part of the roadmap for @steemhunt and their reviewhunt product. I’ve been excited about that web app for a long time because it really fits in with my old work that I used to do for brands and agencies.

before I get into it, head over to block-review.com and click on the ‘add yourself to the map’ to get added to the global map at the top of the site if you are interested in being a decentralised gadget/tech reviewer — it’s not just for the Steem Blockchain but if we can build a 100 strong group of global reviewers that really gives me something to walk into an agency with and talk HUNT tokens! :)

I had previously with 1000heads and crayon agencies for both some Nokia brand work and some Verizon work in terms of strategy they had in splintering off side web businesses — the Nokia stuff was straight forward, 100’s of vloggers worldwide with engaged audiences (or in my case more hands-on first timer video) and the Verizon stuff was a year long, monthly paid project with eight advocates involved, seven east coast America and me alone in europe!

Even thou my time was short (a few years) with both of these agencies I learned a lot about how that industry worked from a bloggers/reviewers perspective back before the youtubers days and how that’s panned out since — it’s given me a good 360 on the industry as it was, where it is and where it probably has to go too for it to survive cost effectively.

the current stage of brand advocates

Speed as you already know is everything, especially when it comes to pushing product and using social media and marketing to make a dent in the audience attention day to day matrix of attention spans — in the current market place we have the high profile youtubers that have built up good follower counts and good daily views eating up all the marketplace for brands to go directly to the personalities (brands in their own right some might say) who then get put under NDA to release videos at the same time for maximum impact.

People like FunForLouis get early access to the latest cameras like the SONY A6400 FULL Review! Best Vlogging Camera? - YouTube) and you can see on that video the links to other high profile vloggers as well. . Jenna:

Julien: https://youtu.be/d0iwA-xoHg4 Justine: https://youtu.be/hwDKEFuZPcc — what they have and what the brands know is great ‘word of mouth’ and exposure as they are respected in their fields for building their own channels out.

the potential future of brand advocates

We have an opportunity here with ‘blockchain’ technology and especially with steem with it’s zero transaction fees and 3.5 second window to send and receive steem/sbd — tie that together with the HUNT tokens that @steemhunt have and you have a few ways to not only bring in money into the steem ecosystem but also to the existing tokenised economy of steemhunt one of the world’s top 10 DApp (out of 2.4K dapps) with over 61K monthly active user (yes, that’s us, that’s using the Steem Blockchain!)

Some of the biggest headaches for brands and agencies I’ve put together as a list below so you can get a handle on where the problems lay today and how decentralised and blockchain options are gonna make that a lot easier for brands to spend their budgets moving forward — in turn, I hope this gives you a little insight and some education as to where I’d love to go with block-review.com

what block-review.com could help solve or at least cut down the churn time for brands/agencies

discovery
Tried and trusted vloggers that have built up a community are always going to have their user base and followers but people want new people, more choice, more characters, more informed people to do with a certain technology or adoption of new methodology, the ‘time to live’ for authentic voices in those spaces are what a brand will get attracted to and if jack black (celebrities) has shown us recently is that the window for ‘critical mass’ of followers is anything to go by speed and growth faster is a factor that agencies are looking for.

Example: we ran a week long outreach on @steemhunt for CES which happens every year in january at the start of the year, we proved that we could spin up an event focused on a broader world view conference that already had a lot of ‘twitter’ chatter and hashtag driven buzz — imagine if you had a 100 strong global decentralised vlogger network that could review/opinion from b-roll footage with stats from the conference floor — later the brands could work with the reviewers they like with steem or tokens which the reviewer accepts from their block-review profile.

unlocking foreign marketplaces
Hardest thing for a global brand to do is to find reliable voices outside of the usual English language, a centralised list of decentralised global voices could be easier if the payment method issues was removed — no more issues for brands and agencies with payments in local currency, zero fee transactions, smart contract employment nda’s and buy in’s from the industry with HUNT tokens or other chains that decide to come onboard — even maybe a brand’s own token.

dapp for voting for your favourite media makers
Giving you a freebie here, imagine some kind of x-factor but for the hundred strong of decentralised global media makers where people comment and vote and feedback to their favourite media makers where ‘in-time’ bounties and smart contract NDA style reviews could be live streamed around the clock, 24/7 — ip television but with verified content creators getting paid for their time by the tokenised internet.

and that’s just the start

It’s certainly got me fired up about brand advocacy again because it can be multiple verticals from product reviewers to charity, to anything that requires mass of opinions and video and it’s a perfect ‘channel’ for the @vlogging app that i was considering a design for last year, I’m behind with that of course but this certainly fits into that with multiple people globally reviewing a product for instance with a bounty from the brand in say HUNT tokens.

That’s why I believe building this global team of reviewers is crucial not only for reviewhunt when that’s released but just in general, I believe a new marketplace can be created for those who have already invest money into equipment and studio spaces that are currently under utilised and yet still require an income stream to be active for larger projects — it goes hand in hand also with local training initiatives and side stepping the bullshit ‘grant’ culture we have across England and Europe which is a crab shoot anyway.

so sign up today!

If any of this sounds interesting to you and you are actively doing product reviews, want to get into doing product reviews or love the idea of doing projects incentivised by blockchain technology and tokenisation don’t forget to ‘add yourself to the map’ and we will reach out to you and collect some details.

Lots of Love!
__humble x

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