Cryptocurrency marketing needs better storytelling

Original Title: “re: crypto marketing needs better storytelling”

Author: Nate, Head of Growth at Eclipse

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

As marketers, our job is not to master the most sophisticated technology; rather, we need to be the best storytellers. The reality, however, is that the stories we tell are often dull and incoherent.

Some of my favorite stories come from movie franchises. I find that a good story stands out as an independent film, and it is equally compelling as part of a cohesive narrative. One of my recent favorite films is "Dune"; each installment of "Dune" is fantastic on its own, but they also blend together to form an epic, all-encompassing story.

Here, I am not saying that we need to remake a cinematic masterpiece for a cryptocurrency company, but what exactly are our stories telling? Aside from endless product integration announcements, podcasts, and junk posts, there is nothing, which is quite boring, and there is no narrative to tie these things together. We are clearly improvising.

Telling a good story requires thoughtfulness and intentionality. Many of us adopt a "plant and pray" or "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach. This method may work initially when trying out paid ads and their placements, but it is rather foolish for building a great brand. Your marketing cannot just start with a blog post and end with a random meme, especially when there is no unifying theme between them. We need to, and can, do better.

Building a quality brand is like boiling a kettle of water. When you put a kettle on the stove, it doesn’t immediately rise from room temperature (a mediocre brand) to boiling (high recognition). You need to continuously apply heat (marketing) to raise the temperature. Consider other factors like altitude (the company’s lack of momentum), which can make it take longer to boil.

So, how can you make water boil faster? Adding a bit of salt to the water helps. In building a brand, intentionality in marketing is the salt in this metaphor. If you are comprehensive and specific in planning your marketing communications and packaging, you will elevate brand awareness more quickly. You should always ask yourself, "How does this announcement relate to my brand story?"

To be honest, all cryptocurrency marketers could benefit from improvements in this area. I think there are two main reasons why our marketing leaders (myself included) perform poorly in this regard:

We are too quick to change our core messaging based on the ever-changing industry landscape.

We are too easily influenced by feedback from all directions (from our CEO and colleagues).

Our industry suffers from a terrible case of collective ADHD, and that is no secret. Take Memecoins, for example; they are driven by regularly changing trading metadata (i.e., politics, specific blockchains, etc.), which affects price behavior. But we also have a counter-narrative that attracts the attention of intellectuals on crypto Twitter. Three prominent conversation topics come to mind from the past year:

• Modular vs. Monolithic Chains

• Application Chains vs. Application-Specific Ordering

• Solana vs. Ethereum

The issue is not that we are trying to make our projects relevant to these discussions. It is clever to find ways to leverage attention-grabbing topics and shift that attention onto ourselves. However, if we go too far and sacrifice the consistency of our brand's core messaging in pursuit of narrative, we will run into problems.

You cannot answer all industry debates at once, and not all topics maintain their heat for weeks. Our colleagues, and even ourselves, are prone to distraction by industry trends. At appropriate times, these may affect your business strategy, but your brand should evolve consistently and thoughtfully. High-quality feedback and suggestions are valuable, but you also need to know when to reject certain things for the sake of the brand.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not all opinions are equal. Our CEO, Vijay, has expressed opinions multiple times, and I have repeatedly reflected on the best strategy for our GTM plan. When Vijay tells me he wants to see a specific category of DApp on Eclipse, I might ask a few questions, but I ultimately defer to his expertise because he has been in the industry for 10 years, and I trust his business acumen. In short, I listen to my leader because he knows more about these matters than I do.

But when it comes to marketing, that is my expertise. I have vetoed some of Vijay's marketing suggestions multiple times because they did not align with the broader narrative we are building for Eclipse. Sometimes I reject certain ideas because the timing does not align with other things we have planned. I have previously told Vijay, "I will die on this hill," to secure more funding for specific plans. I do this not to rebel, but because it is my job. I was not hired to be a "yes person," but to manage marketing efforts and do it better.

Similarly, I also value feedback from the Eclipse team and colleagues. They often inspire me. For example, much of the ASS content we recently released was conceived by other team members rather than myself. This garnered us some attention. However, when I believe they are wrong, I still reject their requests. I am not looking for a few months of attention; I want years of it. I have a responsibility to ensure that each of us consciously works towards that.

This is key to giving the brand a consistent voice. Only one person can drive the car, and only one director can control the plot of a movie. Ultimately, if our brand performs poorly, it is not my colleagues' fau< the responsibility lies entirely with me. If Eclipse's brand ultimately fails, then I am the first one who should be held accountable.

That said, I realize all of this is quite abstract, easier said than done, so I will share details about the creation and evolution of our mascot, Turbo, in hopes that it helps you understand what I am trying to explain.

Many people have asked me about Turbo and whether you should create a mascot as well. The short answer is: probably not. To explain why, let’s start with the history of how Turbo was created.

Long before I joined, the core team at Eclipse had been discussing a "thicc sorter," which I will elaborate on later. Although the team released a well-performing funding announcement, Eclipse struggled to gain consistent community attention. It was at that time that Vijay reached out to me, and we began seriously discussing my joining the company. On the day I officially interviewed for the position at Eclipse, I pointed out that "intern accounts" were not effective. Too many projects were jumping on the bandwagon, creating intern accounts to boost their engagement and gain more attention (Eclipse was doing this too). The problem was that only a few teams were doing it well, and it was becoming increasingly clear that marketing teams were merely chasing the success of others.

This is one of the biggest flaws in industry marketing strategies. Leadership teams are reluctant to take risks or spend money because they lack conviction. So when they see others doing well, they want to replicate it; instead of coming up with something fresh and unique. The reasoning is that they are willing to spend resources on things that have worked in the past, but the problem with this logic is that those strategies were effective precisely because they were unique and well thought out. Copying others rarely succeeds. If you are not the first to do something, you need to do it much better than those before you to stand out.

I refuse to fall into this trap and let our brand become just another irrelevant name in the graveyard of failed crypto companies. Eclipse must be unique. Therefore, I decided to completely abandon the previous efforts to establish intern accounts and try something different: create a mascot that people could rally around, even if they did not know what Eclipse was.

At that moment, our marketers brought a Highland Cow into an art gallery in New York, and the cow quickly went viral. Influencers completely unrelated to the crypto Twitter sphere began posting photos with this cow. This was our "aha" moment. Highland Cow = thicc, Highland Cow = viral in mainstream culture. There was a way to connect this animal to our brand in a thoughtful and organic manner, which is why we adopted the Highland Cow as our mascot. We were not copying others; we were creating a legend in real-time.

Once we settled on the Highland Cow, it was time to design and name it. Previously, Eclipse had marketed itself around blockchain performance, but it was clear that performance alone was no longer appealing. TPS was constantly being surpassed by newcomers, and no one cared whether you were slightly faster than other blockchains. But I did not want to completely abandon performance; after all, Eclipse is very fast. During brainstorming, I realized that the best way to highlight our performance was not to promote it directly but to imply it indirectly. If it could be achieved in a unique way and not tied to other crypto projects, that would be even better. So I began looking for ideas outside of cryptocurrency.

Most of you may not know this, but my inspiration actually came from anime. I went to our website and to animation designers, asking them to start brainstorming while keeping two key inspirations in mind: "Akira" and "Speed Racer." This inspiration was completely unrelated to cryptocurrency, which is why I believe our brand and Turbo have become very unique.

After several rounds of discussions, we finalized the new logo, brand colors, website design, and Turbo's artwork. The bold yellow-green aesthetic features a hero character, a cute 2D/3D hybrid Highland Cow, driving fast cars and motorcycles, evoking associations with speed. The animation quality is also noticeably superior to other mascots I have seen, which makes our mascot truly stand out, and we decided to name it "Turbo."

However, I soon encountered a problem. Everyone at Eclipse was excited and wanted to share their opinions. We faced a classic issue: too many cooks in the kitchen. I quickly realized that to maintain momentum, I needed to isolate Turbo from other team members. While I appreciate the Eclipse team, there have been many times when I outright rejected their requests. Here are a few:

1. Team members wanted to start heavily investing and creating more Turbo content. I did not think this was a good strategy before gathering more data, so I first collected some data. Ultimately, I decided to invest more in Turbo because there were three key data points:

The content we posted on Twitter related to Turbo performed significantly better than other content;

Our community united to create Turbo, which was unprecedented at Eclipse. The amount of artwork, memes, and random content created by our community made me believe we delivered something truly unique;

People began consulting the team about Turbo, even if they had never really cared about Eclipse before;

1. Team members suggested we start using Fiverr to mass-produce more Turbo content. Absolutely not. We are a lean team with fewer than 30 full-time employees. Our strength lies not in quantity but in quality. Sacrificing quality to produce more animated videos would make Turbo no different from other mascots. We would only be shooting ourselves in the foot.

2. Team members wanted to monetize Turbo and turn it into an NFT or Memecoin. Absolutely not. We are building a permissionless ecosystem, so if the developer community wants to do something, they can. But the core team at Eclipse will never issue a Turbo NFT collection or Memecoin. Why? Because if it performs poorly, we would ruin all the goodwill or momentum we have built around Turbo, not to mention it would greatly distract our product/engineering teams. I do not want to associate Turbo with the performance of digital assets at all. Turbo is a brand asset that is more likely to resonate with the general audience compared to Eclipse alone.

I share all of this not to indulge in self-congratulation but to demonstrate the deep thought we have put into this behind the scenes. Turbo has resonated with our audience and has become one of our most successful marketing levers. So when you come to me asking, "Should I create a mascot?" it is not a simple yes or no question. The answer depends on whether you are willing to invest in your brand mascot in a meaningful way. If you are just casually drawing an animal and calling it a day, it won’t do much for your brand. Water takes time to boil, and many of you want to see it boil instantly.

To be honest, Turbo's story is just beginning. We have not done enough for it or the overall Eclipse brand to prove that it can be a game-changer. But we have been working behind the scenes to let ideas mature over time. Turbo will continue to exist, and I am very excited to let everyone see our plans for the next six months. We have some very bold things planned. November is just the beginning.

I hope you all enjoy all the Turbo content from now on, as we will continue to build a story around Eclipse. I hope all of you also view your brand as a story, finding ways to connect all announcements together and linking them to some core brand positioning and narrative.