SCRIB3 is proposing for our agency to manage this workstream by providing a veteran team of Marketing, Creative and Data Science experts to guide and oversee delivery of the highest-signal Research and Testing Program in support of Cardano’s 2025 Marketing Budget.

Our approach to the Market Research, Testing and Strategic Planning workstream will draw on decades of established best practices. It’s also worth noting that a significant percentage of this budget is intended to be allocated to third-party organizations – like Nielsen, Gartner, Ipsos, etc. – to most effectively and expeditiously deliver the components of this workstream to the broader Marketing Program.

Here are the primary workstream components:

Market, Audience and Brand Research

Developing and segmenting Cardano’s key audience personas Executing structured market studies through surveys and focus groups with each audience segment Conducting community listening and sentiment analysis on existing audiences and throughout deployment of new Brand/Creative materials Collecting any available off-the-shelf research across Market, Audience and Brand, if applicable

Competitive Analysis and Landscape Assessment

Engaging third-party research specialists for competitor benchmarking, market sizing and trends, and technology/adoption forecasts Lite SWOT analysis to provide a structured lens into Cardano’s advantages and potential risk vectors

Channel Analysis

Employing analytics tools (like Nielsen’s Media Impact) to analyze which channels across owned, paid and earned maximize ROMI for specific Messages and Audience Segments

Creative and Messaging Testing

Conducting A/B (or multivariate) testing to gather performance data across messaging and creative variations to refine Cardano’s content based on objective performance metrics

Analyzing neurological and physiological responses to Brand decisions and Creative Campaigns through a partner like Nielsen Neuroscience (this is a stretch line item and would be high-value to incorporate, but may not fit within budget for 2025)

SCRIB3’s management of the above workstream components and third-party firms would include the following:

Sourcing and Selection: Identifying specialized research platforms and consultants best suited to accommodate Cardano’s needs in each workstream component

Onboarding and Alignment: Coordinating contracting and vetting scope and research/testing approach. Onboarding session(s) with each vendor.

Oversight: Day-to-day project management and quality control of ongoing research activities – resolving bottlenecks and handling checkpoints.

Evaluating and Consolidating Results: Collecting and analyzing data from each research stream to produce clear, actionable insights. Translating findings into comprehensive report(s) for Cardano’s MPM and Marketing Workstreams.

Implementing Results: Supporting each Marketing Workstream in translating insights into practice and setting up continued real-time Analysis and Testing following the wrapup of the Market Research and Testing workstream.

The most performant Marketing and Communications Programs in the world are rooted in science and data, not subjective decisions. Cardano’s Growth & Marketing Committee (GMC) produced a 2025 Marketing and Communications Program totaling more than $13 million across 10 workstreams (Brand Strategy, Community Grants, Public Relations, Social Media, Events, etc.).

Without fundamentally sound Market/Audience Research, Competitive Analysis, Testing, and ongoing Optimization to inform the decision-making in each of these workstreams, they risk being shaped by well-intentioned but ultimately subjective viewpoints - (i.e., “guesswork”).

Marketing programs that are not rooted in high-quality data run a higher risk of delivering suboptimal Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI). This approach would be at odds with Cardano’s commitment to managing its Treasury responsibly on behalf of its Community.

It’s the difference between a marathon runner who trains for 12 months leading up to the race versus another who shows up cold without a single mile (or kilometer) under their belt.

We have an opportunity to allocate a small percentage of the overall Marketing Budget (~3.77%) toward this Research/Testing Workstream to give Cardano the greatest odds of success in a highly competitive market – it would be imprudent not to take it.

By anchoring Cardano’s 2025 Marketing Program in robust, iterative Research and Testing, we avoid the aforementioned pitfall of relying on opinions and anecdotal perspectives to drive a $13 million dollar Global Marketing Program.

Instead, each of the Marketing Workstreams will leverage Market/Audience Research and Testing methodologies with the same rigor and sophistication employed by leading brands across all industries and business models (B2B2C, B2B, B2C, D2C, etc.). Cardano’s marketing program should make programming and spending decisions across each workstream based on what has the (objectively) highest likelihood of achieving the intended business outcome(s).

This program also creates a robust set of shared truths across each of the workstreams. For example – Cardano has inevitable Target Audience overlap between Social Media and Events, or Public Relations and Community Management.

As such, alongside the Global Brand Strategy and Creative Campaign Workstream, we can share data-driven Audience, Messaging and Creative insights across all programs — rather than leaving each Workstream on its own to try and make evidence-based marketing decisions without the dedicated budget to do so.

Additionally, as SCRIB3 talks about often (and may be repetitive for those who’ve heard it before), the Web3 Industry has a lot of room to improve the emotional and psychological resonance of its Brands and Marketing Programs.

Said differently, the industry often over-indexes on communicating to their audiences’ Left Brain – consistently hammering the quality of their tech and logic-based arguments for caring about their project.

As we all know, humans are not rational decision makers. And the past 100+ years of marketing evidence tells us that making logic-based attempts to build Brand Evangelists is quite ineffective. We make decisions for all sorts of reasons – but decisions rooted in emotion over rational thought a vast majority of the time.

Cardano has a phenomenal opportunity in its 2025 Marketing Program to double-down on building psychological (and often subconscious) ties between its Brand and Target Audiences.

This opportunity starts with conducting world-class Audience Research/Testing – like Behavioral Research and Neurological Testing – to objectively determine the right emotional triggers worth pursuing in our Audiences and evaluating their physiological responses to our Creative and Messaging Materials. In its most sophisticated form – this means physical sensors like EEG Headsets, biometric devices like Galvanic Skin Response Sensors, Eye-Tracking Cameras and even Facial Coding Software – check out NielsenIQ.

To zoom out and close… The 2021 Gartner CMO Spend Survey estimated that organizations leveraging data and research-backed communications programs see as much as a 25% increase in ROMI compared to those guided primarily by instinct. Given the market Cardano operates in and the massive opportunity provided by the general lack of marketing sophistication across Web3, we expect that data-backed decisions will increase ROMI well beyond that.

Months 1-2:

Source vendor and begin Market, Audience and Brand Research.

Source vendor and begin Competitive Analysis and Landscape Analysis Research.

(Ideally) Source vendor and begin Channel Analysis and Messaging/Creative Testing, depending on the progress of other Marketing Workstreams – possibly Months 3-5.

Months 3-5:

Evaluate, consolidate and deliver Market, Audience and Brand Research and supporting each relevant workstream in the implementation of Research Insights.

Evaluate, consolidate and deliver Competitive Analysis and Landscape Analysis Research and supporting each relevant workstream in the implementation of Research Insights.

Evaluate, consolidate and deliver Channel Analysis and Messaging/Creative Testing, delivering results, and supporting in the implementation of gathered Insights.

Work with the MPM and each relevant Marketing Workstream to set up their programs for continued Analysis and Testing.

$300K in OOPs to be paid to third-party research/testing groups, as defined in the Proposal Description.

$200K in agency fees covering the management of this workstream, as defined in the Proposal Description.

A Research and Testing Program of this scale will likely require a team of 5-7 SCRIB3rs (our internal name for employees) with a mix of Program Managers and Channel/Data/Analytics Subject Matter Experts. We don't bill by the hour and will not manage this work according to hours limits - individually or as a team. In other words, while that is our estimate, we will dedicate whatever internal resources are necessary to deliver the best work. Additionally, as mentioned above, a sizable portion of this budget will be used to engage third-party groups to support in conducting Research/Testing.

SCRIB3 is a global team of ~65 people spanning past careers from engineering and data science to advertising and communications prior to joining Web3. We also all have experience in Web3 prior to SCRIB3. Collectively, we have run Marketing and Communications Programs for many of the leading projects in Web3 – such as, Metamask, Optimism, Kraken, Avalanche, Polygon, Axelar, Aptos, Uniswap, Eigen Labs, TON Foundation, Movement Labs and others.

Although it’s rare for our Web3 clients to allocate budget toward robust Market Research and Testing – our team has decades of experience doing so outside of this industry and look forward to bringing that sound approach to Cardano.

We come from some of the best Brand/Advertising/Agencies in the world including Leo Burnett, Publicis Groupe, Omnicom, WPP, Golin, W20 and others. At these agencies, Audience Research/Testing was a standard affair. We’ve conducted research and developed Global Marketing Programs for some of the most valuable brands in the world including Emirates, Lyft, Rover, GM, Champion, Morningstar, Corona, Mike's Hard Lemonade, Home Depot, Samsung, Mexico Tourism Board, Microsoft and others.

The Market Research and Testing Program will be ongoing for up to five months in line with the below Delivery Milestones.

The proposal will (hopefully) be endorsed by the Growth and Marketing Committee and is one of the workstreams included in the Draft 2025 Marketing Budget being submitted to the DReps this week or next.

• Working well with the Marketing Program Manager to deliver and implement program results in their approach to defining/evaluating success metrics for each workstream.

• Working well with all other relevant workstreams to support and enhance their programs with the results of Research and Testing.

• Working well with each of the third-party firms selected to support in Research and Testing.