Working with the Blockchain Research Institute

The Web3 & Blockchain World Conference is a product developed in Canada by the Blockchain Research Institute in partnership with the MCI Group, with its first edition in 2019 in Toronto. The conference welcomed 1,100 attendees in its inaugural year and reached 3,400 attendees in the following editions.

HERMES® Awards Gold Winner for Outstanding Strategic Campaign, 2023

2022 became to be known as “the year crypto came crashing down to Earth” (NPR, Dec 29th, 2022), with big competing conferences being canceled or postponed. While Web3 and Blockchain technology are perceived as less volatile, W3B investors presented concerns that the dramatic shift would affect the buying intention of potential attendees and sponsors.

Additionally, uncertainty and concerns regarding Covid were still very prevalent in early 2022 and persisted throughout the year. This added a challenging aspect to the campaign and raised questions about the project's feasibility.

The final briefing required flipping and relaunching the brand from “Blockchain Revolution Global” (BRG) to “Web3 & Blockchain World” (W3B) and promoting the new Canadian Camp Experience designed by MCI. Reach a 50% following growth over all social media channels, maintain historical engagement levels for the campaign season, provide advancements in tracking technology, and feed stakeholders with attendee and sponsorship-related data every week.

Increase revenue from digital channels by 30%, sponsorship leads by 50%, and achieve a 15% growth in revenue from new partnerships compared to the previous edition. Improve registration conversion rate from newsletter subscribers to ticket buyers by 15%. Reduce the use of incentives by 45% while increasing ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) by 28%, maintaining control over the cost per ticket sold.

Paired with acquired data from research suppliers, planners started laying out strong evidence that the crypto market downturn would accelerate the perception of rising volatility around the theme. Due to its inherent correlation, there were relevant chances of it impacting the willingness of potential attendees and sponsors to invest in tickets and sponsorship.

Blockchain-based tech is very new, and not a lot of consumer data is available for market research purposes.

In 2018, following Lehman's failure, the aftermath caused a significant decline in trust in financial institutions, serving as one of the most notable instances of sector contamination. Customers began withdrawing their money, and investors became hesitant to invest in banks, resulting in a liquidity crunch. This can be attributed to the negative perception of the entire banking industry, providing a classic example of sector contamination influencing consumers' perception of individual brands within the sector.

For W3B, the dramatic downturn in the crypto market posed a threat to the perception of all entities within the blockchain space, including the conference.

Primary Demographic Cohort includes individuals aged 28 to 65, regardless of gender. C-suite executives, blockchain consultants, Web3 entrepreneurs, government entities, logistics companies, DeFi initiatives, energy stakeholders, healthcare entities, and digital validation companies.

The product would need to be positioned with aspects of brand differentiation from the sector, selling the conference as a stable and valuable opportunity for learning and networking, highlighting the unique elements part of the experience and proposition.

Based on these findings, insights and the briefing, creative minds at MCI have reimagined the traditional (and conservative) conference format and transformed it into a highly interactive Canadian Camp Experience.

The tailor-made approach included Main Lodge Keynotes, Fireside Chats, Campfire Sessions, Live Music, and other festival-like elements. Rather than being passive observers, attendees became active participants, engaging face-to-face with an extraordinary selection of the world's leading thinkers and practitioners in the Web3 & Blockchain space.

Building differentiation shaped every single strategic and creative decision in this campaign.

Our understanding led us to offer an interactive, unusual, fun and engaging environment that proved appealing to hundreds of ticket-holders waiting 2 hours before W3B opened doors in November 8th, 2022.

Creatives found inspiration in the quintessential Canadian summer camp – a place of togetherness, friendship, and new experiences, and in the Pantone® 2022 Color of The Year (17-3938). The campaign palette incorporated dusk tones, along with a tailor-made representation of the night sky adorned with stars and multicolor lights.

Following operational instructions, we deliberately avoided using firepit representations.

Average for the cryptocurrency industry, the decision for W3B was to avoid the use of any type of money representation. Instead, and with the intention of advancing with differentiation, creatives designed light texture patterns inspired by the Northern lights and forest trees, combined with glowing auras around 2D elements.

The content distribution strategy was structured around the Omnichannel Framework, building conditions for a cohesive cross-channel messaging across all active platforms, appropriately tracked to provide a consistent customer experience. The use of some formats like Podcast and Messaging Groups (Telegram), is quite unusual for corporate events, and demanded channel populating efforts.

Following strategy definitions, agency producers established several contracts with blockchain-related influencers of mid-size (up to 100k followers) and amplified their ability to produce and disseminate new content across all W3B channels. Social posts were created to tag high-profile speakers with a large following on Twitter, generating relevant retweets, with some reaching up to 800,000 views, and approximately 10,000 website visits.

A new Telegram channel was launched for subscribed users to engage with the community. It was updated 2-3 times per week with new content from W3B team of influencers. Informative threads were posted on social media, and the content was later boosted through paid media to increase delivery to the targeted audience. Content writers, hired by the agency, created various assets in the form of images, text, and videos to increase traffic and populate the conversion funnel. Video content was produced by multiple creators in a face-on format for Instagram, TikTok and Youtube. The W3B Podcast featured 10 interviews with personalities in the blockchain field, grabbing the attention of thousands of new listeners.

A comprehensive remarketing strategy, managed through CRM, supported the efforts to convert engaged users into ticket buyers.

Compared to the previous edition, W3B 2022 saw a 48.3% increase in website and ecommerce revenue (via Pheedloop), fueled by strong sponsorship leads and new partnerships, which accounted for 52% of gross revenue. Despite an overall increase in the use of incentives, financial stimulus for engaged leads were reduced by 64% and replaced with onsite perks such as early access, additional content, and complimentary streaming passes.

The use of complimentary streaming passes proved to be a highly effective tool for audience expansion, enabling media buyers to enhance their ad segmentations on platforms like Google, LinkedIn, and Meta.

The agency's tracking structure was able to identify buyers for 95% of all tickets sold. Remarketing strategies enriched with data from past editions' buyers proved essential, as the majority of paid ticket holders converted after interacting with a remarketing-level ad. With a focus on improving ROAS, the agency made strategic decisions to leverage data, analytics, and segmentation from previous editions to boost the current fiscal year's performance.

This approach kept costs low while delivering an impressive ROAS growth of +108%, significantly above the industry benchmark of 4:1.

This campaign is a practical demonstration of sector contamination recovery and shows that by investing in professional marketing and advertising services, smaller players can also achieve significant results.