Hi. I’m Adrienne but most people in crypto call me Adz.
I joined Gnosis as Head of Marketing at the start of August and would have introduced myself sooner but I’ve been heads down working with the team on the rebrand that you saw yesterday and the early access launch for our consumer product that starts next week.
I want to remedy that now and share a bit more info about the changes in Gnosis brand and marketing - in sections so that you can dip in and out.
My personal backstory:
IMO most people come into the space for 1 of only 3 reasons - money, technology, or ideology. Typically one thing pulls you in through the initial friction. I’m an ideologist. I love the tech for what it enables and appreciate the money as a way to keep my family above the water line.
But our values only win if we out-compete in terms of both product and narrative.
I started my career with a decade in brand and business strategy, working on positioning and narrative definition for Cadbury’s, Prudential, and Unilever and InBev’s brands, and then in group strategy and global brand management for Diageo.
Then I decided that the obvious next move was Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) where I invested my life savings to build companies with my husband (we’d only been married 3 months at the time!). In 2011, UB was going through a resources boom that felt like a bull market. As that fell off a cliff, we built a second company in Singapore. We sold the Singaporean company first, before selling the Mongolian one a couple of years later.
Since then, I’ve spent time in DAOs, venture-backed startup, infrastructure, and data privacy.
I’ve always been drawn to projects that embody values of individual agency and access. Shifting more power to individuals, anywhere in the world. I’m beyond excited to join Gnosis.
The new direction for marketing at Gnosis:
Gnosis occupies a unique and vital position, but lacks top-of-mind awareness and narrative cut-through. Put simply, most people don’t think of us very often and they don’t really know why they should. If they ever do, it might be to wonder if we’re Safe, or is Safe us.
To change this we need a strong POV that is true, differentiated, and engaging.
Gnosis is the home of a more empowering and disruptive future of finance.
In a world where banks and Neobanks are rapidly adopting crypto, and new “onchain Neobanks” pop up every week, we stand for the original vision of blockchain. Power to ordinary people, not from them.
We are not here to rebuild the status quo onchain.
We’re here to empower builders that are building what comes after banks. More sovereign and user-empowered financial products. And we have everything they need - from plug-and-play card infra, compliance tooling, and on and off ramps (Gnosis Pay) to an ecosystem of the world’s stablecoins, low-risk DeFi, and an OG chain (Gnosis Chain).
And we’re putting our money where our mouth is and using the same things to launch our own consumer finance product. Doing for cooperative finance, what Neobanks did for TradFi.
It will be our flagship product - simply known as the Gnosis App. And it’s a new type of money app - based on collective ownership, instead of extractive ownership. Where you earn more rewards because you’re an owner in the stack. With easy consumer-friendly UX.
We’re executing a soft launch in Ireland this month, in partnership with student organisations, with a GTM that learns more from Redbull and Innocent, than Coinbase or Revolut. We’ll lean into grass-roots activation, trust-building and community-building, over broadcast. Instead of asking people to switch to our app, we’ll engage with them to build theirs. Where they earn more rewards because they’re owners in the stack. And owners always get more. Right?
The world will know that Gnosis is where blockchain is still a paradigm shift, and not just an upgrade for the status quo.
Fork banks. Bank on Gnosis.
The new visual identity:
This was led by the development of our consumer brand and is an opportunity to unify what already exists, so we compound value over time far more effectively.
We are elevating what is most iconic about our brand - the Owl. The Owl is now at the heart of the logo and we will build lore around it as the heart of our brand. We’re calling him/her ‘the g’. The g in guardian. The g in our gm. The g in Gnosis. The g is everywhere. The g is silent.
We are also using an evolved ‘blue’ alongside a gradient approach to act as a unifying visual thread across the product mix.
This is a big break with our current and historic visual styles. We’re moving from a more abstract / solarpunk identity into something higher energy, more disruptive, more bold.
We’re still a principled rebel, still focused on empowering and giving agency, still focused on disruption and challenging the status quo, but we selected a visual path that tested best with a mainstream audience.
The final direction was based on consumer research with different panels:
- a young demographic that tends to be early adopters for new financial products and a strong lead cohort to attract subsequent cohorts
- nationally representative panels to make sure that we’re not alienating anyone or impeding our path towards full mainstream adoption
We then extended that visual identity across our products and services.
The consumer brand launch:
We’re launching in Ireland, because our product is set up to best serve this market. The market is attractive in terms of size and growth potential.
We’re soft-launching with a community of students in Dublin on the 26th of November, and will then start activating our wider GTM in Q1 and Q2 as we grow the early access cohort and build our waitlist ahead of the full launch. The exact timing for that will depend on the product readiness. We launch with an agile PWA but may need a mobile app as we hit our scaling stage of mass adoption. We’ll know much more within the first few months.
Our mainstream GTM will include:
-
Social media for broader awareness: primarily TikTok and Instagram with a mix of organic content, UGC, and creator collabs.
-
Campus activations for adoption: we’ll use highly-targeted OOH and guerrilla marketing for awareness, and a mix of online and campus-based events to drive conversion.
-
Partnerships and media visibility for trust building: we’ll work with societies and organisations that already have high trust, as well as high-credibility media outlets.
-
Co-creation for evangelism: a community hub for everyone who wants to shape the product, show their skill mastery, and be recognised and rewarded.
We are working with the leading GenZ marketing agency in Ireland to develop and execute the GTM. They’re called ThinkHouse.
Our crypto-native products:
All of our products will benefit from increased visibility for the mother brand, and driving a step-change here is a major focus for the next 6 months.
But, we’re also prioritising marketing activities that will drive maximum user growth for each of our products, including:
- A/B Testing and Click Rate Optimisation for all of our B2B / B2Dev products
- Accelerating SEO and GEO, especially for Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Business (formerly HQ or Gnosis HQ)
- Hosting a quarterly BD-centric dinner around major conference plus selective sponsorship of target-rich environments
- Strengthening the conversion driver component of all campaigns
The Circles Plan:
Circles is a priority and we’re focused on use cases that showcase its value.
One of these will be our consumer app - where Circles operate like points, but with added benefits and a lot more depth.
- The community aspect of Circles allows for rewards to be targeted to specific groups - like Groupon with targeting - so merchants can offer more because they really want to reach a specific group (like genz).
- You can mint additional CRC to access more rewards and benefits, and you can use them within your community and with partners.
- Unlike traditional rewards programs, your CRC can be transferred. Because they’re yours.
Circles is much more than this, but this is one of the use-cases that we can explore and communicate to drive awareness and adoption. There are other use-cases and community partnerships that we’ll also continue to drive separately.
People can engage lightly or go as deep as they want.
Next up:
I’d be happy to join the next AMA and answer any questions and will respond to any comments in the forum as quickly as I can - although I’ll also be running around Devconnect this week making sure the relaunch goes smoothly so please bear with me if there’s a small delay. If you see me IRL please say “hi”.
If you have thoughts / opinions on our new direction or on any of the plans I set out here, I’d love to hear them.
Thank you for reading!
Adz