[OGP-DRAFT]: OATH/Ethos branded educational videos

Governance Proposals
1

Hallo friendly friends!

I shall be the first to test the governance waters with a grant proposal for a product that should be of value to many people interested in OATH but who are not quite sure how to wrap their heads around the multitude of gigabrain moves that exist within. That is: a library/academy of ELI5 style educational videos. Many of you already know me, so my reputation as a meme-slinging, poncho-wearing 3D artist/filmmaker should not be a mystery. Anyway, diving in to the nitty gritty!

Proposal Title: OATH/Ethos Academy Branded Videos
Proposal Chain: Chain-Agnostic
Type: Funding Proposal
Proposal Author: Aspenth
Date: 7/28/23

Executive Summary
A series of branded educational videos that are designed to embrace the visual story/lore of OATH’s world. Videos would generally be no longer than 60 seconds, so as to make them easily digestible and focused on a single aspect of the ecosystem.

Proposal Motivation:
As the OATH ecosystem grows increasingly more complex with new ways to engage with it, less-experienced users may opt to deposit funds elsewhere because the advanced logic expressed by flowcharts and written docs go over their head. Whiteboard videos are common and can be effective, but these tend to lack character and fail to make use of the strong lore that exists here. The impact of story is not to be underestimated when it comes to users feeling immersed and motivated to participate.

Proposal Specifics:
As I’ve been creating similar videos for other protocols 'round the chains, I can share some examples of what these videos might look like. I created this pitch video for THENA to visually illustrate the concept of bribes for those who are unfamiliar with ve3,3 platforms:
THENA Bribes Video

I also spent a little bit of time creating a render specific to OATH that could be the basis for a similar video, exact topic TBD:
OATH Sample Video

Ideally, the path forward would be a collaborative effort between myself and a council of sorts to help identify the most beneficial topics or strategies worth highlighting.

Team Experience
Refer to the sample videos shared above to get a sense of my experience with regard to 3D art and how that would be leveraged to create videos that hold interest.

Key Objectives & Success Metrics
Success would be an ongoing metric as we evaluate whether there is a discernible increase in new deposits following their release. But, brief surveys could be used to periodically gauge whether viewers find them informative or in any way additive to what they already knew about a given topic.

Length of Engagement & Budget Breakdown
Using the THENA example above, that video was produced in approximately 4 days and cost about $2000 USD. That figure accounts for the time spent writing a simplified script, modeling/animation, and a custom music track by Steven Vinyl – another face that should be familiar to the OATH community. A similar breakdown would be the target here, although if the interest exists, I would leave it up to this discussion post to determine how many videos are worth pursuing, as I’m not certain what amount of tokens have been allocated for educational initiatives.

Community Support
As I’m currently producing content for RETRO on Polygon (Thena-friendly fork), I have observed that much of the gigabrain knowledge shared in our Medium posts and discord announcements goes overlooked. But, video/animated content tends to receive far more engagement because it naturally catches your attention quicker, and they can be more readily shared on the “not-a-bird” app. :melting_face:

Risk Assessment
None that I can think of. Educational videos are codeless, so there’s nothing involving user deposits that could be lost. They should only be a value add to the ecosystem in helping drive people to explore OATH versus another opportunity.

4 Likes
2

I like the idea. I won’t judge price matter here (since It’s terrible to be having your work value determined by someone else).

I just want to raise some points:

1- This needs to be well timed. When the protocol is ready to invest in marketing. I am not able to judge if now is the time.

2- Producing a video like that for just some RTs wont make much sense (imo). In case we invest into a high quality production it needs to be shared by some paid promotions (twitter big accs, maybe a paid add etc).

3- looks like oath foundation already have someone producing videos and this kind of content. So maybe your proposal could be changed into a colab. I personally think that more heads thinking to solve a problem (or make a video) will do better than someone alone, no matter how good the professional is.

That’s my 2 cents. Good luck.

3

Some good thoughts here – and yes, it’s not lost on me that times are still tough for a lot of protocols right now. So I agree timing would be important.

I’d probably want to clarify there’s a bit of a distinction between marketing videos and educational videos. Marketing being the kind of “explosive” stuff that plays like an exciting commercial to hook you in. (ie MONSTER TRUCKS! SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!)

The intent here is more educational: a secondary (but still visually exciting) way of explaining the how-tos and defining terminology, for those people who can’t be bothered to read the docs (and those numbers are always depressingly high). Explainer video is perhaps the more accurate term here. And since levels of comprehension tend to hit both ends of the spectrum in DeFi, my thesis is that written docs are likely to be more helpful to experienced users because they’ll understand the “scientific” flowcharts. And videos are tailored to newbies, by either focusing on the basics or taking advanced info and making it analogous to something else.

It follows then that the goal is also not -just- for RTs, because they’d be meant to live within the site resources section. It just happens to be the case that this content lends itself well to being RT’d, as opposed to a brick wall of text that would no doubt attract a few of those “i ain’t readin all that” memes. :sweat_smile:

4

Just dropped a standardized naming convention for OATH Governance Proposals, OGP-#.

Would you mind updating the title to OGP-2: OTH/Ethos branded educational videos?

Thanks!

5

I like the idea overall idea as we currently have a gap with video content.

Overall I would be more in favor of a mix of marketing / educational content as I feel that both are needed. Perhaps a variety of videos between 15-60 seconds long.

If we break down the cost of the Thena example: $2000 / 60 seconds = $33.33 per second. Could there possibly be a bulk discount for X number of videos (we can chat about what X should be separately)? I think that would make the proposal more attractive (just my two cents).

3 Likes
6

I may have mixed both up (marketing and educational). Sorry about that.

I would like to have a insight from the team/core contributors regarding the need for that and if now it is the right time.

But in my opinion I am in favor. As long as they get used enough to justify the spending.

7

Yes, I’d say a bulk discount could be possible because Steven is likely to be my primary collaborator for any such videos in preparing custom music. Given multiple videos, it’s likely that any one track can be re-used a few times. So TL;DR = cost comes down a bit with a batch.

And as you pointed out, not all of them have to be 60 seconds, so a 15 second one is definitely quicker to kick out, and for less

8

First off, thank you @Aspenth for breaking the ice and putting a proposal forward!

The way I see it, the kinds of videos you’re proposing lean towards marketing, granted they’re not mutually exclusive. But to sufficiently explain the details of each protocol you’re going to need either loads of 1-min videos or several longer videos, which I’m not sure is something we can afford for what is costs at this stage.

My view would be to lean into the marketing aspect and cover topics from 30,000 feet. I like the idea of simple, intriguing and attractive explanations of each protocol; they would do some good marketing-wise and you could probably do it in a 30-45 second video.

I do think that more comprehensive educational videos are needed, but those might have to be less focused on the production quality considering the resources required. Your content looks really good which is perfect for brief, tantalizing clips that make people want to learn more.

9

Hey Aspenth,

Thanks for this awesome proposal - love your initiative! Your concept of creating a series of branded educational videos aligns with the internal discussions we’ve been having about the need for such content to enhance our communications.

Before we greenlight this project and allocate budget, it’s crucial for us to establish a concrete strategy. This involves deciding on the key messages we wish to convey and identifying the best formats and channels to do so. We should make sure that our marketing resources align strategically with how we envision our future users discovering and engaging with us.

In other words, we need to nail down what we want to say, how we want to say it, and where we want to say it before we start spending. Once we have that strategy in place, we can talk more about the budget. I’m on board with AS’s idea of looking into a bulk discount for a series of videos - but only once we’ve figured out our content strategy.

So, in a nutshell: love your idea, let’s flesh out our strategy, nail down what we want to say, how we want to say it, and where we want to say it. I’m thinking it’ll take about a week or two to hash this out.

Thanks for your understanding and your awesome ideas!

5 Likes
10

Really compelling, would be interested to see North and AS collaborate on finer details. Definitely willing to support.

1 Like
11

Very funny sample vid :grin:

I support in principle but as has been echoed, I think this needs more refined direction and intent.

1 Like
12

Hi guys,

I. I agree with Charles that educational videos about this ecosystem cannot be done in 30-60 seconds. If we are talking about education then I would rather have 5-8 minute guides that would really help the new community. Marketing videos with a mix of education that would encourage people to use OATH products up to 1 minute in length would work well.

II. I agree with A_S that it would be good to have a longer cooperation and not just one short assignment. There are a lot of changes coming, it would be good to be able to convey this with engaging content in video form as well

1 Like
13

I just want to synthesise my opinion:

1- Needs to be coordinated with the team: what they need and the best time to do it.

2- Needs to be marketed, otherwise, only we (few governos and few people on CT will see it.).

In that case, I would vote yes for the “re-written” proposal.

14

My Opinion: Proposal Ready for GPRC Review

15

Proposal Ready for GPRC Review.

16

GPRC member reporting in: ready for review.

17

Happy to proceed to review

18

Cheers all! I’ll continue to check-in here and make myself available for any questions, comments, etc that may arise during the formal review process.

Since I know that bulk pricing is something that has been brought up, and I’d certainly want to incentivize a longer engagement, I’ve analyzed the ways I could subsidize the cost. Here’s the logic I’ve come up for that:

Using the above “model” of a 60-90 second video priced at $2000, I’d be able to discount 15% for every batch of 3 videos requested. Some videos may be shorter, and that’s OK. We’d simply increase the quantity to maintain an appropriate value for the buy. Examples:

3 videos that are 60-90 seconds
Normal cost = $6000 / Discount = $900 / Total = $5100
6 videos that are 30 seconds
Same as the above
6 videos that are 60-90 seconds
Normal cost = $12000 / Discount = $1800 / Total = $10200

There is an even more significant discount I can offer, but it would come with a very short time window. That is: a package worth at least $12000 and paid in full before August 30 would get double the number of videos. So instead of 6x videos that are 60-90 seconds in length, we would do 12 (making the cost $1000 each). This is possible because of an airdrop opportunity with an imminent snapshot, and if taken advantage of, I’d simply pass the full projected value of that drop on to OATH. This could be a way to pre-pay any planned budget and receive a significant number of credits to be used down the road.

Looking forward to potentially making this work out for everyone! As noted above, I expect there would be a lot of strategy that goes into this before anything is created, since I have no intention of going lone wolf. I’d want it to be tailored exactly to what the community feels will be of most use, whether that be educational videos or marketing videos.

19

Hello @Aspenth, thanks for all the extra context. Definitely appreciate the info and efforts on your end of this proposal.

The GPRC met yesterday to discuss this proposal, ultimately we decided that we’d like to support this effort pending a meeting with our Marketing / Branding Lead (Crypto North). The GPRC hopes to better coordinate before moving to a community vote to ensure marketing/branding/information of the proposed videos align with long term content strategies and development efforts.

@North tagging you for visibility to begin the conversation.

The GPRC will revisit this proposal at the next GPRC meeting pending the meeting mentioned above.

Let me know if you have any questions, happy to chat.

3 Likes