I just found a piece on Hacker News called PR Advice from Facebook’s Head of Tech Communications
To develop a compelling message, Marooney advises running it through the RIBS test (will your story “stick to your ribs�)
The RIBS test consists of crafting a message that is
- Relevant
- Inevitable
- Believable
- Simple
If I were to run an ad campaign for Bitcoin, I’d run it on the tagline of “Your Money, Your Responsibility, Your Destiny.”
I’d satisfy the relevance part by highlighting for merchants by highlighting the near zero dollar fees on bitcoin charges. I’d also highlight the fact that Bitcoin places the responsibility for your money in your hands. For example, during a tax lien, the sheriff goes to the bank, shows them the judgment, and takes your money. To seize your funds stored in bitcoin, the sheriff will have to seize the actual device with the private key, and make you type in your password to send the government the funds. Given that the tax system has done so many unfair things like tax the rich less and actually target people politically, this inconvenience for tax collectors is okay by me. It gives the average citizen more leverage against the IRS. As someone who was levied
The inevitable part of Bitcoin is that looking at FiatLeak you can see in real-time more and more fiat converted to bitcoin. A good example of adoption is Overstock hitting $1 million in sales through customers paying with bitcoin.
In order to make Bitcoin believable or credible, it’s important that exchanges become transparent. The debacle with the Mt. Gox exchange losing over 750,000 bitcoin or about $450,000,000 at the time of their shutdown would’ve been prevented with exchange data public. Credibility is Bitcoin’s biggest challenge.
The simple part can be fulfilled by showing how easy it is to make a purchase with an Android enabled app.
There’s lots of marketing and evangelizing work to be done for Bitcoin.