Interview with Managing Director at Key Difference Media

Key Difference Media is one of Top Agencies at the ICO Market (Top 5 at MoonRate) which has strong team in professionals and provides marketing and other services to the projects since 2007. KEY Difference Media specializes on Media Planning, PR, Partnerships and aims to build the right buzz to help attract the right investors for its clients. We’ve talked with Karnika E. Yashwant (Mr. Key) and found out a lot of useful information about the world of ICO marketing as well as several hints about successful promotion on the market.

How many years your agency is working at the ICO Market?

We are in the marketing space for the last 11 years (since 2007) working with Fortune 100s like CISCO, AJC, etc. So we understood metrics, data, long-term perspective, etc.

In 2013 when bitcoin was adopted by gaming companies, like bitcoin casinos, bitcoin poker, that was our first introduction to the blockchain space. In one way, even those companies look for investors. We helped the gaming group to market, grow and sell their bitcoin-based group of sites (ecosystem) to a traditional gaming company. This made us the oldest and most experienced marketing agency in the ICO space. We have ever since worked with various other blockchain companies, we have seen the turn of the trends, massive highs, and deep falls. So what’s happening in the market now isn’t any new to us — we have been there, done that.

This experience gives us a very good perspective of understanding the market sentiment, investors’ emotional cycle, every news/action/trigger/cue and it’s corresponding results, etc.

Around 2.5 years ago, we entered the ICO space when ICOs came knocking at our doors, as they know we were associated with Cointelegraph, NewsBTC Media Group and the likes. Our association with top influencers like Ameer Rosic whom we were friends with even before the crypto space’s happening moments contributed to the demand for KEY Difference Media’s services and expertise.

Also since we were part of the “team” of all top media houses, advice funds and family offices on their due diligence, invest in ICOs ourselves, we are very tightly involved in the community both at the grassroots level and the elite.

How many clients have you already worked with?

More than 150.

Since we support 5 of the top 20 ICO Marketing Agencies, many of the US-based PR and Marketing traditional agencies, we get to work with a lot of ICOs than any other agency out there.

This also gives us a lot of insight and data to work from. Hence, we do not just depend on the past data to create strategies, but we have the source of future data, upcoming ICOs and their approaches to help form the strategies for our clients.

Do you usually look for the clients or clients find you by themselves?

We do not have a sales team or anyone working to prospect. Not just now, but we never had in the last 11 years. Our growth was always organic, word of mouth.

We constantly receive inbound emails, appointments, LinkedIn messages, and telegram reach out.

When we delay responding, they reach out through another channel. That helps us to filter and only take in clients who “specifically” want to work with us and not just sending messages to all agencies.

We prefer that the client does their research, study and come to us when they are certain, we are the one they “need”.

How many of your clients succeeded at the ICO?

For ICOs to whom we did an end to end ICO Marketing, everyone hit their hard cap. In fact, they hit it way before the counter running out. Even in this bear markets, our clients are successful in raising funds — both public and private.

Couple of ICOs did fail, and those were very good lessons. One ICO failed because whoever did their smart contracts and dashboard did a poor job and it failed on the day of launch. They did a relaunch in a few hours, it failed. They relaunched in a week, it failed again and ICO refunded all the ETH collected. We then helped them close a private sale to meet their needs.

Another ICO that failed had internal politics and a technology stealing accusation between the CTO and CEO, leading the project to a halt.

Do you have a service on which you focus mostly or you provide services depending on the project’s needs?

Every project is different. The services depend on many factors ranging from:

• Market condition — bull or bear or fear or excitement;
• Messaging Strategy adopted;
• The actual product and its status;
• The niche of the product;
• Timing;
• Other factors.

So ideally we look at the project, do our analysis and propose what needs to be done.

However, I can say that as long an ICO begins ahead of time, Content Marketing is the high ROI activity they need to perfect — comprehensively.

Which PR services do you think are the most effective?

It’s hard to say, as it depends on many variables. Here are some examples:

• When we have 2+ months for the Pre ICO, content marketing is the best one;
• When we are focusing on the Private Funds, then messaging strategy, content marketing, and PR work are the best;
• If ICO is already underway, then regional marketing, ads (crypto and traditional media), PR, work best.
• If ICO is towards its end, but need a push, we prefer to focus on a market like India where the competition is extremely low due to the number of languages there. South Korea and other competitive markets offer low ROI, but the Indian market is ripe and perfectly positioned.

So, we do local print PR, influencer campaigns, email marketing to reach to specific investors and more to help reach the hard cap.

So the “effective” approach changes based on many variables. We should get out of the mindset of having a “full marketing plan” and then begin. ICO space changes every day. Revisiting the plan once in a week or two is essential**. We can’t use the approaches to planning, strategy, and execution we use in the normal digital marketing world here**. That is why many ICOs who bring an internal team fail.

• This space is different;
• This space is special;
• The community is the key.

Being there, being one among them makes all the difference.

That’s why we are the KEY to the success of a lot of ICOs. They trust us, there is faith and our strategies perform miracles then.

Do you work with all the ICOs who are requesting the support or you have some criteria for the projects?

We function at two levels.

We have a list of individual services which anyone can buy, as it’s just a specific service with a specific deliverable, clearly defined. It does not involve me or any of our world-renowned expert advisors.

But if they do want us to be part of it as an advisor and provide end to end marketing solution, then a lot of filters come into play. Remember, we have our associated Utopian Capital, so we are solid in due diligence.

Unlike most, we do not take up 20 advisories at one time. **I personally don’t advice more than 2 or 3 ICOs max at one point.**That’s the fair number one can manage if they are doing justice for their position. An ICO runs for approximately 6 months, which means in a year I do not advice more than 4–6 projects. So, I have to be super extra careful in choosing. I have a reputation to upkeep.

When someone does research on me, as Mr. KEY (Karnika E. Yashwant) or KEY Difference Media, they all do see substantial social proof. That is my pride.

In ICOs we advise, we like to be in it from the start. We like to oversee all aspects, like legal, tech, and so on, even though it’s not part of the marketing. Primarily because we do not want anything outside marketing causing trouble to the marketing process later. Also, because we have vast experience and our being on the lookout is something ICOs love.

Here is where ICO marketing gets complicated. There are more variables that decide the conversion rate not limited to:

• The Niche;
• Tokenomics;
• Token price;
• Team members;
• Ease of dashboard/KYC;
• Crypto market sentiment;
• Current hype factor;
• Media presence;
• Community and their vibes in the communication channels;
• Reviews/Ratings in ICO Listing Sites;
• The website, Whitepaper and such sales materials;
• And more.

We know the “secret sauce” to make all of these elements come together ideally for an ICO raise. However, we don’t always have control over these elements. So, we can take more “responsibility” when we control more of these variables.

Of course, standard due diligence on background, capabilities of the team, product’s demand and around 50 other parameters are taken into consideration to decide.

We also look at the founder’s investment. No, I am not talking about the private funds. I am very keen on the founder’s actual monetary investment. That shows if they even believe in the project before asking us to put our name to it and believe in it.

Many projects that’s stuck right now or those who fail are the ones where there is no risk from the founder’s part. I say, sell your home and car and that can easily raise $150k which can propel the ICO forward. This is a key factor to consider.

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