Team Nimiq recently published an article mapping out its fresh take on communication and marketing matters. Make sure to check it out if you haven’t already.

In this article, we take a stance for marketing that provides value to its recipients as well as for Nimiq’s stakeholders and goes beyond crude attention seeking and hype. At the Web3 Summit in Berlin, a first result of this new approach was on display — literally.

As a direct example of how we want to put our plans into action, let’s take a closer look at the operation and the process behind our publicity stunt.

Being naughty

Web3 Summit has a strict policy on project promotion: No project promotion.

Our sweet-spot: The only way in, the only way out.

The idea was simple at first: Get a boat (as the location was right next to the Spree River), put a giant billboard on it, and show up to the event with it. But to justify breaking this rule, we had to come up with something that would create attention in a meaningful way — in a way that added value, not only to the attendees but hopefully to the organizers as well.

As we have been thinking about developing an easy onboarding showcase for some time now, we seized the opportunity for the first-ever Nimiq water… airdrop.

From idea to execution in less than two weeks

Team Nimiq found itself with a risky idea and less than two weeks to find a boat, produce and install the billboard, build the faucet app experience and logic and — most importantly — decide whether this was a good idea and if we actually had the guts to take the risk.

From trouble with the German water police to hate from the community to simply not being able to finish the app in time — the list of things that could go wrong was daunting.

In the end, the reason we ran with it was the team’s spirit. We liked the idea, we liked doing something bold, and we wanted to prove to our community that we were able to act on our promise to increase marketing our efforts. And knowing that even if something would have gone truly wrong, a faucet app is a valuable resource, our energy would not have been wasted.

The beauty of the struggle

While the developers worked overtime, the billboard was set up by our trusted handymen and a user experience was designed that pushes our ease-of-use principle even further.

The great thing about a boat (to be honest, it was a raft) is that you can work on it. The UX and marketing team moved their operation to a shaky wooden platform with an outboard motor 50km outside of Berlin. Our style guide article was entirely written on this very raft.

Who needs an office anyways?

Stormy weather, bridges that were almost too low to pass, the motor dying minutes before the event, the police, the app itself — it all worked like a charm in the end. Even the organizers seemed to like the attention and the effort that we had put into their summit.

The weather was bad, we were close to quitting at this point.

Visitors could scan the QR code or visit the getsome.nimiq.com domain to create a wallet in their phone’s browser and receive 1000 NIM in under two minutes. From this point on they were able to visit the Nimiq Swag Shop and try our online checkout experience, spending their NIM on merch or browsing the Nimiq app ecosystem.

The boat-billboard was promptly shared in the various community channels. Some users decided to game our faucet by exploiting missing geofencing of IP addresses and were able to claim the airdrop multiple times. Although this was of course not what we intended, geofencing was swiftly implemented and the faucet app successfully improved for its future uses.

Results

In total, getsome.nimiq.com was opened 792 times by 682 unique visitors of whom 85% successfully created a wallet in their browser. 79 Web3 Summit attendees scanned the QR code. Many more saw Nimiq’s new brand, with the boat being positioned at the sole entry point to the conference.

Hey, it’s Richy!

The onboarding experience is still active, so go ahead and try it. You only will receive 1 NIM, though. At least until the next promo…