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Just as the Apple brand is to tech, McDonalds is to burgers, Nike is to sneakers and Coke is to cola, so is the Bitcoin brand to cryptocurrency.

Whoa hold the phone! you say. Bitcoin isnt a brand. It's a currency. Currencies arent brands!

Well, thats a traditional way of looking at it. And Bitcoin is anything but traditional.

Think of it this way: blockchain is a technology. Coins are an asset on the blockchain. Bitcoin is a brand that brings its unique selling proposition to blockchain.

To be clear, Bitcoin is not an ordinary brand. Its what I call a User-Generated Brand (UGB). Because Bitcoin lacks a centralized brand owner or chief marketing officer, it is molded by a large ecosystem of foundation members, technologists, investors, miners, commentators, thought leaders, innovators, journalists and more. Nevertheless, as a UGB, the cumulative effect of its brand assets stand for something.

Still skeptical? Consider this:

Moreover, what makes the Bitcoin brand so intriguing are some other less cut-and-dry factors:

Okay, so youre onboard: Bitcoin is a brand. A User-Generated Brand. Next question you may be asking is: so what? Consider these:

The Contract A great brand, at the end of the day, is a promise (a contract) that the sum total of it what it stands for and how it behaves will provide confidence and comfort that if you put your faith in it (by purchasing, investing, advocating, etc.), youll be rewarded. For all the reasons stated above, Bitcoin is in an enviable pole position, particularly as it relates to wooing institutional investors and their allocation committees who, once fully bought in, would represent a true tipping point in the race to bitcoin adoption. To propel this forward, as a UGB, it is incumbent on the communitys most vocal believers to not just talk amongst themselves (as they are apt to do) but to the masses in ways that will elucidate that promise to them.

The Community A great brand feeds off the passion of its most active users. In fact, passion is the fuel that ignites any brands fire. So while Bitcoin, as a UGB, may not have a chief marketing officer, it does have an army of de facto marketing officers (many of whom read this magazine). Collectively, they believe that Bitcoin and its underlying technology is a true force for good in democratizing finance and have many forums for sharing that point of view. For them, its important to spread the word: Bitcoins primary purpose is not about making money, its about making a change. And, as with any movement, the rubber meets the road when its story can be told in calm and simple terms, using analogies that everyone understands.

The Coattails Versus The Contrarian Project founders, foundations and decentralized autonomous organizations of every size and shape have a decision to make: regardless of their technical or functional relationship, do they ride Bitcoins coattails or cast it off as a fine but flawed product that is ripe for disruption? It will vary from case to case for sure, but contrarians should be forewarned: brands with the community, contract, passion and purpose that Bitcoin has are formidable. While a small group of insurgents may rejoice at the thought of dethroning the king, most of these contrarians efforts will be rejected entirely by the Bitcoin community, as proven by previous hard forks.

The Conventional Wisdom Dominant brands are typically expected to act in conventional ways. In fact, it can be argued, it is the shackles of category conventions that box them in, allowing challengers to erode or overtake their position. So is Bitcoin a conventional player in an unconventional category? Hardly. Conventional behaviors come with time and a sense of dominance that is considered an impenetrable moat. This leads to a risk-averse, defensive posture and possible stagnation. But Bitcoin is still in its infancy and is at the center of a tsunami of innovation. To the UGB community that is pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo I say, Rock on!

To summarize: to some, the very thought of traditional, centralized marketing in the Bitcoin space is antithetical to the category. As with any radical change in conventions and norms, this is to be understood. But, even as a User-Generated Brand, the marketing of Bitcoin most certainly is influential in ways that will certainly evolve over time. As advertising veteran Regis McKenna famously said, marketing is everything, and everything is marketing.

Today, while metrics such as Reddit subscribers, social comments per hour, Twitter followers, website traffic and community size dominate the discussion of brand health (and are closely watched by investors), there will certainly be other, perhaps more influential metrics, as the roles, bullhorns and motivations of key voices decentralized and centralized in the ecosystem evolve.

As it does, you can be sure that Bitcoin will be at the forefront of this evolution. Because if it looks like a brand, acts like a brand and works like a brand, then it is a brand. That its a UGB simply means that you cant expect the same rules that governed branding and marketing over the past 25 years to hold.

This is a guest post by Rich Feldman. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Read more here:
Yes, Bitcoin Is A Brand. Heres What That Means. - Bitcoin Magazine