PR Firm Name? Here you go…

Hi all,

First off, I am not a member of the foundation but only a member of the investor group that has been working closely with the foundation. To be clear, no matter what anyone actually thinks this is a community driven effort. We just organized ourselves a bit because its a little difficult to negotiate as a forum/IRC channel etc. The group responsible for internal donations gains no control in any way shape or form by helping to hire this PR firm. A foundation member will be represented in all future interactions with the PR firm and we will do our very best to disclose all pertinent information to the community at large.

OK, it has been a long time coming and I appreciate everyone’s generosity and patience. To get right down to business the PR firm we have hired is the Max Borges Agency (www.maxborgesagency.com) based in Miami, Florida. We eventually decided to go with them for 4 primary reasons:

1.) They specialize in TECH PR. We thought it was absolutely key that we focus our efforts on being THE coin that NEW Crypto adopters come to. To that end we will be focusing on winning over people who are tech savvy enough to actually navigate their way into crypto.

2.) They have a very VERY good working knowledge of Crypto. When they made their pitch I learned more about our competitors than I had in the past few months. I actually mean that. They looked at transaction times, delved into PoS/PoW etc. It was impressive.

3.) They are not ridiculously expensive and actually responded as if they were excited to work with us. They are, I promise you, excited. It’s very cool.

4.) They will be accepting part of the fee in BC. Yes, we just paid a brick and mortar PR firm (in small part) in BlackCoin. Take that BTC!

OK, So in total we are paying 32.5k USD for a 90 day PR campaign. We need 16.25k USD up front and 8.125k USD is due on June 1st and again July 1st. I have just liquidated some of the BTC we raised (internally) in order to pay the up front amount (without having to part with any BC raised internally or externally). We will be wiring the money in about 2 business days. The plan moving forward is to arrange one more conference call prior to an in-person meeting in Miami in the coming week to week and a half. After this meeting we will have a lot more information about key messages etc.

What we actually get for this money.

1.) 2 bylined articles per quarter for placement in at least 2-3 media outlets each (quantity depends on media opportunities and relevance)

2.) 2 press releases per quarter (quantity depends on company news and announcements)

3.) 1 infographic (graphic fee not included [the community should be able to step up here, as in actually create the graphic from their content.] but they provide research and content for at least 1 infographic per quarter)

4.) Facebook and twitter content calendars

5.) Analytics and all that jazz for up to $3500 (additional fee to us) in directed social media advertising

Most importantly, we get a PR firm to review and distribute any and all content we generate. So please help, not only by coming up with article/infographic suggestions, but actually write/make them. We can crowdsource the review process but we will have an open door to some very serious tech outlets.

THIS IS SO IMPORTANT I WILL REPEAT IT AGAIN

SUGGEST ARTICLES

WRITE ARTICLES (It doesn’t matter if you can’t write, get some thoughts down, post it to reddit and let the masses edit it)

CREATE COOL INFOGRAPHICS

PRODUCE BLACKCOIN STATISTICS (Energy consumption vs. BTC for example)

Post these all on reddit.com/r/blackcoin.

Funding issues. Alright, full transparency I messed up by accepting both community donations and our private donations to my coinbase account. While I had made separate wallets Coinbase seemingly compiles them all for me with no good way of following this process (if there is please let me know). On top of this 5.6 BTC (sent as 0.6, 1, and 4 BTC this morning from the same address) was added mistakenly to the public funds even though we raised them internally. All this has made for a confusing ‘how much did the community raise etc.’ As of now the community has raised 6.88 BTC and about 55k BC (little doge and LTC). This can still be tracked via the total received here (https://blockchain.info/address/1MAGvdGMCAaJysMBgA5uFRBUFQ25AkUWQV) minus 5.6. Let me be clear, no community funds have actually been used. They remain in my coinbase account. Anyone wanting a refund for any reason can expect one to be filled the very same day (as long as I am awake (East Coast US normal hours).

That’s all I got for now. I have been running around all day working on the schedule for the meetings to follow so if I’ve missed anything vital, just ask and I will get around to responding as soon as I can.