A leading brand (Ethereum) should promote the category (crypto), and why Bitcoin should be an ally

So when I'm not mucking about here with you guys, in my job I'm a branding consultant. Lately I decided to look up some old/timeless material from the annals of branding, and came across this: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

Flashback: Actually posted this piece a month ago on the Daily, and it was suggested by a kind Ethfinancier that I make this a standalone post. Life got in the way, I suppose. But lately, with flippening aspirations abound, and coming off the back of that Tron-Bitcoin fiasco, I do feel the relevance of keeping the bigger picture in mind again. You can find the original discussion here.

On here, we like to have ratiotalk™ and inevitably that leads to the notion that other coins must be put down, stomped on, and pushed out, before our coin can succeed. Or rather, just frequently discrediting the other party. I've come to think that this is extremely counterproductive. I'll admit, I was once guilty of the same, especially towards granddaddy BTC. I'll like to draw your attention to Rule 8: The Law of the Category: “A leading brand should promote the category, not the brand.”

In the article linked above, as I read about the 'battle' between young upstart Polaroid vs dominant incumbent Kodak, another parallel rivalry quickly came to mind. Shit, even their logos fit the comparison.

But the law of the category says that, even when competition enters the picture, it’s best to promote the category of the brand, rather than the brand itself: “instead of fighting competitive brands, a leader should fight competitive categories."

Why? Competitive brands can spark interest in your category, which can expand your market and actually end up creating more business for your brand.

According to Ries and Ries, Polaroid’s biggest mistake was pushing Kodak out of the instant photography market. If Kodak had entered the market, it would have increased interest in instant photography and ultimately created more business for Polaroid.

How this applies to us is, BTC (or NEO, BCH, whatever) is the competing brand. Crypto is OUR category. Our competing category is therefore Traditional Finance, we all know who those are. That's what we're going up against, that hulking behemoth. BTC is a peanut compared to that. Crypto is in such an early stage of infancy, we'll need all the collective brand power we can get.

People might initially flow into crypto through BTC because they understood 'digital gold' best, irregardless of whether the theory holds up. Or they might be here because Coinbase told them 'staking' is here now, through Tezos. Either way, the total crypto pie is now increased. Over time, as fundamentals become clearer, how we shift the pie allocation towards us is another matter.

Long story short, crypto is in its absolute infancy right now. The focus should be on growing the overall pie, and not infighting. We can fight for market share when the prize is saliently half the world's GDP, not....this. The more arms we have in roping in the mainstream, the better. Do you want us to have 80% of a $200 billion crypto mcap, or 50% of $5 trillion? Obviously bear in mind this excludes the obvious scams and unsavoury operations, I won't name names. But legitimate players should definitely band together wherever possible. ETH and Zcash are looking solid. Bitcoin and us can be, too.

In fact, I've found that the 22 Laws have thrown up some gems even when it comes to how crypto can get its name out there. BTC's superior brand has also been talked about before, and I feel many of the 22 Laws unpacks its brand dominance quite well. I might do an analysis/comparison on BTC & ETH when I get the time.