Attention is cheap in crypto.
Trust is expensive.

A web3 product can generate enormous engagement in a week and convert almost none of it, because the audience arrived for the incentive rather than the product. Story Mode helps crypto teams build the credibility, narrative, and conversion path that turn a community into users who stay when the incentive ends.
20+
Fintech & web3 clients
20yr
In growth marketing
90-day
To a working operating plan
Trusted by founders at
GroundfloorRaiinmakerBlockonomicsBitrefillDSCVRTradeZeroStep3

What this looks like in practice.

DSCVRHead of Marketing, May 2023 – Jun 2024
A chain migration is an infrastructure event, not a reason to sign up.

A Web3 social platform backed by Polychain and Upfront, built on Internet Computer — an ecosystem with limited remaining momentum. Expanding to Solana was the route to a materially larger user base, but the launch had to arrive as something communities wanted to join, and the product needed retention mechanics capable of holding the users it brought in.

  • Built a 30-day launch campaign spotlighting a different Solana community each day, with partners including MonkeDAO, Aurory, YakuCorp and StonedApeCrew
  • Timed the launch to Solana Breakpoint, anchored by an event at Soho House Amsterdam
  • Shipped loot box and streak mechanics with the product team, with unlocks sourced through project partnerships
  • Introduced community-curated daily content portals to give users a reason to return between campaign moments
~200,000 → over 500,000 users; the largest social platform on Solana
The brand had not kept pace with the protocol's scale.

A decentralised cross-chain liquidity protocol with a large, vocal, highly technical community and significant assets under management. It had grown quickly on engineering credibility with no corresponding marketing function. Ownership was distributed with nobody accountable, agency relationships were unmanaged, and live reputational exposure was affecting confidence among users and partners.

  • Led a full brand refresh, including positioning and visual identity
  • Restructured how marketing was organised, establishing clear ownership across functions that had overlapped
  • Sourced, hired, and managed external agencies against defined scopes
  • Directed crisis communications through a sustained period of public scrutiny
A coherent brand, defined marketing accountability, and a communications posture able to handle scrutiny rather than react to it

What they said.

Reggie helped build the growth team from the ground up. His leadership and hands-on approach inspired juniors and built awesome team culture.

Shiva S.Founder, Blockonomics

Helped kickstart our marketing strategy from concept to new product launch.

Nick CasaresHead of Product, Step3

Built for web3 teams that need
real growth.

01
Community without conversion

Thirty thousand Discord members and a few hundred active users. Not a growth problem — a conversion problem that more members make worse.

02
Marketing beyond the token

Teams whose narrative depends on price action, and who need a reason to care that holds when the chart is flat.

03
Rebuilding credibility

Projects that overpromised in a previous cycle and now face an audience trained to discount whatever they say next.

Sound familiar?

1
High attention, almost no conversion to product usage.
2
Your growth numbers track the incentive, not the product.
3
Community metrics look strong and mean nothing to an investor.
4
The audience reads confident marketing as a warning sign.
5
Nobody owns whether any of this produces retained users.

Story Mode builds the credibility-led growth system web3 actually needs — less noise, more signal, and a conversion path that survives the end of the incentive.

From attention to adoption.

Crypto marketing fails at conversion rather than acquisition. The work below is aimed at the gap between an engaged community and a product people return to.

01
Credibility architecture

Named team, published audits, honest documentation of current limitations, and a visible record of shipping what was announced.

02
Product narrative beyond the token

A reason to care that holds when the price is flat, which is most of the time and all of the time that matters.

03
Community-to-product conversion

Qualification gates and an activation path that turns members into users, with the funnel between them made explicit.

04
Ecosystem positioning

Where you sit relative to the chains, protocols, and partners your buyer already trusts — borrowed credibility, earned properly.

05
Metrics that survive scrutiny

Retained users, activation rate, and usage depth rather than follower counts that respond to spend and nothing else.

06
Weekly operating rhythm

Reporting, experiment ownership, and a cadence that keeps working through a market the team cannot control.

The first 90 days.

Week 1–2
Separate signal from noise

Which numbers reflect real usage and which move with incentives. Usually the first time the team sees the community-to-active ratio written down.

Metric auditActivation baselineCommunity analysis
Week 3–4
Rebuild the reason to care

Positioning that works when the chart is flat, plus the credibility signals a sceptical audience checks before they trust anything.

Product narrativeTrust signalsEcosystem positioning
Month 2
Build the conversion path

Onboarding, activation milestones, and lifecycle sequences that move a community member to a retained user.

Onboarding redesignActivation pathLifecycle build
Month 3
Run it and adjust

Weekly cadence against activation and retention rather than reach. Iterate on what actually moves usage.

Weekly rhythmRetention focusPlaybook handoff

How we work together.

Fractional CMO — Web3 & crypto

Embedded marketing leadership on a monthly retainer, built for a market where the audience has been burned before.

Two to three days a week embedded
Credibility and trust architecture
Product narrative beyond the token
Community-to-product conversion
Ecosystem and partner positioning
Activation and retention reporting
Slack and async communication
Month-to-month, no lock-in

Scoped as a monthly retainer against what the company actually needs. Reggie has personally led growth for crypto and fintech products through more than one cycle.

Questions.

How is web3 marketing different?
Attention is unusually cheap and trust is unusually expensive. Most categories work the other way round. A crypto product can generate enormous engagement in a week and convert almost none of it, because the audience arrived for the incentive rather than the product. The work is qualifying that attention rather than maximising it.
How do you market a crypto company without relying on hype?
Lead with what the product does when the price is not moving. Hype-led marketing borrows attention from the cycle and returns it with interest — every campaign that overpromises makes the next one more expensive, because the audience has been trained to discount you. Teams that survived multiple cycles market like a normal software company with an unusually sceptical audience.
How should web3 teams build trust after the hype cycles?
Specificity and consistency, over a longer period than feels comfortable. Named team members, published audits, honest documentation of what does not work yet, and a record of shipping what was announced. This audience has been burned repeatedly and reads confident marketing as a warning sign rather than a signal of strength.
Can you help beyond community growth?
That is usually the actual problem. Most web3 teams have community and lack a path from community to product usage. A Discord with thirty thousand members and a few hundred active users is not a growth problem, it is a conversion problem, and adding more members makes the ratio worse rather than better.
What is the biggest mistake web3 teams make?
Optimising for the metric that is easiest to move. Followers, Discord members, and impressions all respond quickly to spend and say almost nothing about whether anyone uses the product. Then the incentive ends and the number stays while the usage never arrives.
Do you work with early-stage web3 projects?
Yes, where there is a clear product path and a willingness to run disciplined experiments. Pre-product projects looking to manufacture hype ahead of a launch are a poor fit — not on principle, but because that work does not compound and the engagement would not produce anything durable.

Need web3 growth with real
operating discipline?

One 30-minute call. A practical conversation about the gap between your community and your active users.

Book a Call
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