You're Already Influencing People, Why Not Get Rewarded For it? Raiinmaker's JD Seraphine

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

Influencer marketing has revolutionized the way Millennials and Gen Z are targeted. Rather than targeting an entire demographic or group, it targets individuals by taking a figurehead with social influence or specific expertise in a subject and creating a social profile around them.  Influencers usually get sponsorship or endorsements from brands for promoting their products in their posts, whether that be via Instagram, Tik Tok, or Facebook (NASDAQ> FB).

The influencer market has actually grown in success since Covid, and is on course to bring $13.8 billion, by the end of 2021, with most brands allocating a standalone budget specifically for content marketing, of which 75% of these dedicate a budget solely to influencer marketing.

The power of influencer marketing comes from the fact that fans look up to influencers, respecting their views, aspiring to  their lifestyles and indeed their purchases.

While Tik Tok and Instagram seem to be the most popular influencer destinations, India has had huge success with its blockchain based Chingari app, and a Western blockchain based platform, Raiinmaker is paving the way for a whole new ecosystem of fan, influencer engagement.

Bringing Influencers Using Blockchain

Raiinmaker turns marketing on its head, and instead of brands paying for advertising campaigns, they can directly reach relevant audiences via fans and reward them for their work, using their proprietary “Proof of Influence”™” protocol. Fans are boosted for their ability to create viral conversations and engagement around the products they admire.

The platform facilitates a symbiotic relationship between influencers and audiences, where influencers are rewarded for actual results, bringing a jump in targeted marketing and thus ROI for the brands they promote. This new approach to tapping into unreached audiences is unique and exciting, and one that could change the future of marketing for good.

Using the blockchain to achieve automation and directly connect the two parties seems an obvious choice. The blockchain is the perfect technology to combine the alignment of incentives and the democratic and transparent distribution of digital influence and social value between fans and brands.We spoke to CEO and founder of Raiinmaker, JD Seraphine to learn more about this exciting blockchain use case.

J.D. you spent the early part of your working in the entertainment industry, how do you go from there to here? 

That’s right, I was involved in Financing and Producing a number of Media Projects including most notably Hesher, Growing Up Smith, and the Tony Nominated Broadway Play Rock of Ages.  In 2012, we crowdfunded the feature documentary ‘Sirius’ which set the record for the largest documentary film crowdfund in history and 11 months later the film was released via Direct-to-Consumer TVOD release and did over $1M in sales the first 2 weeks - 100% driven by the community on Social Media and the web.  

We saw then there was a big opportunity to build a system that aligned the interests of the community and fans with brands, projects, and creators.  In essence we have been at the forefront of the bleeding edge of the media technology metaverse for quite some time with a focus on creating media and building technology to transform humanity and the world.

So with Raiinmaker, you are essentially removing the middleman and connecting brands directly with their desired audiences?

We believe that there is tremendous potential to unlock when Fans and Community are properly incentivized and rewarded for the value they create on Social Media through their organic content for Brands and Creators.  

We have built a system that quantifies the value of their Digital Influence and Compensates them equitably and proportionately for the Social Value they create for Brands and Projects.  This creates a flywheel effect around the community and brand with better engagement and a true sense of co-ownership which thereby impacts the quality of the content and an overall increased level of passion from fans.

What kind of brands or sectors are your influencers promoting?

Our initial areas of focus are Entertainment, Gaming, Sports, and Technology with an emphasis on the Crypto and Blockchain related assets for brands and creators from those sectors.  Each campaign’s reward pool and with the platform fees and revenue, there is a portion that will be donated to supporting Climate Change, Animal Rights, Youth Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and many more worthy causes.

What is your ‘Proof of Influence’ protocol?

We created a layer 2 consensus algorithm called Proof of Influence™ (PoI) that tracks all of the social interactions generated via the Raiinmaker network across multiple social media platforms hashing proof of the social campaign analytics on multiple public blockchain networks including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain.  The PoI algorithm is then used to distribute rewards on the campaign level to users based on the amount of value they have generated on Social Media on the campaign effectively mining their fractional portion of the campaign reward pool through Social Action. 

Additionally, on the network level, the Proof of Influence™ algorithm calculates the total value created on Raiinmaker during each 28-day social mining period, which determines the number of new tokens minted.  The majority are distributed to campaign creators and participants who are then incentivized to stake those rewards on the platform for compounding rewards.

We have seen that influencer marketing just works and coupling it with the blockchain makes sense from a validation point of view. Can you give us an insight into your statistics? 

The latest case study to date involves a brand new charity initiative and cultural movement that launched with the release of the Public versions of the Android and iOS Raiinmaker app called #GlobalFieldDay, which generated over 5 million media impressions and over $100k in donations to charities supporting youth empowerment, climate change.  

The inaugural initiative is set to run until late November and features notable Influencers including Josh Richards, Bugha, Nike Finesse, and Glitch Girl along with Athletes/Celebrities including Olympian Julie Ertz, NFL Players Zach Ertz of the Philadelphia Eagles and Mario Addison of the Buffalo Bills, former WWE champion Mojo Rawley, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Founder of band Chicago Danny Seraphine.

How are you helping promote climate change charities?

Through #GlobalFieldDay Raiinmaker has made a direct donation to Climate Change Charity Laudato Tree. This initiative is being run by 17-year old Vivienne Harr, who has been endorsed by the Pope and has committed to raising $42M to plant 7 million trees across the Great Green Wall of Africa. Additionally, the royalties from the upcoming Banksy NFT charities will go to 3 charities including Laudato Tree, America’s oldest forest conservation organization American Forest, and the Council for Rainforest Nations.

Have you received any investment?

Yes, Raiinmaker is just wrapping up a $5M Seed Round with Crypto VC Investors including most notably Alphabit, Krypital, GDA, Axia8, Arcanum, Sheesha, Alpha Sigma, Launchpool, and others. This will help us to develop the technology and market the concept.

What’s in the pipeline?

We have some big moves planned, with some major partnership announcements coming from the worlds of Sports, Gaming, Entertainment and more over the next 1 - 2 months, and then is the upcoming public market launch in November of our native Coiin token.  

Bottom line

The thing about influencers is that everyone wants to be one, and a platform like this rewards fans for influencing products and brands, whether they consider themselves to be influencers or not. The fact of the matter is that in our day-to-day lives we influence people to watch shows, wear brands, use products, so why not get rewarded for it?

Image Sourced from Pixabay

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.