In the last year, we've watched with awe as the Web3 movement has continued to gain ground and spawned powerful new experiments in decentralization. This new way of organizing has given birth to a new lexicon of brand building.

There’s been much talk of “decentralized narratives” and “headless brands” on Twitter. (Hat tip to the good folks at Other Internet for coining the latter phrase.) However, there are still precious few actionable resources for those looking to make sense of this new landscape or steward identity for an emergent organization.

In the absence of such a playbook, many DAO's are forced to either impose old, centralized notions of brand management on their communities or abandon the task altogether and hope some meaning emerges organically from the ether.

(See what we did there?)

We don't claim to know the path forward. However, we do believe there is need for stronger theoretical frameworks that are grounded in both the challenges and opportunities presented by this moment in time. That's what we hope to build, and, in the spirit of decentralization, we want to do it with the help of the wider Web3 community.

What we’re doing

We'll be launching Absalom on Juicebox this month and plan to kick off the project in the new year by enlisting token-holders in a 90-day experiment in participatory design.

Our mission with this experiment is two-fold: First, we want to develop a comprehensive, open-source framework that covers the core concepts of brand strategy as they relate to decentralized organizations. Second, we want to apply these concepts to the development of our own brand.

As a starting point, we will be working through the "Brand Strategy OS," a nine-point framework developed by our founder T.S. Strickland that presents a fairly traditional view of brand building.

Each week, we'll be inviting some of our most visionary Web3 Frens to our Discord server to tear this framework apart and enrich it with their perspectives on competition, identity, ownership and related concepts.

Along the way, we'll be sharing our insights here on Mirror, discussing them on Discord and working together to apply them to the emergent Absalom brand.

If you want to check out the original Brand Strategy OS, take a look at the below tweets (featuring some obligatory social proof to show we’re not just a bunch of crazies).

What to expect

By becoming a token holder, you can expect to enjoy a few benefits:

• You’ll receive a crash course in both traditional brand strategy and emerging concepts of decentralized brand building.
• You’ll contribute to the creation of a powerful, open-source resource for the wider Web3 community.
• You’ll get hands-on experience participating in a truly decentralized branding process.
• And you’ll earn a stake in an emerging service DAO that is focused on taking these concepts and applying them to other decentralized protocols and communities.

How to get involved

If any of that sounds interesting to you, here’s how you can take part:

• Connect with us — You can find us on Twitter and Discord.
• Snag some tokens — We plan to launch on Juicebox this month. Connect with us over one of the above channels to be notified when the token drops.
• Introduce us to smart people — We’re looking for other folks with compelling perspectives on decentralized brand building. If you know someone with whom we should talk, please drop us a line.
• Tweet that shit — Help us spread the word.