Suresh and Dave chat with Tim Haldorsson Founder Lunar Strategy

In this episode of the Web3 Marketing Association Podcast, hosts Dave Wallace and Suresh Balaji are joined by Tim Holdorsson, founder of Lunar Strategy, to discuss how marketing in Web3 differs radically from traditional models—and why education and community are now the most powerful tools in the space.

Tim shares his journey from investing in crypto during 2017’s boom and bust to launching Lunar Strategy in Lisbon in 2019. Spotting a gap between traditional agencies and crypto-native projects, he built one of the first agencies focused purely on Web3, NFTs, and crypto marketing. Today, Lunar Strategy has grown into a 16-person team working with clients worldwide.

The conversation explores the unique dynamics of Web3 marketing: the primacy of storytelling in digital-first ecosystems, the centrality of platforms like Twitter, Discord, and Telegram, and the regulatory complexities of accepting crypto payments. Tim also explains why community management has become the cornerstone of successful projects, requiring skilled moderators who can maintain morale and trust even when markets are down.

Education is another major theme. Tim outlines Lunar Strategy’s upcoming Web3 marketing course, built directly from real-world experience. Covering influencer marketing, PR, community building, paid advertising, partnerships, and social media strategies, the course is designed to professionalise Web3 marketing and prevent brands from repeating common mistakes.

Looking ahead, Tim predicts more big brands and influencers will enter the space as the hype subsides, with mainstream adoption driven by platforms like Instagram and Facebook integrating NFT tagging. He argues that now is the best time for cautious but serious players to move in, laying sustainable foundations rather than chasing quick wins.

This is an eye-opening conversation for marketers seeking to understand not just the opportunities of Web3, but also the pitfalls—and why building resilient communities and investing in education will be critical to long-term success.

Transcript

Speaker 00: 0:00

With a remarkable journey that spans the worlds of crypto, NFTs, and now the limitless horizon of Web3, Tim Holderson of Lunar Strategy in Lisbon, Portugal has a vision for growing the space through education and community. It's time to tune in as Dave and Suresh catch a glimpse of the future, Holderson style, here on the Web3 Marketing Association Podcast.

Speaker 01: 0:34

From the studios of NMD+, comes the Web3 Marketing Association podcast. Latest thinking at the very cutting edge of marketing. We aim to bring you insightful and interesting discussion about Web3 and the metaverse and other emergent digital trends. And here are your hosts, Dave Wallace and Suresh Balaji. Welcome to

Dave: 1:03

Web3 Marketing Association. everybody to today's podcast and we're delighted to have Tim Holderson. Tim is joining us from Bali and I think he's on his way to Singapore soon. So Tim, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself and what Luna Strategy is up to and why you're in Bali at the moment as well, you lucky thing.

Tim: 1:24

Yeah, absolutely. I started my crypto journey back in 2017 and I saw it coming slowly and I rode the wave up and then and all the way down. Then at that time I was working in marketing, but I was like investing in crypto currencies on the side. Then around four years ago, I moved to Lisbon in Portugal, where I was working in marketing for a company as well as freelancing on the side. The freelancing was going so well, so I started consulting in tech and in crypto companies. And this was back in 2019. And then it started to grow and grow and grow. And then I saw that it was like a big market there because it was no traditional marketing companies or agencies there to take on the crypto clients because they did not understand it as well as many crypto projects wanted to pay in crypto. So there was a big gap between the companies that were in the crypto world and the more traditional companies. And that's kind of where I was operating and then it grew into an agency and I took in another person. And this was a little bit more than three years ago when I started Lunar Strategy. And that over the last three years, it has been growing organically by me writing about crypto marketing on our blog, being on podcasts and talking about it. And right now we're a team of 16 people that work full time just helping NFT companies, crypto companies companies and the Web3 ecosystem with different marketing strategies.

Dave: 3:11

So when you're talking about marketing, is that everything from how they position themselves to brand to actually the consumer or the business proposition? Yes.

Tim: 3:23

So one thing that you have definitely seen in the Web3 world is that storytelling has become a more important element because in the In the real world, when you do marketing, then it's usually about some product. If you see a Mac product, then you can kind of touch it and everybody can build their own story and storytelling about it. But then in the Web3 world, it's all digital. And then, of course, one of the core things, a story that many people can follow and want to be a part of. And that's kind of where Web3 marketing starts, on the storytelling side. that, of course, we live in a world where a lot of the ways of getting out to people is by using traditional marketing strategies, for example, like Facebook ads, Google ads, press releases, and all of these marketing tools of getting a message out. But then the messaging is born in the Web3 world.

Dave: 4:27

I'm interested because you've obviously identified quite a niche which traditional agencies actually have struggled to address. And when it comes to the structure of you compared to a more traditional agency, what are the kind of key differences that you would see? So

Tim: 4:46

one key difference is that it's very few traditional companies that can work with crypto companies because of regulatory issues. For example, we do accept cryptocurrencies as a payment After each client has done a thorough know your customer form, so they have to submit their passports. Then on the more traditional basis, there is new platforms like Telegram and Discord that are not platforms that traditional marketing companies work with. Twitter is of course the core platform where communities get out their vision and talk about their story. So there's different platforms and then there's a different jargon that works in the Web3 world.

Dave: 5:36

It's really interesting. I mean, why do you think Twitter is so central as a kind of marketing platform? What is it about Twitter that's so suitable to the Web3 community?

Tim: 5:47

I think one part is because Web3 is more about sharing stories with the NFTs, getting the visual art as well. But in the beginning, it was mostly people sharing stories about why their cryptocurrency was changing something. So I think that the biggest P is that it's more focused on ideas instead of just the visual that is core of Instagram or Facebook.

Dave: 6:15

From what you've said, you can already see the big differences. And then going back to this whole thing about being paid in cryptocurrencies, for clients, would you get paid in a mixture? So would you get dollars as well as crypto? Or do you exclusively allow payments in cryptos if you feel that there's a stable reason for doing that?

Tim: 6:35

We only accept stable coins, which is kind of these digital versions of a euro or a dollar. Because quite a few projects are trying to offer part of their own token or part of their NFTs as a payment. But that's not something that we accept. And that also has to do with regulatory issues because here is a lot of things that needs to really be cleared out in the marketing world. Because if you take a part of their tokens and then the project goes under, are you then liable for what happened? Because if it's a security, then you're a shareholder in in the project. And then if it goes down, was it also partly your fault? What happened? Nobody really knows, which is also one thing that makes it very scary for companies to go in to it. And we work with a lawyer in Portugal that is specialized in cryptocurrencies. And you kind of often have to take an extra step to legally have disclaimers and make sure that you are on the safe side, so to speak.

Dave: 7:43

I think it's interesting that you're in Portugal as well. So is the framework for regulation around crypto in Portugal more benign than, I guess, other places? Or is there better skills? What's the kind of reason for Portugal itself?

Tim: 7:59

Initially, the prime minister has been very open to it and been talking in a positive way about it. And on a personal, individual level, then the tax reasons and the tax incentives have been done in a quite good way around crypto, which has made it favorable for individuals to be there as well. But on the company basis, a lot of these decisions are made on the EU level, which means that they will go out on the whole EU-wide level. So it depends a little bit, but they are definitely one of the most friendly ones, as well as quite a few big events or like Web Summit, NFT Summit, and these big events are taking place there as well, which is, of course, attracting companies to set up their head offices there, as well as it's a very nice place to live in Lisbon.

Suresh: 8:55

Tim, what brings you to Bali? What brings you to Asia? Firstly, welcome to Asia. There's so much going on. We have one of our team members in Bali as well. We are seeing quite a bit of action in Bali in terms of talent moving as well as new projects coming up. I was just on a call with a Web3 accelerator who are going to be based out of Bali as well. So what's happening in Bali? What brings you to Asia?

Tim: 9:17

I've been here quite a few times a few years ago, and then I was living in South Korea for six months. Then I also went to Bali to visit and of course it's very open for expats and for remote workers and it's a very nice place to be in. So this time why I came was because I wanted to see a little bit what was going on here and the first thing I did when I arrived in Bali was to put out a tweet saying, hi, what's the crypto and NFT community doing here in Bali? And then I got tons of replies from different people here and I've been on quite a few different dinners with people and just talking and chatting and seeing what's going on here. So you can definitely see that even though the market is going down a bit and there's been a little change in sentiment, but when you talk with the people here, they're as optimistic as ever and building and focusing on creating good things that works. So it's definitely an energetic community here.

Suresh: 10:21

That's really cool. And what would a successful trip for you look like? I mean, would you have done some partnerships or would you have found some clients? What does success look like for you from this trip?

Tim: 10:30

One thing that I've already started with was we needed a few community moderators. And in Asia, there is a lot of places where you can get good people that speak very well English as well as at a good price for employment. So one of the things I wanted to do was to hire two new community moderators that will help our clients' communities and make sure that the communities are a good place and an enjoyable experience.

Dave: 10:58

I mean, it's so interesting. I mean, that whole kind of community aspect. You mentioned Discord before, and I think there are very few traditional marketing agencies or indeed clients who have really been able to get their heads around Discord. I'm guessing for you, a community platform like Discord is absolutely vital.

Tim: 11:18

Yes, I would say that more or less. Every single Web3 project that we're working with have either a Discord and Telegram. Basically, they build their community because in the Web3 world, the community is becoming more and more like shareholders of the project where they are kind of like incentivized to help the community grow because it kind of grows the ecosystem. And if you grow the community, you grow the project. You

Dave: 11:52

talk about shareholders, which immediately sounds kind of official, but a lot of this is very unofficial, isn't it? So managing the community is something that you need a lot of experience, understanding and knowledge about what's going on, because I can imagine if you did something wrong, it could easily turn against you.

Tim: 12:12

Just on our agency, we have five people that are working full-time only with community. And in the beginning, when we started about a year and a half ago with a community, then we saw it a bit as a side product. But the more into now and over the last year and a half, it has become kind of like the core pillar of the marketing strategy where more or less all other channels are focused on how can we build the community in different kinds of ways. And that can be different Facebook campaigns that are only targeted at growing the community or growing the discord. But it's also one thing where it's important to have people that understand human behavior and how people like to interact, to be in charge of moderating the community and making sure that the community is happy and they are educated and they are happy to be there. Because especially during times like this, what a lot of the parts of the community might be in loss. For example, they bought NFTs at a very high price and now they're down maybe like 90%. Or they bought a token at the top and now they're down 80%, 90%. That's when you need to have a community and community members and community ambassadors keeping up the mood and keeping up belief in the project.

Dave: 13:36

That's interesting. One of the things that you're quite focused on now is education. You just talking about that kind of community. I mean, that's going to be something that doesn't come naturally to agencies or their clients. You see an opportunity to kind of help. You know, I wonder if you could just talk about that a bit as well. So I think you've got a program around education, which would be really good to hear more about.

Tim: 14:02

Yeah. In the crypto marketing world, the few players are producing content and kind of building up the industry, but there isn't really a lot of strategies out there that have been proven and tested over a long time. And that is because there's so many things that changed. So a few years ago, everything was around ICO marketing, which is an initial coin offering. And then people built up marketing around that and like different strategies. And then some strategies work very, very well when it goes up and up and up and the hype is there and you see that it's working really well. But then it goes down and the market is very, very, very cold and very harsh. And then New marketing strategies are needed. And then NFTs happen. And then NFTs are going through different stages as well. In the beginning, it was just like these profile picture NFTs. Then it went into utility NFTs where they built up different utilities to it. And then there was other types that came up. Your marketing has to evolve along the way. And then when you are a company that is scaling up and hiring new people Then what we did was we had to train, of course, the new people. We had a few different internal training courses that me as well as some of the other leadership had built up so that we were like, yeah, maybe this could actually become a course that we can teach and that we can build on. It's going to launch in about a week, but it will be a full course with seven different web three marketing areas and our best practices that we have learned. And then it will be from our side, the head of department that will actually do the course. The one example is influencer marketing is a core pillar of Web3 crypto marketing, kind of the influence side. Then it will be around one to one and a half hours session divided up into four different categories on what kinds of different influencers are there? What lessons have we learned so that you don't have to learn it again? And this is, for example, being scammed by different influencers, people having fake followers, bots, and everything there in the middle. So in the course, our goal is to, in each individual area, to give our best practices and the things that we have learned. So it's influencer marketing, PR, community building, paid advertising, how to build mutual beneficial partnerships with other broad projects, communities, how to set up social media, how to work on Twitter, and yeah, seven different sessions.

Dave: 16:59

If someone signs

Tim: 17:00

up, they get access to those seven sessions, do they? Yes, so it will be a learning portal where you can log in and then you can access seven different courses and each course will have around four different videos as well as a resources document, which is basically templates and tools that we use to implement it. For example, on the influencer side is links to tools that you can use to see how many fake followers an account has. Or on the public relations side, it's examples of pitches that we have sent to journalists that got picked up. Or on the paid advertising side, it's example of banners and how we work with the policies on each platform to navigate that.

Dave: 17:49

I like the fact that it's based on the experience you've had and the learnings that you've had along the way. I think that's often the most and the best sort of learning that you can have, particularly as I think there'll be a lot of people who are approaching the subject with some trepidation.

Tim: 18:07

There is one other company that is doing a similar thing. It's a very great European agency called Hype Partners. They're definitely one of the leading three agencies. And they are also doing a bit of marketing 101 for Web3. What they are instead doing is that they are offering it as a free course. It's a bit more basic, just covering one area.

Dave: 18:30

Right.

Tim: 18:31

But then they use it more for hiring. So basically what they use it for is to train people and then they go to other companies and say, here are all of these kinds of Web3 marketeers that we have trained. They're looking for a job. Can we come up with a deal there? Okay. doing it a bit of the other way while we do it with a small price instead, a more robust kind of course.

Suresh: 18:55

Can you give us an example of when there has been a really good client with a really good understanding of Web3? And can you give me some example of when the client did not know what is Web3 and they just came to you and then you had to go through the whole process of educating them? I'm sure there are extremes. Are there any examples that you can talk about?

Tim: 19:15

Earlier this year and last year as well, we had around 25 people that tried to request a meeting with us every single day.

Dave: 19:27

Wow.

Tim: 19:28

And this was more last year. Over one month, I did on average four so-called discovery calls a day. So it was in a month I did maybe around 70 or 80 or something around that, which is both basically like a 10, 15 minutes meeting when I was talking with other person to understand, are we a good fit for them? And I remember I was talking with a couple from the United States and they were probably around 65 or 70 and they were running a traditional agency. So it was the agency owners and they had one of their clients that were paying me million dollar budget. So they were like, yeah, we really want this client. I remember sitting there talking with them and they did not understand what Bitcoin was. They did not understand cryptocurrencies. And then we were talking about Web3 and they were actually going to launch a project for the client and they had already signed a contract and everything, and they were completely lost. And I remember guided them through a little bit the very basics of what it was.

Suresh: 20:33

How do you see all of this panning out over of time, eventually we need mass adoption and we need more brands coming on board. How do you see big brands, which are web zero brands, web one brands with the big trillion dollar budgets, right? How do all of them come to play? You know, what do you think will come in the way of all of the big brands coming to play as well as what do you think we should do to get the big brands to come to play?

Tim: 20:58

I think in the short term, one of the biggest changes, I've actually written an article about that that is coming out soon and and that is Instagram and Facebook, that you can tag images with ownership of an NFT. So a little bit similar to like how you can tag an image with a product, that you can tag an image with an NFT. I think that's a very interesting thing on Instagram and Facebook, as well as now when we see Ronaldo teaming up with Binance for NFTs. We saw the biggest TikToker also teaming up with Binance for NFTs. I think right now is a very good time for large personalities to come in. Why? Because nobody wants to be the person that brought in their audience on the top. And this is kind of what you have seen with Matt Damon that got a lot of criticism because he was doing the campaign for crypto.com at the peak. It's kind of like less risky or as an influencer, or as a brand to go in now because you're not letting your audience get in at the top, right? So I definitely see that there's like a bit of a shift and a lot of smart money is coming into it and you see more and more of the conservative players that feel more confident coming in now instead of like a hype. And they are like, it's just going up and it's going to crash soon. Now it has crashed. Now is the time to go in. I

Dave: 22:37

mean, just listening to what you're saying, you're right. The problem is, is if we don't exist, then people will just keep making lots and lots of mistakes. And there's no doubt that Web3 marketing is going to be very different from what's come before. So if we can help people raise education around all of this, it's going to be massively, massively helpful. Because then I think you end up with a better result faster. So it's fascinating. I think your insights around community are particularly interesting for me because that's just not something that comes naturally to most marketing people you know anyway thank you so much for joining

Suresh: 23:17

us thank you so much thank

Speaker 01: 23:23

you take care you have been listening to w3ma an nmd plus production