Serviceplan Group Wants to Market Cardano to Enterprises. Here Is What They Are Proposing.

# Europe's Largest Independent Ad Agency Has a Proposal for Cardano. Here's What It Covers. Serviceplan Group, Europe's largest independent agency group, has submitted a proposal to Cardano's 2026 budget process requesting 20.87 million ADA (approximately $3.55 million USD at current rates) for a 12-month marketing and demand-generation initiative. The proposal, titled "The Marketing-Powered Demand Engine for Cardano," is currently open for DRep and community review on the Intersect Hydra voting platform . ## Who Is Serviceplan Serviceplan is not new to Cardano. The group built Masumi Network, a decentralized AI agent protocol, on Cardano mainnet in collaboration with NMKR. Masumi has been live since November 2024, is open-sourced, and has recorded over 25,000 on-chain transactions. The Cardano Foundation publicly endorsed Masumi at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2025. Serviceplan was subsequently onboarded as an enterprise member of Intersect. The group reports revenue of €866M, 6,500 employees across 40+ countries, and was named Independent Agency Network of the Year at Cannes Lions 2025 with 19 Lions. ## The Core Argument The proposal frames Cardano's primary challenge as a perception problem, not a technology problem. It argues that enterprise decision-makers are not doubting Cardano's capability but are missing use-case clarity they can act on, proof they can rely on, and structured engagement paths. The proposed repositioning is built around the tagline "The Blockchain for Serious Business," aiming to shift Cardano's image away from a community-driven ecosystem movement toward mission-critical infrastructure for governments, regulated enterprises, and builders who prioritize reliability over hype. The positioning rests on three pillars: Integrity by Design (peer-reviewed protocols, formal verification, deterministic execution), Reliability at Scale (zero downtime since launch, energy-efficient proof-of-stake, the Leios roadmap), and Future-Ready Trust (Midnight privacy layer, on-chain governance, W3C-standardized digital identity). ## How the System Works The proposal is structured around a three-stage demand funnel: Attention, Proof, and Qualified Leads. These are delivered through three parallel streams. The first is Hub and Proof, a central Cardano Hub where enterprise decision-makers can find case studies, whitepapers, compliance briefings, and clear next steps. Every campaign touchpoint routes back to this Hub. The second is Funnel and Demand, media activations designed to create entry points for the target audiences. The channel mix is deliberately selective: LinkedIn (41%), native editorial advertising (43%), Out-of-Home at key financial venues (13%), and paid search (3%). The proposal explicitly excludes X ads (arguing Cardano already has strong organic reach there), crypto publishers (wrong brand association), generic display, and consumer social. Events anchor the activation calendar, with Money20/20 Amsterdam named as the primary example. The third is Community and Amplification, using the existing Cardano developer and builder community as proof of a credible ecosystem, not as a separate audience. ## Target Audiences and Markets The proposal identifies three enterprise segments: Responsible Pragmatists (enterprise CTOs and finance technology leaders, global addressable size approximately 26.8 million), Compliance-First Adopters (public sector CIOs and regulated finance and healthcare institutions, approximately 18.9 million), and Long-Term Builders (institutional finance entrepreneurs and infrastructure founders, approximately 7.6 million). Phase 1 launches in three markets: UK, Germany, and Switzerland. Brazil and Argentina are on a watchlist for expansion based on existing Cardano ecosystem footprint. ## Verticals The 12-month pilot focuses on two verticals, with final selection to be validated with the Governance, Marketing and Community (GMC) structure. The proposed verticals are Institutional DeFi, targeting regulated banks, asset managers, and capital-market infrastructure providers, and Supply Chain Traceability, targeting global manufacturers, logistics providers, and ESG-driven brands. Two further verticals are recommended for Year 2: AI Business, where Masumi Network is cited as a live proof point, and Real World Assets (RWA), where the proposal references the global RWA tokenization market forecast to exceed $10 trillion by 2030. ## What to Expect if It Passes The total ask is €2,978,738 (approximately $3.55M USD) across 12 months. If approved, the first months would be spent building the foundation: establishing the shared "Blockchain for Serious Business" narrative across Cardano's entities, developing the Cardano Hub with enterprise-readable case studies and compliance materials, and preparing the creative assets. From there, the campaign becomes visible. Cardano would appear at events like Money20/20 Amsterdam with Out-of-Home placements across airports, metro stations, and key routes, LinkedIn campaigns targeting CTOs and CIOs at regulated financial institutions, and long-form native editorial content on premium publishers in Germany and the UK. The same three-phase logic repeats for the Supply Chain vertical, anchored around the Gartner Application and Business Solutions Summit in London. The proposal also includes a single billboard placement at Davos during the World Economic Forum in January 2027. Behind the media activity, the Hub would route interested enterprise contacts into working groups and ecosystem partners, with structured follow-up processes designed to convert event conversations into actual business discussions. By the end of the 12 months, Serviceplan projects over 45 million paid impressions, 320,000 guaranteed views on native editorial content, and over 300,000 clicks to the Cardano Hub across both verticals. ## KPIs and Governance The proposal tracks outcomes across the full funnel rather than top-of-funnel metrics only. Key measurement dimensions are Hub traffic and qualified engagement, lead quality and routing into enterprise working groups, and event influence tracked through pipeline contribution. Broader ecosystem health KPIs include sentiment change, active wallets, DeFi participation, TVL benchmarks, and governance participation rates. Budget tranches are tied to milestones. At Q3, KPI and routing performance are evaluated before budget is unlocked for Verticals 3 and 4. ## How the Intersect Budget Process Works This proposal is going through Cardano's 2026 ecosystem budget process facilitated by Intersect. The framework was approved on-chain on April 4, 2026, with supermajority DRep support. Proposals are submitted through the Hydra voting tool , where they go through review and off-chain voting requiring at least 67% of participating DRep stake to advance. Approved proposals are bundled into a single Budget Info Action, followed by an on-chain treasury withdrawal governance action to release funds, typically milestone-based via smart contracts. The Serviceplan proposal is currently in the community review stage and has not yet gone to off-chain vote. ## Where Things Stand The proposal is the first to enter the live 2026 budget cycle under the new Intersect framework. Community members and DReps can review the full 56-page proposal and the appendix directly. No voting outcome has been recorded yet. Whether DReps consider a professional agency with live Cardano infrastructure a compelling case for treasury-funded marketing, or whether the budget and scope raise the same fiscal caution seen elsewhere in the 2026 cycle, remains to be seen.