Strange that he says “No agency would have done this ad.”<p>Someone from the ad agency that pitched them this idea replied: <a href="https://twitter.com/Cavallokristen/status/1495811487897735170" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/Cavallokristen/status/149581148789773517...</a><p>Then after that he tweeted “I’d be remiss not to mention the creative firm we worked with…”
and he proceeds to never name them. <a href="https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1495820351879659525" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/14958203518796595...</a><p>The whole thing is bizarre. Just admit the ad agency had the idea, why try to take credit for it yourself?
Looks like this is the ad: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zLsUhOCqyU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zLsUhOCqyU</a><p>This came up while googling that: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/13/22932397/coinbases-qr-code-super-bowl-ad-app-crash" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/13/22932397/coinbases-qr-cod...</a>
This is great for the ad itself, but I want hear what happened directly after they ran it. The site went down for maybe 10-15 minutes and then came right back up. Probably a great war story from the depths of cloud engineering and devops.
As a Com Truise fan myself, I enjoyed learning that Brian commissioned him for the ad. Com’s slow motion funk fit in perfectly with the minimalist DVD screensaver motif.
"(standard super bowl ads tend to be gimmicky, celebrity cameo driven, going for a laugh etc)" - interesting that one of their competitors, who happens to be growing much faster at the moment, had one of those "gimmicky, celebrity driven" ads. Said competitor, FTX, also had much more of a positive response to their ad and, as far as I could tell, had far, far more of a response on social media to their ad. (I will admit, a not insignificant part of said response was due to their Twitter giveaway.)
I don't think it's possible to overstate how popular Coinbase is. I used to assume it was Binance that was #1 because they have a slightly more active social media presence, no it's Coinbase by a big margin. Coinbase owns the US adult market, which has much deeper pockets compared to Binance. Also it is why those YouTube livestream scammers so much too, by targeting those deep pocketed Coinbase users.
Interesting that nobody has mentioned the statement "we bought it not knowing what we would do" -- a $14 million ad buy (before production costs) with zero plan.<p>Not too surprised the stock is dropping fast.
This is the only ad from the superbowl I remember, mostly due to people talking about it, including talking about how it was so successful it brought down coinbase's website.<p>Good game, coinbase.
I have zero interest in crypto, but that was seriously the only ad I even remember. My friends and I talked through most of the ads (and even the game), but when that came on we all patiently watched it, waiting for the floating QR code to hit the corner. Pretty smart.<p>The only "flaw" was that I didn't scan it because I don't trust random QR codes without any context. But I'm sure most people don't share those reservations
In other news, none of the 8 people at my Super Bowl party were quick enough to wipe their hands off the nacho cheese, get to the phone and scan the code.
Funny noone mentioned the office tv show DVD logo scene...<p><a href="https://youtu.be/QOtuX0jL85Y" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/QOtuX0jL85Y</a>
No mention of how the ad crucially depended on viewers being able to access the site[1], and yet that site crashed under the anticipated load? SRE probably should have been part of the “tiny” $100k budget.[2]<p>I also completely forgot that it had music, which also feels like a waste.<p>[1] It communicated no information about the advertiser other than via that QR code.<p>[2] Edit: and if the $100k budget excludes the website costs, are they really bragging about being able to get a bouncing QR code in the screen and music rights for only $100k?