Much water has passed under the Coinbase Super Bowl ad bridge already.
The post-ad drama—in hindsight—perhaps seemed more interesting than the ad itself, which itself was extraordinarily unique.
A quick recap of the post-ad drama: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong claimed that no ‘agency’ was involved in making the ad, in a long tweet patting his and his team’s back for the success of the ad.
He ended the thread with a 12th tweet posted 8 minutes after the 11th tweet!
Then, the CEO of The Martin Agency, Kristen Cavallo replied,
And…
Then, Coinbase’s CMO Kate Rouch added to the mess!
But this post is not about the post-ad drama. This post is about the ad itself.
It was a 60-second ad (that cost Coinbase US $14 million!) that had ONLY a bouncing QR code – no brand name, no logo, no voice-over, nothing else at all.
It was only towards the end of the ad that there was a Coinbase mention, to denote who paid for this ad, which does not look like an ad at all!
How did that look on the TV, during the Super Bowl? Here’s the human reaction:
… and the canine reaction 🙂
It was most definitely completely audacious… something that no brand has ever done before.
And it worked, depending on how you define ‘worked’. For instance, it crashed the app, took the app from No. 186 in the Apple App Store to No. 2. Coinbase’s CTO, Surojit Chatterjee (former SVP and head of product at Flipkart) tweeted that the ad resulted in 20 million hits on the landing page in just one minute!!
What was that landing page? This.
It was a sweepstake that gave away US $15 in bitcoin to every new sign-up (during the campaign period) and a chance to win US $3 in prizes (a lottery, in simpler terms).
Did the actual Super Bowl ad convey any of this? Nope. It did not even have the brand name!!
So, first things first: Coinbase’s Super Bowl ad was the TV equivalent of a clickbait.
A clickbait induces you to click on something on the web or mobile intended to exploit your curiosity (and in the case of a clickbait, the result is that the curiosity exploited from you does not deliver as well as it induced you).
Considering there is no click on TV, what Coinbase did was a CTAbait (CTA – Call To Action). TV advertising already includes a host of CTA – email us, visit our website, call us, drop-in, and so on. QR codes are already popular in advertising anyway.
But no brand had done ONLY a QR code! With no lead, explanation, context, brand name, or logo, just a QR code for 60 seconds in THE MOST watched event on TV is a masterstroke in building intrigue. The ad completely sidestepped the usually all-important, ‘Here is why should you perform this call-to-action?’.
It could have even been ‘free15dollars.com’ floating on the TV for 60 seconds, but people would still be expected to type the URL on a phone/web browser. Compared to that, scanning a QR code is quicker and more interesting because there is ZERO context of why people should scan it.
The equivalent in a website URL may be, ‘gotothisURLandWINnow.com’ or ‘freemoneyhere.com’ 🙂 But even that IS setting some context. You may turn skeptical at those given how scammers exploit our interest in free-this and free-that. So, a QR code that the human eye cannot understand is setting you up with a kind of intrigue that only requires a simple, predictable action from you that does not cost you anything more than 5 seconds of your time.
The print advertising equivalent would be, in India, for instance, be the front-page ad in The Times of India where there is a masthead of the paper and just a QR code in the center of the otherwise completely blank page. And nothing else. But a TV ad has a time limit, unlike a print ad that has no time limit. So the TV QR code would induce more intrigue than a print ad, naturally.
So, people performed Coinbase’s CTA as expected. In droves. Crashing the app.
One may ask how many of the 20 million hits actually signed up to Coinbase – after all, signing up is the actual conversion for Coinbase. But driving 20 million hits in a minute, in itself, is a huge success for any brand.
Because the primary purpose of advertising is, first and foremost, to get noticed. Only if something is noticed, would people consider performing the call-to-action (that could range anything from… buy our product, come visit us, visit our website, think of us in a positive frame of reference… to remember us, and more).
Coinbase’s ad was a clever amalgamation of get-noticed + perform call-to-action in one sweeping stroke! To be sure, it is a gimmick. A very, very expensive gimmick at that. But since it has never, ever been done, it got noticed, understandably.
One can also argue if the Coinbase ad was harvesting attention for attention’s sake, and not relevant attention. Since they did not set up any context, the most relevant people didn’t land on their page – everyone did, simply out of curiosity. But I’d reckon that Coinbase is a B2C product, potentially meant for anyone and everyone. It’s not a B2B product after all.
Also, I would even argue against my own earlier assertion that this was a clickbait on TV (or a CTAbait). A clickbait sets some context of why someone should click the link. Coinbase’s ad had no context whatsoever.
So if you scanned it, it is entirely on you, not Coinbase 🙂 Coinbase did not ask you to scan the QR code. They just showed it to you and you let your own inherent curiosity take over.
But think about it – would you have scanned it if the Coinbase brand name was somewhere on the screen? Far fewer chances, I’d argue – you may perhaps check out what Coinbase is, what they have to offer, and then, if at all the space interested you, may scan it. But that’s where the ad’s brilliance lies.
Coinbase gamed us all, but fair and square 🙂
I presume we may see minor variations of this idea from other brands who put QR codes at the center of the strategy. But Coinbase’s ad was not about the QR code – the QR code was merely an enabler, a tool. Coinbase’s ad was about evoking our curiosity… the ‘how can I NOT try this?’ feeling in us. Other brands and agencies that are aiming for a similar strategy need to remember that, more than merely copying the tool.