Scoop: Did Coinbase Steal The Viral Super Bowl Ad Idea?

Coinbase’s creative advertisement depicting a bouncing DVD meme during Super Bowl become an internet sensation and was a point of debate across crypto community. However, within just a few days, the creative campaign has now made it to the headlines over its ownership idea.

Did COINBASE steal the ad idea?

In interesting turns of events, Kristen Cavallo, head of an advertising agency called out Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on the internet over the popular Super Bowl ad. Kristen claims that the iconic bouncing DVD logo idea was influenced by her company’s advertising pitch.

Earlier, Coinbase CEO took to Twitter explaining the insights from the successful ad campaign. How the bouncing QR ad was created after an outside agency suggested ‘a bunch of standard super bowl ad ideas’. However, he didn’t like any of them.

2/

– we bought it not knowing what we would do

– initially an outside agency pitched us a bunch of standard super bowl ad ideas

– I didn't like any of them (standard super bowl ads tend to be gimmicky, celebrity cameo driven, going for a laugh etc)

— Brian Armstrong – barmstrong.eth (@brian_armstrong) February 21, 2022

4/

– so we went back and brainstormed, came up with a bunch of wild ideas (some of these we will do down the road, but didn’t have enough time to produce – think Apple 1984, some crypto native stuff, etc)

— Brian Armstrong – barmstrong.eth (@brian_armstrong) February 21, 2022

We were running short of time (a few weeks), and one of the original ideas we had included putting a QR code at the end, said Coinbase CEO, This idea was partially inspired by Reddit’s superb owl commercial from the previous super bowl, he added

However, according to Kristen Cavallo, this is false and an ad agency did suggest that idea. She also dropped the reference from the notes.

It was actually inspired by presentations our agency showed your team on 8/18 (pages 19-24) and 10/7 (pages 11-18) with ad concepts for the Super Bowl with floating QR codes on a blank screen.

— Kristen Cavallo (@Cavallokristen) February 21, 2022

Coinbase CMO comes to rescue

In the meantime, Coinbase’s CMO, Kate Rouch, came to the rescue and wrote The Coinbase team and I deeply value our partners. The fit with our creative partner Accenture Interactive (AI) was seamless – so much to that extent our CEO actually thought we were a single team when presenting work.

3/5: Only when AI onboarded and came up with the idea of inserting a QR code in a popular meme did we green light the idea. The meme as a conceptual underpinning was creative genius and a unique use of the QR code and was what unlocked our SB success.

— Kate Rouch (@kate_rouch) February 22, 2022

Cavallo said that her decision to call out Armstrong was not about ‘intellectual property’. While she added that this thread could easily have been a celebration of creativity and breakthrough thinking, versus claiming credit and disregarding agencies.

My tweet was not about IP. I wrote because his thread could easily have been a celebration of creativity and breakthrough thinking, versus claiming credit and disregarding agencies. I'm advocating for @Accenture as much as I am for the industry.

— Kristen Cavallo (@Cavallokristen) February 21, 2022

Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange released a 60-second advertisement during Super Bowl LVI. The full ad showed a colorful bouncing QR code depicting a bouncing DVD meme. The ad was such a big hit that Coinbase’s website crashed due to a sudden increase in traffic. The app jumped to 2nd position on the apple playstore in the U.S. that day.

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