CryptoBowl 2022
Superbowl LVI was nothing short of spectacular as Americans gathered all around the country to watch Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams fend off Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals. For what it was worth, it was an awesome football game with what I thought was a legendary halftime performance with Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Mary J. Blige. The wings were good, the beer was great, but the commercials this year were even better than before.
There was a big theme when it came to the expensive commercials that aired during the SuperBowl, and that theme was crypto. Companies like FTX, Coinbase, Etoro, and Crypto.com shoveled at least $6.5 million for 30 seconds of air time to showcase their services in fashionably unique ways. We are going to dive into some of these commercials and explain what seemed to be an evolutionary day for cryptocurrency in America.
Coinbase
This black screen with a QR code that scanned you into the sign-up screen of Coinbase throttled living rooms in the United States. Coinbase saw the most traffic at one time that they have ever seen, as 20 million people scanned the code. There was so much traffic that the website crashed! Fortunately, the engineers at Coinbase quickly resolved the situation and had the website up and running again. The bouncing QR code found its way to the corner at the end of the ad, and it turned to the coinbase logo with the URL that was on the QR code in the top right corner. This old style look at the end made it seem like Coinbase was trying to show that this is the beginning and things are only going to get better for the cryptocurrency community.
FTX
FTX came in with a bang for their commercial bringing in Larry David to act simply unimpressed by innovative ideas like the wheel, fork, or toilet. Larry David is unenthusiastic about a lot of things and at the end of the commercial, someone shows him the FTX app which is an easy way to get started with crypto. Like with everything else, Larry shakes his head in disappointment and the ad cuts out with “Don’t be like Larry.”
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FTX did a good job showcasing cryptocurrency as an innovative technology that your probably should not miss out on. FTX went with the comedic approach and hit the nail on the head with onboarding Larry David as the guy who is not impressed with anything. The campaign was called “Don’t Miss out”. Using Larry David as ‘anti-sponsor’ promoted the skepticism that cryptocurrency receives from its critics. Many of the biggest crypto advocates once had their own skeptical thoughts, and FTX did a good job embracing the skepticism that crypto receives to shine the light into the mainstream.
Crypto.com
Crypto.com teamed up with Lebron James for an advertisement right after the halftime show. Lebron recently teamed up with Crypto.com in a $1 billion bid to continue enhancing Crypto.com brand name. James’ nonprofit, the Lebron James Foundation (LJF) is working with Crypto.com in a multiyear partnership to enable kids to learn more about Web 3.0 opportunities and Blockchain projects. The commercial brings Lebron James back to 2003 where he is with a younger version of himself who is so excited to see what the future has to offer. At the end, the campaign slogan is shown which was “Fortune favors the brave”. Another kick at this is the time to get yourself into the game. Crypto.com offers a user-friendly centralized exchange and a wallet that allows you to connect to Web 3.0 apps. It is personally my favorite company out of the three that offer Crypto services.
EToro
EToro’s Superbowl ad named “Flying your Way” showed the collaboration of the EToro investing community on where to start investing. The advertisement pays tribute to the memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB) featuring a Shiba Inu dog. The commercial was more focused on the community-based investing that EToro has to offer rather than getting into the cryptocurrency space itself.
Outstanding Effect
There does not seem to be any effect that the commercials had on the prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, but the Superbowl showed signs of the 2000 “dot-com” bowl where the Superbowl was filled with innovative tech ads from the dot-com boom. This was a great day of exposure for the cryptocurrency world in America as the adoption has lagged fairly. 2022 will show great growth as far as wallet counts and daily transactions. Developers will continue to enhance user-interfaces to provide greater accessibility for consumers to get started with crypto which will allow for adoption.
