As pioneers that invented an entirely new fintech solution, Rapyd, a global fintech company, has seen remarkable growth and ascension in recent years. However, a flooding of the market with new players obscured the uniqueness of Rapyd, and posed a threat to their future success in the fintech space. With heated competition starting up all around them, Rapyd approached us as a strategic and creative partner to help them carve out a compelling brand distinction.

Rapyd’s primary objective was to attract talented developers across the globe to join Rapyd’s online developer community, where they can get the information and support needed to build great local commerce experiences with Rapyd’s technology. We sought to expand Rapyd’s international developer community by 51,000 users in 4 months.

If you’ve seen Star Trek, you know that “to boldly go where no man has gone before” is central to starship Enterprise’s mission. The same sentiment embodies the driving spirit behind Rapyd, the London-based Israeli fintech startup (started in 2015) that created an easier way to facilitate cross currency transactions with embedded finance technology.

Rapyd knew they needed to tackle the next chapter in their growth story to truly set themselves (and their innovation story) apart in the marketplace.

We did just that, launching a global campaign that quite literally offered developers an opportunity to experience the great beyond. The campaign was called “Hack the Galaxy,” a challenge where anyone who signed up to the Rapyd developer community could enter to win a trip to the edge of space by solving a series of virtual challenges and puzzles.

Software developers are the lifeblood of a platform like Rapyd, serving as the main advocates and conduits for brand adoption. We needed to activate and drive devs to engage with the brand—initially, by joining Rapyd’s online community. Thanks to qualitative research, we validated three audience truths to inspire the campaign: 1) software developers love solving challenges in and outside of their profession, 2) they want to give back and help other developers grow, 3) going to outer-space was a childhood dream of many.

Equipped with these insights, “Hack the Galaxy” offered developers who signed up to the Rapyd developer community an opportunity to experience the great beyond, by solving a series of virtual challenges and puzzles––designed by the best of the best puzzle pros out there: New York Times puzzle masters (and magicians!), David Kwong and David Shukan. Knowing outer-space fascinated our audience, we partnered with space icon, William Shatner.

We targeted the international developer community with an array of digital content that led them to a custom “Hack the Galaxy” website. With three space tickets to give away as grand prizes, we broke the contest up into three separate missions, each accompanied by dedicated online videos featuring William Shatner. The campaign maintained a consistent digital presence with engaging social posts, community emails from Shatner, and additional puzzles for chances to win smaller prizes, like a custom Hack the Galaxy toaster. The campaign was live across 48 countries featuring digital video, organic social, digital puzzles/site, influencer and email campaigns.

May 26: Teaser

June 6: Launch Announcement

June 13: First Mission opens

June 20: First Mission Closes

August 7: Second Mission open

August 10: Met 51k developer goal

August 21: Second mission closes

September 18: Third/Final Mission Opens

October 2: Final Mission Closes/Contest Wrap

Over just 2 months, “hackthegalaxy” and “Rapyd community” were searched over 40k times on Google. We surpassed 545 million total impressions (89+ million impressions on YouTube, 36+ million on Facebook, & 50+ million on Reddit. The puzzles were so brain-bursting that there were nearly 13k puzzle submissions––82% of those who submitted puzzles came back to solve another. We reached 51,000 developer signups in half the allotted time (just over two months).

Targets were achieved within 63% of initial allocated media budget and within 55% of campaign planned period––this gave Rapyd an opportunity to focus on engagement and to also target developers only for the rest of the Hack the Galaxy campaign.

Around 70% (36K) of 51K signups are attributable to paid activity on last click basis. As per LinkedIn website demographics for the whole period of the campaign, 78% of pageviews on the community are likely to be developer audiences.