With emerging categories, success hinges in large part on PR’s role to drive awareness and adoption. But history books are littered with doubters and skeptics of new ideas. Mark Twain passed on Alexander Graham Bell’s offer to invest in the telephone, certain the typewriter could never be unseated. Analysts and consumers alike predicted the internet would never get mass adoption in its early days.

This campaign succeeded in driving conversations at the consumer level, stimulated interest in learning more about crypto in traditional media outlets and on social, and ultimately succeeded in catapulting FTX and crypto into the mainstream.

The past year has been a breakout for crypto. Corporations added cryptocurrency to balance sheets. A country adopted bitcoin as legal tender. Celebrities discovered NFTs. But work needed to be done to address the expected skepticism existing among consumers.

In its Super Bowl brand debut, the world’s largest crypto exchange, FTX, made a play to reach the masses and stimulate crypto conversation with an “anti-sponsor” and a PR campaign facing skeptics directly.

Objectives to drive a press target of 5B earned media impressions:

-Incentivize FTX site traffic, app downloads and increase social following, raise visibility for crypto and capture majority share of voice against competitors.

-Segment storytelling, targeting outlets across finance, business, ad trade, entertainment and national broadcast to make FTX an unmissable in media coverage and social chatter.

-Depart from the norm, withhold the full spot and all details of celeb spokesperson until in-game debut.

It’s hard to see the next big thing, even when it’s right in front of you. “Don’t Miss Out” follows eternal-skeptic Larry David as he passes on great invention after great invention, culminating in FTX, the safe and easy way to buy crypto. The film spans the spectrum of human achievement – from the wheel, the fork, the lightbulb…even the invention of America. And Larry is positive none of them, especially crypto, are ever going to pan out.

Our insight was drawn from published research and history itself which gave us countless examples of innovation throughout time that was first faced with doubters and skeptics before it achieved mass adoption. We derived that innovation often sits at the intersection of too good to be real and too real to ignore. That leaves a lot of people in stasis, on the sidelines. Enter crypto.

In order to reach our campaign’s target audience of the crypto-curious and skeptics, the early adopters evangelizing crypto, and mainstream America, our challenge was to communicate that FTX is an open and safe place for crypto questions, exploration and adoption.

Execution tactics over October 2021-February 2022:

-Announced FTX’s Super Bowl participation in Ad Age in October leading to syndication in several outlets. We emphasized broadcast, national business, financial news, and ad trades early on.

-Launched teaser campaign to announce the in-game social #FTX Sweepstakes FTX would give away bitcoin to four people in an amount equal to the time the ad aired in the game.

-Negotiated an exclusive with The New York Times for a behind the scenes feature, showcasing an in-depth look at how a Super Bowl spot gets made, and access to FTX leadership to tell the story about crypto’s promising future even amidst continuing skepticism. The story was timed to break online immediately after the ad airing and in print Monday morning.

-Pitched advance embargoed interviews for director Jeff Schaffer and FTX US CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, securing fast-follow coverage in national consumer, entertainment, sports, and business outlets.

Media:

31.7 billion earned media impressions

6,900k earned media placements

Rare sweep of top four US national broadcast morning shows Feb 14: Today Show, CBS Mornings, Good Morning America, and Fox & Friends.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe played long-form version on air, declaring “the best commercial of all time.”

285% more coverage than Crypto.com, 26% more than Coinbase Feb. 7-15.

More positive coverage than competitors: FTX 92% positive sentiment, Crypto.com 90%, Coinbase 84%.

Against competitors, received +683% more UVMs, +35% more articles, +30% more engagements, +42% more reach.

Post-game media coverage engagement outperformed competitors, 48% higher than Coinbase, 140% higher than Crypto.com

A second Today Show segment Feb 22, “Should you invest in cryptocurrency? What to know about digital currencies and investing safely” delivered on campaign promise.

Target Audience:

Received greatest number of new social followers Feb 13-14: FTX/150,211, Crypto.com/28,459, Coinbase/26,508.

Drove more engagement Feb. 14 with 90.5k engagements, 48% more than Coinbase and 140% more than Crypto.com

Consumers voted “Most Comical” Super Bowl Commercial in USA Today’s AdMeter

Generated second-most Super Bowl related tweets after Pepsi Halftime Show

Named “Retweet Rusher” by Twitter, receiving most in-game single post retweets

182k retweets of sweeps entry tweet, 126,838 sweepstakes entries

283,747 pre- and post-game conversation mentions Feb. 6-18

36M views + 2.022 comments of Larry’s Cut on YouTube

Business:

130% boost in app downloads Feb. 13

81% userbase growth increase Feb. 15

5.5x more next day site traffic than closest competitor

57.4% share of voice around Super Bowl ads compared to competitors