2022 SUPER BOWL AD DISSECTION
By Manuela Ochoa Sevilla
Among the super bowl commercial strategists, companies put in an insane amount of effort to produce our advertising industries creme of the crepe. Someone always goes minimalist and in this case, it's Coin-base. In the second quarter they went to the end of the spectrum of what's considered a simple super bowl ad. Coinbase spent 13 million… yes 13 million on a 60 second ad and that's not the most surprising bit. The commercial consisted of a QR bouncing from corner to corner. No product name or famous actors. Just a QR code hovering around. If you managed to scan the code you were then brought to Coin-base promotional website, providing a super limited time (until the 15th of February) promotion of $15 worth of bitcoin to new members. I'm seeing a lot of people criticize the lack of effort and design but I think that's actually the main intention...
This lack of production makes this commercial stick out like a sore thumb in relativity to the others. Being the black sheep is also being the memorable sheep. In my personal assessment, what makes an ad successful is based on its memorability, cultural impact and quantifiable traffic brought to any of the companies medias. Taking this risk paid off well because the site then crashed as a result of the foot traffic the clever ad produced. I'd give this ad a B+ for harnessing so much engagement, but draw back points for not having the system pressurized to suit in influx.
