{"id":577235,"date":"2026-02-09T10:25:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T10:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/577235\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T10:25:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T10:25:14","slug":"coinbase-bets-on-karaoke-themed-super-bowl-commercial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/577235\/","title":{"rendered":"Coinbase Bets On Karaoke-Themed Super Bowl Commercial"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMost Super Bowl commercials<\/a> aim to be faster, louder and shinier than the rest. And then there are Big Game ads from advertisers like Coinbase<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter mystifying Super Bowl viewers in 2022<\/a> with a decidedly lo-fi ad showing nothing but a floating QR code, the cryptocurrency trading platform has returned with another spot that\u2019s so spartan it looks like it was created by someone working on an Apple II in the 1980s. The 60-second spot emulates a karaoke screen at a bar, with basic computer animation and less-than-stylish graphics. The emphasis is on lyrics from the 1997 Backstreet Boys song \u201cEverybody (Backstreet\u2019s Back)\u201d and the first words people will see on screen are \u201cOh my god we\u2019re back again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe no-frills approach is the point. By not emulating \u201cthat kind of more polished feeling than every other ad at the Super Bowl time typically has,\u201d Coinbase believes its commercial is more likely to capture attention than many of its celebrity laden counterparts, says Cat Ferdon, Coinbase\u2019s chief marketing officer, during a recent interview.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe commercial aims to create a communal moment, the executive says and get all members of the Super Bowl audience singing the song, which has words the company hopes will suggest the broader appeal of cryptocurrency. \u201cWe\u2019re still competing with people\u2019s cell phones, and this ad will undoubtedly get them and anyone to look up,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re really trying to effectively use this as the world\u2019s biggest singalong, to show that crypto isn\u2019t just for techies, but really for anyone who knows the lyrics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCoinbase isn\u2019t the first Super Bowl advertiser to take an extremely basic approach to its pitch. In 2020, Lifeminders.com, an email advertising company, ran what was basically a few lines of black text against a yellow screen, proclaiming that the spot was \u201cthe worst commercial in the Super Bowl.\u201d As an error-filled version of the piano exercise \u201cChopsticks\u201d plays, the ad told the audience that \u201cWe\u2019re information experts. (Geeks). But we don\u2019t know diddley about making ads.\u201d In 2021, Oatly ran a spot that showed a senior executive in a field playing a keyboard and singing about its chief product, oat milk.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe commercials come off like cutoff jeans and a tank top at a formal affair. Viewers typically tune into the Super Bowl to see the best of what Madison Avenue has to offer. Expectations are high for surprise celebrity cameos, dazzling images, clever uses of popular songs and, in some cases, the chance to see a culture-defining effort like Apple\u2019s famous \u201c1984\u201d commercial, which blew minds with its depiction of an athlete rebelling against autonomous society, or Chrysler\u2019s 2012 \u201cHalftime in America\u201d spot, which featured a grim Clint Eastwood telling the nation to get back on the playing field after being hit by a significant recession.<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the unembellished spots stand out despite their rudimentary nature. GoDaddy, a web hosting company, thrived for years with bare-bones commercials<\/a> that initially played on the potential for seeing a scantily clad female character. Cash4Gold, a trader that usually relied on cheaply made direct response commercials, in 2009 made a Super Bowl ad<\/a> that used celebrity pitchman Ed McMahon and rapper MC Hammer.<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch efforts have surfaced as the ranks of the annual Super Bowl ad roster have swelled to include more start-ups and first-time entrants<\/a>. Many of these companies have little experience with mainstream advertising,<\/a> and most of their focus has instead been on using digital outreach to cultivate specific customer niches. The best Super Bowl ads find a way to capture the attention of tens of millions of viewers, while driving home a need for a product or the reliability of an overall brand.<\/p>\n

\n\tCoinbase executives believe their approach works. The company\u2019s 2022 commercial \u201cwas probably the most talked about ad\u201d of that year, says Ferdon. After the QR code appeared in the Super Bowl, Coinbase saw 20 million hits on its landing page in one minute, the company revealed following the end of the 2022 game. Its app crashed in the immediate aftermath.<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps Coinbase knows something about the Super Bowl audience that others don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

\n\tOf the 120 million tuning in to the gridiron classic, \u201cI think 110 million have had a bit to drink,\u201d says Joe Staples, Coinbase\u2019s vice president of creative. \u201cThis is fun and it\u2019s supposed to be kind of our gift to that moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Coinbase team considered every element of design in the ad, he says. Should they add some of he backgrounds people see on karaoke screens in bars, like waterfalls? Should the graphics have fuzzy edges? Should the ad try to use some of the heart-shaped graphics that sometimes surface as lyrics scroll?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\u201cAlmost all of our conversations were about restraint,\u201d says Staples. \u201cSo people can just focus on themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf it works, the ad will also help lend something that is not often attributed to cryptocurrency companies: emotion. Executives hope that spot spurs \u201ca sense of togetherness\u201d and that viewers will start to sing along with the tune, says Ferdon. \u201cWe know that 60% of Americans who watch the Super Bowl watch it together. It\u2019s not exactly a solemn, singular pastime. It\u2019s something we do in a group. And we really think that this kind of captures the spirit of it,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re not just buying airtime with this ad. We really designed like a shared high energy experience for our community to participate in and do that together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA winning Super Bowl commercial says Ferdon, sometimes must break old rules. \u201cIdeas stand out,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd doing things other people aren\u2019t doing stands out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most Super Bowl commercials aim to be faster, louder and shinier than the rest. And then there are…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":577236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,51407,250589,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-577235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-coinbase","tag-super-bowl-commercials","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116040192954153893","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}