Update on that Super Bowl ad

Last week, I wrote about the “best” ad from Super Bowl 2022. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a bit of recap:

The whole ad was a QR code bouncing around for a minute, like an old-school Windows screensaver.

If you scanned the QR code, it took you to a page to sign up for a Coinbase account.

The ad drew a lot of response. So much so that the landing page crashed.

But in spite of the big response, it’s unlikely that Coinbase recouped the $13 million it cost to run this ad.

So that’s the recap. And now for the update:

A few days ago, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, wrote a Twitter thread talking about the making of this ad.

It was mostly about how cool and creative his team is, and how he likes to pat them on the back, and how he also enjoys having his own back patted.

But the thing that really caught my eye was— “and of course the production budget was tiny, less then $100k.”

Hmm. A tiny budget, less than $100k, for a QR code bouncing around on the screen… something you could get done for on Fiverr for $30?

This brought to mind something copywriter Dan Ferrari wrote a few years ago. Dan was writing about big changes in the DR world. This bit has stuck with me ever since:

Because I’m not sure you’re aware, but there’s still a HUGE world outside of the digital players I’ve been talking about so far.

They’re now entering our world as well.

Specifically, I mean big direct response TV spenders and “brand” companies.

Why? Because their channels are drying up. Everything is moving digital.

I recently met with one of the top execs for a HUGE direct response TV company.

They make even the $200M per year financial publishers look small.

Guess what they’re doing?

Moving online. TV doesn’t work nearly as well for them anymore.

So watch as companies with products and businesses that don’t really fall into our little world of internet direct response start to require the services of people that know how traffic, copy, and funnels work online, at mega-scale.

Just to be clear:

I’m not suggesting you try to sell direct marketing to clueless brand businesses. If their idea of good advertising is a glossy page in a magazine, showing a man in a rowboat, in the middle of a lake, with the company logo hiding somewhere in the corner… well, you won’t change their mind.

But like Dan says, we might be in the early days of a giant opportunity.

So if you are enterprising, now might be the time. The time to take standard DM insights… and sell them to a virgin direct advertisers like Coinbase. The production budget? A mere trifle — $100k or $300k or maybe just a mil.

But perhaps you don’t know enough about how traffic, copy, and funnels work online.

In that case, sign up to my email newsletter — because these are all things I write about regularly.