In 2022, up to five cryptocurrency companies announced themselves during the Super Bowl halftime. In 2026, only one did so. In between, the so-called “crypto winter” took place, a great crisis that the industry went through and took the value of digital currencies to historic lows. At that time, Coinbase was one of the few that maintained its commitment to marketing and communication, which reinforced its positioning as a benchmark in the category.

At this year’s Cannes Lions, his work was recognized with several Lions, but he was also highlighted as an example of both brand building and building a category in itself. He did so in the session “How Do You Build a New Category?”, which included the participation of Catherine Ferdon, Marketing Director, and Gareth Kay, Vice President of Brand of the company.

And in it they presented themselves as cowboys, borrowing some statements from Brien Eno, creator of the Windows 95 login sound, and who saw two types of artists in the world: on the one hand, there are farmers, who find a piece of land, work it, cultivate it and make the land grow; and on the other hand the cowboys, who go out to explore and find new territories.

“I think the same can be applied to brands. And as a technology company that by definition has always been at the forefront, we are cowboys” commented Gareth Kay. “That means that we are not a brand that replicates others, or even that replicates what we ourselves have done. We are full of curiosity, continually looking for new ways of doing things.”.

From notoriety to finding an enemy

The company’s executives shared the principles that have guided Coinbase’s trajectory and the lessons they have learned with the intention of inspiring and sparking reflections on how to build brands. They went back, precisely, to their first ad in the Super Bowl, in 2022, to that viral QR code that changed color for a minute and bounced against the edges of the screen. Simple creativity got 6 million people to scan the code.

The strategy sought to boost Coinbase’s notoriety, something key in the early stages of building a brand, as Ann Marie Kerwin, Americas Editor of Warc, noted at the beginning of the session. “At first, creativity and communication must focus on capturing attention, generating notoriety and spreading brand awareness.“he explained.”Performance is important for new brands because it brings transactions, but as the category develops it is necessary to move towards brand building and storytelling to impact a broader audience and achieve relevance”.

That is the path that Coinbase followed, also coinciding with a crisis that caused thousands of layoffs and the bankruptcy and disappearance of many agents in the category and, therefore, the consolidation of it into a few players. Consequently, consumer confidence in cryptocurrencies plummeted. That’s when Coinbase found an insight that it has built its brand on for the past few years.

“We could not defend the value of cryptocurrencies and we could not explain what had happened. We had to find a bigger enemy. We discovered that 87% of Americans believed the financial system needed to be renewed“, said Catherine Ferdon. “We didn’t have to convince consumers that the system was broken because they already knew it. The system that they were trapped in and that they hated, that failed people, was that enemy. So we started to plant the idea that cryptocurrencies were the only possible solution”.

The idea began to materialize with “It’s time to update the system,” an advertisement designed internally that included those elements of the financial system that aroused user discontent, including commissions or limited hours.
As explained by the brand, the campaign helped improve the perception of cryptocurrencies as the future of bail bonds, and also the idea that such products would facilitate greater economic freedom in the world.

Everything communicates

Then came increased regulation, with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) trying to include cryptocurrencies as a value, which, according to the company, posed risks to innovation in the entire category. “We did something that marketing departments are never asked to do, a political campaign. Not a campaign to sell a product; a campaign to turn 52 million cryptocurrency owners into defenders of common sense”explained the company’s Vice President of Brand.

One of the most striking actions of the campaign was the placement of a billboard in a solitary environment that sought to be a symbol of the ineffectiveness of limiting oneself to commenting on Twitter and encouraging users to contact the congressmen directly to share their opinion. The action, according to those responsible for the brand at Cannes Lions, helped change the perception and position of some congressmen, demonstrating that “Sometimes marketing is the most important lever a company has for its own survival.”.

The campaign set a precedent and rooted a philosophy and a deliberately differential strategic approach around the idea that everything communicates. “Most communication manuals are built on damage control; Ours is built on being direct and going on the attack”, commented the Marketing Director.
This was highlighted when Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong himself spoke out publicly about an extortion attempt and turned the claimed loot, $20 million, into a reward for users.

“When the instinct is to control and minimize, we were direct with consumers, without filters, without tricks“Catherine Ferdon explained during the session.”The truth, told quickly and on your own terms, is usually better than the version that others tell about you.”.

The company’s managers also shared their way of working. The internal marketing and communication team is in charge of day-to-day actions and strategies, but when it needs a boost of creativity for larger projects, it includes ad hoc talent according to objectives or collaborates with the independent agencies Mother and Isle of Any.

The latter was precisely responsible for “Your Way Out”, the advertisement that, among other things, won the Grand Prix in Film Craft at this year’s Cannes Lions. The piece sought to convey Coinbase’s mission, one that its managers describe as “simple but profound” and which is based on increasing economic freedom in the world, on evolving the financial system so that everyone has access to the necessary tools to achieve said freedom.

Coinbase and its reason for being

The clear definition of that mission allowed the brand, according to its marketing managers, to develop a discourse focused on getting people to think about cryptocurrencies as a technology that drives the future of finance. “This positioning allows us to show that our products address a specific, important problem, widespread among the population, and how that problem can be solved through cryptocurrencies.“, noted Gareth Kay. “An advertising approach that proves our brand promise and dramatizes the message”.

This has been reflected in one of Coinbase’s most recent campaigns, “Hidden in Plain Sight”, with which the company once again proposes digital currencies as an alternative to a model that it considers obsolete. In the pieces dedicated to specific products and services, the platform highlights its offer of extended hours for the purchase and sale of shares, the future incorporation of an artificial intelligence advisor; or predictive markets. All of these innovations that Coinbase considers an evolution of the system in line with its mission and brand promise.

The strategy followed in recent years is aligned with the search for differentiation and relevance typical of a brand in its maturation stage. “Challenge notions of the category and seek new moments of demand; understand the emotional impulse that moves consumers and build a pro-people brand. This is how you achieve credibility and leadership”, explained the Warc editor.

The brand considers that its communication trajectory reflects the way in which the category has gone through ups and downs, but has known how to find a way to strengthen and legitimize itself. It also understands that it still has a lot of room for growth, since, according to those responsible for Coinbase, 99% of the world’s money is not yet on the blockchain.

“We’ve learned that the brands that survive volatility are the ones that know exactly who they are when everything else is uncertain.“concluded Catherine Ferdon, Chief Marketing Officer at Coinbase. And she extracted three essential learnings: finding the right enemy matters more than having a big budget; restrictions are what make you more interesting, not what limits you; and if you follow someone else’s rules, you are being fooled.”Coinbase exists to increase economic freedom in the world. And that’s not a slogan. It is a reason to exist. Everything we do responds to that idea”.