Why Coinbase is leaning on product-focused marketing for the first time

Security footage of traders leaving to go home at the end of the workday is punctuated by a score that would be at home in a thriller and a voice-over that questions the traders’ schedule: “Why do they get to decide when you can trade?”

It’s a question that’s designed to make viewers think about how the financial world works—and whether or not it works for them.

That’s what Coinbase is aiming for with its latest campaign by its in-house team, which includes four new product-focused spots, and expands on the brand’s focus from crypto to finance as a whole, Catherine Ferdon, Coinbase CMO, told us.

“We’re sitting at the nexus of two industries that don’t exactly give people the warm and fuzzies: Big Tech and finance,” Ferdon said. “What we’re really focused on is giving a voice to a utility that straddles those two industries.”

To do that, this year, Coinbase is creating spots that prompt viewers to question why things are the way that they are, and the new campaign, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” builds on that approach. Creating something provocative is the point.

“There’s constant regulatory scrutiny in a really, ever-evolving landscape for the field that we play in,” Ferdon said. “When you have that situation on the field, the very first instinct is to generate a very sterile brand. And I think we’ve gone a different way.”

Directed by Steve Rogers, the new ads will run throughout the second and third quarters this year with ad buys on NBA programming along with the brand’s previous video game–inspired effort, “Your Way Out,” still airing.

Eye spy: Where “Your Way Out” has a protagonist gaining consciousness and opting out of the monotonous world he’s been used to, the new spots are more voyeuristic. It’s not voyeurism for the sake of it—and there’s still the focus on the annoying monotony of the world today—but to get people to look at things that are normal in a different way.

“If you look around, there are anomalies that we put up with,” Joe Staples, VP of creative at Coinbase, said. “What we wanted to say is there’s an option to some of those anomalies.”

The new work comes following a reported 14% cut to staff with nearly 700 people laid off in early May, which could make for tricky timing to debut new work.

The ads, however, have been in the works for nearly six months, Ferdon said, and the company is “moving forward here, business as usual.”

The brand’s overall approach to advertising—creating something bold and potentially off-putting that will encourage viewers to question what they’re watching, as many did during the Super Bowl with the sing-along spot—makes sense to Douglas Brundage, founder and CEO of brand strategy shop Kingsland.

“I love seeing a brand that has the budget spend the money and try [to] and do new stuff,” Kingsland said. “When you take a big swing, you’re going to miss sometimes. I think culturally, it seems like the Super Bowl thing was a miss, but it did get people talking about the brand…They just need everyone and their grandmother to know that Coinbase exists and know what Coinbase does. And I think they’ve done a good job of that.”