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Cryptocurrency’s biggest boosters would do well to remember technology’s most notorious puppet puppet. Year is 2000; it was what would later become known as the “Dot-Com Super Bowl,” an NFL head-to-head game in which tech companies acquired about 20 percent Real estate ads in the Big Game. A few years later, many of the companies that acquired those ads were either defunct or swallowed up by other companies — including Pets.com, which ran ads featuring a singing puppet made from a sock.
This warning is issued not because crypto companies are looking to turn socks into mascots (at least, not that we know of), but because they are currently pump millions of dollars buy advertising space during Super Bowl LVI. Crypto.com, which recently flooded the market with ads starring Matt Damon, has a large active slot; crypto exchange FTX plans give away bitcoins during its Super Bowl game. Coinbase is also running an ad. Companies are playing quizzes about who will show up in them. Regardless, the message seems to be that cryptocurrencies are hot and everyone should be on board. But like a lot of posts have shown over the past week, the Crypto Bowl has echoes of that evil tech company’s commercials of the past.
Not all of those companies failed. Autotrader still exists. So does WebMD. If anything, these massive ads could define how massive cryptocurrencies are. All of the market’s early adopters are already in the game, so these ads could be what attracts crypto curious people. Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins told MarketWatch this week: “These companies are scrambling to get new customers. Like celebrities trying to get you hype about NFTsThese ads are intended to engage sports fans through the NFL.
Whether any of these will work will completely depend on the extent to which people outside of the tech world actually want cryptocurrencies. Autotrader exists because people need to buy and sell cars. Ordering dog food from Pets.com when having a grocery store nearby proves less necessary — or at least at that time. Perhaps the great irony is that the Crypto Bowl will also feature an ad from Amazon, which has turned the purchase of random household items online into a multi-billion dollar business. (You remember, that commercial was a slightly creepy spot in which Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost imagined that Alexa could actually read their mind.)
One of the things people often forget about Pets.com’s sock puppet is that he actually has a new gig. A few years after the site shut down, he was hired by 1-800-BarNone, a company that provides car loans to people with bad credit. (The company that revived the career of chihuahua Taco Bell deal broker.) In her new job, sock puppet the motto of becoming “Everybody deserves a second chance.” We’ll see if crypto needs one.
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