The head of an advertising agency called Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong after he suggested that his company’s popular Super Bowl ad was conceptualized internally. The head of the advertising agency claims that the idea was actually inspired by the advertising of her company.
Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, made headlines earlier this month when it devoted its entire 60-second place in the game to a color QR code bouncing on the screen. It was so effective that his website crashed due to the spike in traffic.
In a tweet on Sunday explaining how the ad was created, Armstrong said an outside agency had originally presented Coinbase with “a bunch of standard Super Cup advertising ideas,” but “I didn’t like any of them.”
“Standard Super Cup ads tend to be deceptive, aimed at celebrity cameos, laugh, etc.,” he wrote.
“So we came back and thought, we came up with a bunch of wonderful ideas …” he added. “We didn’t have time (a few weeks) and one of the initial ideas we had included was to put a QR code at the end.”
Citing Reddit’s 5-second Super Bowl ad last year as part of their inspiration, Armstrong said his team had finally decided to dedicate the entire ad to the QR code.
He then suggested that there was a lesson to be learned from his success, and turned to the merchants. “No advertising agency would do this advertising,” he wrote.
But according to Kristen Cavallo, CEO of Virginia-based advertising agency The Martin Agency, this is not true.
“Except for an advertising agency, this is an advertisement,” Cavallo tweeted Monday.
“It was actually inspired by presentations that our agency showed to your team,” she continued, citing page numbers for advertising concepts presented by her company, which she said included floating QR codes on a blank screen.
Strangely enough, Coinbase’s chief marketing officer, Kate Roach, had already lent money to another digital agency, Accenture Interactive, for her work on Super Bowl advertising last week.
Kavalo disputes that her decision to summon Armstrong was not about intellectual property, but instead about respect.
“I wrote because his thread could easily have been a celebration of creativity and breakthrough thinking, instead of claiming credit and neglecting agencies,” she wrote. “I stand for @Accenture as much as I stand for the industry.”
Shortly after Cavallo’s tweet on Monday, Armstrong updated his topic with an additional post, thanking an unnamed creative firm for its work in creating the ad, ordering music and obtaining permits. “Honestly, I felt like we were all one team, so I didn’t fully realize it, thank you!” He wrote.
Asked for comment, Coinbase directed HuffPost to tweets from his CMO late Monday, suggesting that the CEO was confused about Accenture Interactive’s involvement.
“Coordinating with our creative partner Accenture Interactive (AI) was a hassle – to such an extent that our CEO actually thought we were one team when we presented the work,” Ruch wrote.
She said that many agencies, including The Martin Agency, had submitted ideas, including QR codes for several different campaigns, but “none of the ideas of any of our partners were conceptually what we were looking for and did not stay the floor for the construction ”.
She said the idea for the QR code was given the green light after Accenture Interactive proposed inserting the code in a meme.
“The meme as a conceptual basis was a creative genius and a unique use of the QR code and it was what unlocked our [Super Bowl] success, “she wrote.
HuffPost contacted Martin for comment.