The Martin Agency’s CEO says that they came up with Coinbase’s bouncing QR Code idea but CEO Brian Armstrong refuses to give credit

• Kristen Cavallo, CEO of The Martin Agency took to Twitter to share that the agency had pitched a similar idea in August and October of 2021.
• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that the idea was conceptualised in-house.

Coinbase’s clutter-breaking advertisement during Super Bowl generated a lot of chatter. It was the Cryptocurrency exchange app’s Super Bowl debut. The full 60-second ad just showed a colorful bouncing QR code, paying a tribute to the iconic bouncing DVD logo, one which never hit the corner of the screen.

When scanned, Coinbase’s QR code brought viewers to its website. It offered a limited-time promotion of $15 worth of free Bitcoin to new sign-ups, along with a $3 million giveaway that customers can enter. The ad was so popular that Coinbase’s app crashed shortly due to the sudden spike in traffic.

In a Twitter thread, Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong explained how the brand came up with the idea and said that an outside agency had pitched him “a bunch of standard super bowl ad ideas” but “I didn’t like any of them.” “No agency would have done this ad. Standard super bowl ads tend to be gimmicky, celebrity cameo driven, going for a laugh etc,” he added.

In a recent development, Kristen Cavallo, CEO of The Martin Agency responded to Armstrong’s Twitter thread saying that the agency had pitched a similar idea in August and October of 2021. She said that the agency hasn’t been credited for their idea yet.