“Now is the most important time for companies in the crypto category to advertise and scale their marketing because the rest of the world is building perception around it.”
– OKX CMO Haider Rafique
Three months ago, The Guardian reported that the price of bitcoin had fallen below $20,000 (£16,400) amid “deepening turmoil” in the cryptocurrency market.
Factors such as rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis have dissuaded investors from trading in risky and fluctuating assets like cryptocurrencies.
Nevertheless, in the midst of a “crypto bear market”, the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world OKX, has decided to launch a multi-million dollar advertising campaign with the aim of ‘introducing’ itself to the world.
A self-aware 90-second film, featuring the likes of Manchester City F.C. manager Pep Guardiola and McLaren Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo, plays on the fact that less than 15% of cryptocurrency traders outside of Asia are familiar with OKX.
The ‘What is OKX?’ campaign actively seeks to expand its global remit, adding to the various brand deals the exchange has already bagged with big names like Manchester City, McLaren Racing and Ian Poulter.
At the same time, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is also clamping down on crypto advertisers that fail to mention that the value of investments can fluctuate.
So why, with all the odds seemingly stacked against OKX, is the brand choosing now to invest millions into marketing?
According to OKX global chief marketing officer Haider Rafique, there are a number of reasons; not least the brand is keen to distance itself from the current state of the cyptocurrency market.
“It feels like the right time”
“I’ve launched a few crypto campaigns over the years and the challenge I often run into is that people don’t appear to be quite ready for crypto historically,” said the cmo.
“But going into this year, it feels like the right time.”
OKX has said in the past that it wishes to take a step away from the ‘smash and grab’ marketing strategy most crypto exchanges have adopted. The most recent Superbowl was dubbed by many as the ‘Cryptobowl’ due to the sheer amount of “revolutionist” ads on the topic.
“With this campaign, I wanted to steer away from a crypto revolution-type concept and detach ourselves from the bear market,” Rafique said.
“A lot of the early concepts we had for the ad emulated crypto.com or FTX ads. I wanted to have people learn about this industry and category in a fun, engaging way.”
Working with OKX’s creative agency BBDO, Rafique said the goal for the brand was to “up-level in the global markets and engage people in crypto”.
“BBDO are a traditional creative that I knew could help me produce consumer work that puts this category in line with the generational brands.”
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“We want to tell the world about our incredible assets”
The ‘What is OKX?’ campaign proved to be the perfect opportunity for the brand to introduce the world to its brand partnerships – McLaren, Manchester City, and Ian Poulter. Most recently, the brand also announced a collaboration with Tribeca Festival, with the launch spot narrated by Robert De Niro.
While Rafique admitted that having big name brands and celebrities in a spot is not always effective, he also highlighted that the new brand ambassadors suit the ethos of OKX.
“Celebrities and public figures have to clearly tie in with the utility and behaviour you’re looking to drive,” he said. “We want our community of traders and investors to learn from the mental and physical conditioning athletes like Ian Poulter and Daniel Ricciardo go through to then build that discipline into their lifestyles.”
Rafique wants the next generation of investors to learn that “trading is a tough business”, which involves “consistency and training”.
“The first commercial that we’ve brought out is about bringing the players together to establish them with our brand.”
“Why would we not spend more when others are scared?”
Rafique stressed that OKX does not wish to follow the crypto exchange crowd as it has its own “intention and point of view”.
“Now is the most important time for companies in the crypto category to advertise and scale their marketing because the rest of the world is building perception around it. Eventually perception becomes reality, and the perception right now is that crypto is an extremely volatile industry that has extreme ups and downs. We have to mitigate the perception that people don’t consider it to be a serious investment.”
Rafique believes that advertising during “bull runs” invited emotional and reckless behaviour.
“When crypto.com or FTX were making Superbowl ads I was in the hot seat internally. I told everyone that we should let them run their media budgets, because they’ll get a lot of speculative customers who will burn out really quickly on the platform. We don’t want that that type of buyer on our platform.”
OKX’s main marketing target audience is those already buying and selling crypto.
“Traders will always be the primary audience and our core strength on our platform, but that being said, we want to carefully incentivise new entrants to come in and make sure that they have a low-risk path on our platform.”
“It’s our cultural principle to try and protect customers”
According to Rafique, the company and its founder, Star Xu, have always valued the protection of the customer.
When the Terra (LUNA) crypto token crashed earlier this year, OKX were apparently “the only exchange in the world that were able to save customers’ money.”
“We literally had love letters from them thanking us for saving them through it.”
Advertising watchdog, the ASA, is tasked with regulating crypto advertisers that fail to mention that the value of investments can fluctuate.
While Rafique has worked in several regulated categories in his career, he stated that he has “never waited to be told what is common sense.”
“We do feel that promoting responsible trading is characteristically the right thing to do. However, we also shouldn’t be in the business of consumer protection, but rather in the business of educating people that these are serious investments that tend to be volatile.”
“Our success will come from gaining long term customers”
When asked how OKX measures the success of its marketing campaigns, Rafique responded by stating that the brand’s success will come from gaining long-term customers “who want to stay and build healthy investing and trading habits.”
“Frankly our global brand awareness in the grand scheme of things is almost non-existent as there are about 7.7 billion people in the world. Having 20 million people using our exchange, predominantly in Asia, doesn’t mean we have strong brand awareness yet.
“I don’t want our teams to be obsessed with trading volume as I think it’s very short-term.”
“The first thing we asked our creative agency BBDO to do was to help us be the first crypto brand that people love. It’s a big mouthful and it will take us years to do, but that’s the journey we want to be on.”
“In the future we want to go full education-mode”
Rafique pointed out that the brand’s most recent campaign was “just introductory” and about putting OKX “on the map”.
“The next few stages of our strategy will be about getting the likes of Daniel Ricciardo to talk about their routines so that traders can actually learn from them,” he said.
“Our future marketing strategy is based around the fact that we want to educate, so we’re going to launch our very own trading course for the first time.
“That will define the OKX character even more.”
