In the wake of a troubling period for digital currencies, OKX—the second largest crypto exchange by trading volume—has one-upped a recent campaign from rival Coinbase that claimed “it’s time to update the system” when it comes to financial services. OKX stated more emphatically that “the system needs a rewrite.”
In a global brand campaign to promote its Web3 services, OKX is challenging the status quo around the use of centralized systems in finance to boost the adoption of Web3 self-managed technology, according to chief marketing officer Haider Rafique.
Created by BBDO New York and directed by Paul Ward, the 1-minute film leading the campaign is a neo-noir mission statement set in a futuristic city in which the audience follows a goth/punk as she speaks directly to them, outlining the brand’s rhetoric.
“Carry on? Why don’t we question things instead? Why don’t we move on from a system that is clearly broken?” she asks as she begins to walk through different scenes including a room full of cash-sniffing suits and an art gallery filled with statues that switch to NFT apes.
It’s like a political ad filmed by Ridley Scott.
“Why compete with things at eye level? Why not launch a rocket—because if you launch a rocket in the sky, everyone’s going to look at the rocket,” Rafique said about grabbing attention with the eye-catching ad, then adding context to the brand statement.
His intention is to build on the company’s Web3 abilities and its mission to democratize finance. The ad follows the launch at the end of April of the ability to enable the viewing and transfer of Bitcoin Ordinals (NFTs with data such as images or videos attached) within the OKX wallet. It was also announced that the OKX NFT Marketplace would also soon offer mint and trade functionality for ordinals.
“As a company, we’ve split ourselves into two halves—half Web3 and half trading desk—and it warranted us to come out and share with the world where our point of view is on Web3,” he added.
