As a world first, TD Ameritrade launched an advert that’s not like anything you’ve seen by now. It is embedded in the blockchain. Known as “Greeting from the Blockchain,” a campaign was born to help the company celebrate innovation and creativity and also to applaud the growing community of blockchain innovators and investors. It also highlights the way new technologies continue to expand and positively change consumers’ behavior and expectations. The intriguing campaign was made possible thanks to the help of creative people at the brand’s agency of record, Havas New York.
Inspired by TD Ameritrade’s heritage, the people at the New-York-based agency found an innovative way to creatively express the use of technology. During this week’s #ThrowBrandThursday column you will get a chance to admire an ad that’s entirely made of ASCII code art. It comprises of 68 Bitcoin transactions, each containing of a string of 80 computer characters that were linked together only to give birth to some unexpected crypto art. But, there’s a twist: It is only visually accessible on a landing page. When putting together all the data, the transactions make up a contour of an image which basically shows the TD Ameritrade logo.
TD Ameritrade’s big target was to demystify finance, cryptocurrency, and the blockchain. While putting the ad together, the team had to keep an eye on the fact that each string is limited to 80 characters only. Because of this space restriction, the crew had to be careful about the use of every character. Each row features a key part of the entire image, with all the characters written in a part of the blockchain function called OP_Return.
“By nature, the blockchain has limited capabilities, but we found that one of its functions (OP_Return) allows pieces of data just 80 bytes in length to be embedded inside of it. Those 80 bytes roughly translate to 80 plaintext characters (but only when you use only the simplest letters, numbers and punctuations). So, we had to be clever about how to construct our message and did so by linking together 68 individual transactions to create a canvas to hold a piece of ASCII art. In the end, we planted TD Ameritrade’s flag on the unhackable, unchangeable digital ledger, in an innovative way, that will be remembered—and be there—forever,” the creative team explained the process behind creating the hidden ad.
The message was made with $23.15 worth of blockchain transactions. Despite its low cost, there was a 229% increase in social mentions and 51.6 million media impressions, in the first week alone. And this is how one becomes part of a blockchain — by literally becoming a part of the blockchain. Well done!