During Elon Musk’s recent appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO appeared in a skit where the “Dogecoin father” was repeatedly asked “What are digital currencies?” or “What is Dogecoin?” no matter his answer.

The skit points to the sheer complexity of the cryptocurrency space, and the aftermath of the show proved the volatility of the $2 trillion crypto market. Just like stocks, money placed in crypto is not guaranteed. Within a week of his SNL appearance, Musk tweeted that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin for vehicle purchases out of environmental concerns. The night of Musk’s tweet, the cryptocurrency market dipped significantly, losing $365.85 billion, according to CNBC. And with every Musk tweet since then, the market has responded like a yo-yo.  

Complex and as unpredictable as it is, crypto is proving to be an immense opportunity for the marketing industry—not unlike other emerging markets such as gambling and cannabis. Agencies and other vendors are jumping into the space to consult for a litany of brands that have evolved out of the rise of buying and investing in digital coins, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Polkadot and yes, even Dogecoin, the coin that began as a joke meme.

Marketers charged with getting the masses to adopt cryptocurrency-fueled brands face some real challenges. It’s not easy to introduce a brand-new sector faced with unpredictable market fluctuations as the economy starts to break out of a debt-inducing pandemic. Those challenges are what Elizabeth Paul, chief strategy officer at The Martin Agency, now has to tackle for the agency’s first crypto client: Coinbase, the digital coin exchange with a growing user base of 56 million that went public last month.  

“Crypto has a perception challenge. It’s a category defined almost entirely by speculative investment and negative stigmas,” says Paul. “Ultimately it will power the global financial system, but that requires crypto to become truly mainstream.” The goal with Coinbase, she says, is to make it clear to consumers that cryptocurrency is the future and “not just a pipe dream or an investment fad.” She adds: “Crypto will support a new generation of businesses built atop it, every one of them an opportunity for agencies to lean in. In five years, I doubt there’s an agency that will be untouched by its impact.”

But Tesla’s move to stop accepting bitcoin points to a potential image issue that marketers must solve: convincing consumers that crypto is not an environmental hazard. Crypto is created by so-called mining where computers battle with each other to solve puzzles, but that so-called mining process can consume huge amounts of energy. Musk has referred to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, which finds that crypto mining can use more energy than entire countries like Sweden or Malaysia. 

"It's a huge deal,” says Ashley Streb, principal and co-founder at Boston-based agency Rocket Insights, which works with Circle, the coin exchange and developer of the USD Coin. “Different chains have different environmental impacts. Many of the brands we've talked to that are interested in getting involved in this space are hesitant to be associated with Ethereum and its energy usage. But we know that the Ethereum team is working on version 2.0 that will fix the energy problem, though there's no set date for it. So in the meantime, we're helping brands to choose implementations that are more environmentally friendly.”

‘To the Moon’

For all the risk, there’s evidence the crypto market could see mass adoption, thanks to Musk and celebrities like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Lil Yachty and Mark Cuban actively promoting it. Also spurring the market is the rise of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which are bought and sold using crypto. Brands like Taco Bell and Pizza Hut have jumped on the NFT craze as a marketing tool. A new survey from cryptocurrency exchange Gemini found that 14% of the U.S. population now invests in cryptocurrency, with two-thirds of U.S. adults who don’t yet own crypto identifying as “crypto-curious.” Even smaller “altcoins,” like DigiByte, VeChain and SafeMoon, have taken off.

Although Tesla has jumped off the crypto wagon for now, other brands like PayPal, AT&T, Expedia, Microsoft and Overstock now accept crypto as a form of payment. Last week, The Influencer Marketing Factory, which creates TikTok influencer campaigns for brands like Dunkin’ and Sony Music, became one of the first agencies to accept payments in Bitcoin and other major digital currencies.

“Companies, especially in the Crypto space, prefer to pay in crypto compared to USD and since the value of 1 [Bitcoin] and [Ethereum] is going up day by day, it would be a wasted opportunity for our agency from a business perspective,” says Alessandro Bogliari, co-founder and CEO of The Influencer Marketing Factory, who also describes crypto payments as faster than wire transfers and easily tracked. Still, the agency is limiting the amount it will accept every year because of the risk involved.

Publications have also sprung up around crypto craze. Last month, TheStreet launched a new paid newsletter for investors called Crypto Investor, and mainstream news organizations like Bloomberg and Reuters have ramped up coverage. “We're learning as we go, just like everyone else in this space. It's what's so intoxicating about covering crypto,” says Crypto Investor Editor-in-Chief Michael Bodley.

As use cases have skyrocketed, so too have crypto brands’ investment in their advertising, especially on social platforms like Instagram. Coinbase went from spending around $34,000 on Instagram ads in the second quarter of 2020 to spending $3.4 million in the first quarter of 2021. Crypto.com, a crypto exchange based out of Hong Kong, went from spending $178,000 on Instagram ads in the second quarter of 2020 to $2.7 million in the first quarter of 2021, according to social media data analytics firm Pathmatics.

TV, out-of-home and social platforms like Instagram and Twitter are preferred channels. But some platforms, like Google, Facebook and YouTube, are still proving difficult to work with. In 2018, Google reversed part of its ban on cryptocurrency advertising and Facebook began allowing some types of ads, but crypto brands say there are still restrictions in place and policies have not kept up with the speed of the sector.   

Make it mainstream

Brands are leaning into ads and messaging that paints crypto as accessible. Education also plays a big role. The Gemini survey found that 60% of people who own crypto say their knowledge about it is low.  

Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale, a digital currency asset manager with over $50 billion in investments, has veered from what he calls the “stereotypical financial advertisement,” which are often product-heavy and weighed down with investment ideas.

Grayscale’s TV and digital ads are filmed like movie trailers, with their own characters and story arcs. It uses New York-based agency Vested and director Brennan Stasiewicz, who has a history of working on spots for big-name brands like Cadillac, Samsung and Google.

“We want to break down any mystery or preconceived notions [people] might have about it,” says Sonnenshein. The new “Origins” campaign that debuted last month plays on the imaginations of a group Zoom call.

Grayscale has also started jumping into partnerships, as though it was a car or sportswear brand. This month, the brand announced a deal with the New York Giants in which the brand will sponsor games and philanthropic events as well as educate the team on cryptocurrency. Sonnenshein says Grayscale is the first cryptocurrency partner of a National Football League team. Another deal includes paying Time Magazine in Bitcoin to create an educational video series. “A lot of what we do is really rooted in educational efforts,” says Sonnenshein, “working to ensure that the investing public really understands the asset class as a whole.” 

Making crypto accessible also means creating seamless user experiences, says Streb. The ability to purchase NFTs directly through credit cards instead of specific digital currencies and designing experiences with “people’s embedded behavior of evaluating cost and value in U.S. dollars” in mind could be helpful in bringing new customers into the cryptosphere, he says.

When designing the visual identity for Coindirect, a cryptocurrency exchange that launched in 2019, Sam Lane, the co-founder of design agency Alphabet, sought to avoid sector tropes—so no coin visuals or circuit boards that he felt were “overdone.” Instead, Coindirect showcased a variety of everyday people who would interact with the brand, from single moms to working professionals.

“We reinforced the idea that crypto can be for everybody,” says Lane. “It’s not something that’s just for seasoned investors and internet geeks. There is no reason why the cryptocurrency platform that a person invests in should be marketed any differently to a music streaming service they listen to or a smartphone they use every day.”