BitBeat: For Bitcoin, Some Good Press, Finally

– This is not your father’s ‘Got Milk’ ad campaign.
Bitcoin, the six-year-old fledgling cryptocurrency with an image problem, will be getting a makeover. Unless you’re familiar with social-media stars like Julia Kelly, Jorden Keith, and Acacia Brinley, though, it’s going to be an ad campaign unlike any you’re used to.
A consortium of bitcoin insiders, including the Bitcoin Foundation, BitFury, BitGo and Tally Capital, hired avante garde ad agency TheAudience to rebuild the currency’s reputation among the general public. The goal is pretty standard: highlight bitcoin’s positive aspects – its potential to help the ‘unbanked,’ for instance – and get people to forget about Mt. Gox and Silk Road.
‘We need to highlight the opportunity of bitcoin, we need to educate people on what it is,’ said Oliver Luckett, the firm’s CEO, sounding as passionate about it as any bitcoin evangelist. What’s different is how the firm will go about achieving that goal.
There have been very brief efforts at bitcoin ads. BitPay, the merchant-services firm, bought a U. S. college football bowl sponsorship. The ‘Bitcoin Bowl’ (the company boldly chose to use not its name but the currency’s) put the name before millions of sporting fans; the company ran ads during the game, too (which North Carolina State won, 34-27, over the University of Central Florida).

This post was published at Wall Street Journal on Feb 24, 2015.