TD Ameritrade: Greetings from the Blockchain by Havas New York
- Location:
In a definite first, TD Ameritrade and Havas have placed an ad in the blockchain as a celebration of innovation and creativity.
The ad is made up of 68 Bitcoin transactions, each containing of a string of 80 computer characters that come together to create ASCII art. It can only be viewed visually on a landing page. When it all comes together, the transactions form an image of a flag being held by a hand and featuring the TD Ameritrade logo.
The goal was to demystify finance, cryptocurrency and the blockchain. While putting the ad together the team had to consider that since each string is limited to only 80 characters, they had to be clever in character use, and chose only Unicode characters or simple typewriter characters (slashes, equal signs) to create the design. The first transaction contains an initial line, “See the full picture at tdameritrade.com/blockchain.” They then built the rest of the design from 67 additional transactions.
Each transaction contains a single line of the ASCII art, which, when taken in totality forms the larger image of a flag.
The ad was meant to spread word of mouth in the finance industry and across social media.
Credits
Client/Brand: TD Ameritrade
Campaign: Greetings from the Blockchain
CLIENT:
TD Ameritrade
Denise Karkos: Chief Marketing Officer
Kerin Morrison: Managing Director, Brand & Advertising
Justin Garcia: Director, Advertising & Social
Jim Crews: Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing
Erin Fairchild: Senior Specialist, Digital Marketing
AGENCY
Havas New York
Harry Bernstein: Chief Creative Officer, Havas New York
Israel Garber: Global Executive Creative Director
Keith Scott: Executive Creative Director
Paul Johnson: Executive Creative Director
Peter Gosselin: Creative Director
Jay Hunt: Creative Director
Alexis Carr: Copywriter
Keegan Sanford: Junior Art Director
Matt DeCoste: Associate Creative Director (Web)
Jess Davis: Associate Creative Director (Web)
Allyn Scherr: Junior Art Director
Stuart Culpepper: Group Director, Product & Experience
James Cloughen: Digital Producer
Tim Maleeny: President, Havas NY; Chief Strategy Officer Havas North America
Casey Ritts: Group Account Director
Elaine Purcell: Group Planning Director
Darah Rifkin: Account Director
Danny Wang: Director of Technology
William Lin: Solution Architect
Angus Lo: User Experience Technologist
Eric Nichols: Web Developer