Coinbase answers two labels with its own research

Two labels and a rebuttal

On 1 December 2023 Coinbase publishes "House", a 30-second film that carries the same description as its two siblings, "Break The Cycle" and "Side Hustle": "The 'lazy generation.' The 'quiet quitters.' These clichés miss the point. Despite what you may have heard about millennials and Gen Z, they're the ones building new tools to achieve their own goals and update the system."¹ The films open by naming two labels applied to millennials and Gen Z, and spend their thirty seconds disagreeing with them.

The campaign page the films point at carries the argument at length. Its headline reads "It's time to break the cycle. It's time to update the system.", and the paragraph beneath it repeats the film description word for word before turning to numbers.²

Where the numbers come from

The page sets out four blocks of statistics. The grievance: only 9 per cent of Americans are satisfied with the financial system, Gen Z has 86 per cent less purchasing power than baby boomers had in their twenties, the average house costs 309,400 dollars against 185,600 in 1970 in today's money, and public university tuition costs 310 per cent more. The rebuttal: 45 per cent want multiple sources of income, 32 per cent have side gigs, 77 per cent of Gen Z want to choose their own path. The product: 38 per cent say crypto can increase economic opportunities in ways traditional finance cannot, and 31 per cent of under-40s own crypto against 12 per cent of older people. And the politics: millennials and Gen Z will be a majority of voting-age Americans by 2028, and 51 per cent say they are likely to back crypto-friendly candidates.²

The provenance of those numbers is split, and the page says so itself. The satisfaction figure, the behaviour figures, the crypto figures and the voting figures come from Coinbase's own State of Crypto report, published on the company blog on 26 October 2023, five weeks before "House" goes up, and the page links to it under a button reading Read the report.^2,3 The three cost-of-living figures in the grievance block sit above a separate button reading Source, which links to an analysis by the consumer publisher ConsumerAffairs.² So the case against the labels is Coinbase's own research; the case that there is something to be aggrieved about is not.

The report states the campaign's premise in its own words: generational disillusionment "has been widely hyped via trends like 'quiet quitting' and 'lazy girl summer,'" and "these narratives miss the point".³ The report uses "quiet quitting" and "lazy girl summer". The films use "the quiet quitters" and "the lazy generation".^1#

Made in-house

The One Club's record for the campaign lists Coinbase itself as the brand-side, in-house agency, with MJZ as production company and Rock Paper Scissors and Pariah Creative in post. Mike Mills directs, Emile Mosseri composes, Kate Rouch is chief marketing officer, and Matthew Moore and Michael Giepert are creative directors. It takes a Merit at the One Show in 2024 in the category for television, video on demand and online work of 30 seconds and under, series.⁴

The entry's own statement of the case is blunter than the films: "the system wasn't designed for your generation, and it's clearly not working for your generation", and "now is the time to stand up for a new system that works for us".⁴

What the line does next

The campaign runs through a downturn. A Coinbase-commissioned Morning Consult survey of American adults in February 2023 finds that about one in five Americans have used crypto. On iSpot's estimate Coinbase spends close to 10 million dollars on television in 2023, down from nearly 38 million in 2022, and keeps advertising while much of the category stops.⁵ Kate Rouch frames the longer view: "Our vision isn't specific to a run or anything short-term."⁵

The line is still in use. The generational argument is not: the same address now carries a series of stop-motion films made with Aardman, under the same heading, It's time to update the system.⁶ What stays constant underneath is the mission Coinbase states on its own mission page, to increase economic freedom in the world.⁷ The line has carried other arguments as well: a 60-second spot titled Update the System first airs on American television on 6 March 2023, directed by Stacy Wall through Imperial Woodpecker and scored to Charles Mingus's "Haitian Fight Song".⁸ Coinbase also uses the phrase off screen, for a summit it holds in Washington in March 2024.¹