How Crypto.com is making a play for the crypto-curious

The crypto platform is defining its customers segments and looking to engage them, wherever they may be in their crypto journey

Crypto.com has found its marketing sweet spot, with sporting partnerships extending from the AFL in Australia to the UFC, World Cup, Formula One and Paris Saint Germain.

The sporting engagements are about giving the six-year-old cryptocurrency platform reach into mass audiences but in a more organic way and medium than TV, says its global CMO, Steven Kalifowitz.

“You could make commercials, but that’s interruptive to the experience. Whereas in live sport, seeing brands integrated into the broadcast is not strange,” he told CMO. “So for us, the challenge was finding the right partners and integrating at the right level.

“There's so much attention on crypto as an industry. But a lot of times, it's about the things that grab headlines as opposed to companies and the people. So we started our journey by saying: ‘We need to introduce people to this company, and we need to introduce them in a way which communicates who we are. And that’s a large, global company focused on trust, safety and security.”

For Kalifowitz, the goal is developing the brand with a view to building long-term relationships with existing and future customers. “The last year has been very much about introducing ourselves as a brand, reaching lots of people, and making some pretty definitive statements about who we are,” he said.

Steven KalifowitzCredit: Crypto.com
Steven Kalifowitz


These ‘definitive statements’ are about defining the brand and its customers. “It's been a series of introductions of who we are, how we see the world and to really established the brand,” he said.

“We launched our campaign, ‘Fortune Favors the Brave’ through a TV spot with Matt Damon. That was more of an explicit introduction of who we are, and how we see the world. It’s very similar to the way Apple launched ‘Think different’. In that spot, Apple didn't tell you to buy a computer. It didn't show anybody using a computer. It was really a film expressing how Apple sees the world, and how it believed customers see themselves and the company.”

Kalifowitz described Crypto.com’s brand position as appealing to people who seek out the new and recognise it when they see it. “Crypto offers an opportunity for people who want to take control of their finances. It's a new industry, and a new technology which will fundamentally change how we engage with the Internet,” he said.

“You're not going with the mainstream when you're starting in crypto today, and so we aim to communicate that as a brand. That’s where ‘Fortune Favours the Brave’ came in. We’re a company of people who come to work every day because we want to change the status quo and make things better. If that resonates with you, as someone who wants to join a crypto company, then this is the place to come work. If you're a company out there who also sees the world like that, and you want to partner with us, we're a company for you.”

Targeting the crypto-curious customers

When it comes to Crypto.com’s customer sweet spot, Kalifowitz said the brand has identified more than just two distinct groups of people who are into or against crypto.

“It’s more nuanced than that,” he said. “There are the people who are really into crypto, and they're traders who trade the tokens. Then there are the people who are the builders, who are really into crypto as engineers and building new applications.

“We address both of them because we have amazing trading tools. But then we also have a venture capital arm investing in crypto-based startups. So we want to speak to both of those audiences. And when those engineers building crypto projects want to list their tokens for people to trade, we want to make sure the highest quality tokens are available on our platform.”

A second superset Kalifowitz highlighted is the ‘crypto-curious’. “Those are people who either just got into the industry recently, or are looking at it, not with scepticism, but more with interest,” he explained.

In this instance, messaging is around education, familiarity and recognising they want to start but don't know where to start or don't know what companies can give them the safest tools. “They're interested, they're ready to start, but they don't know where to start,” he explained.

“We have done a pretty good job in terms of attracting a new audience. But there's still a very large cohort of the crypto-curious still looking for the right company to start with, or who need enough information to then make their decision on how to take the first step. Or maybe they've taken the first step, bought some bitcoin, but now they're in it and excited, they still need to figure out how to take their next few steps. We want to be there for them.”

According to Kalifowitz, this cohort represents many millions of people. Success in conversion comes down to education and helping with their research.

“It’s a massive audience, and a lot joined the industry just in the past year,” he said. “Between March 2021 and April of 2022, our company went from 10 million users to about 50 million users.”

Another subset of customers for Crypto.com are people “on the other side of the chasm” who don’t intend to engage with cryptocurrencies anytime soon.

“It sort of describes technology adoption cycles,” Kalifowitz commented. “We want to both speak to the people who are in market today, but also be a beacon of light for people who we know are going to come into the market in the next few years, so we can develop a relationship with them over time.”

Key traits to demonstrate here are trust, longevity and staying power. “Because this industry will really require a lot of trust, to get people to come onboard,” Kalifowitz said.

Making the pivot to education

Crypto.com’s brand strategy is to communicate its offering as the safest, most secure crypto platform available to everyone in the world. It may have worked, with the brand reaching a kind of unique, special cultural zenith.

“It got to the point where South Park parodied the spot with Matt Damon, which for me was a career highlight,” Kalifowitz said. “When South Park recognises something in pop culture, and puts it into the show, that’s pretty amazing.”

More recently, the fintech has been pivoting more towards an education play, spending a lot of time developing its Crypto.com University and reaching people in different ways with that content “Now people know who we are”.

“In most markets, we're the number one, most well-known crypto brand. Now we've piqued people's interest, we're really focusing on education and creating articles to really help them understand crypto, and different elements of crypto,” Kalifowitz said.

Despite being a brand synonymous with a category which can attract attention for all the wrong reasons, Kalifowitz hasn’t seen this becoming a problem for Crypto.com.

“We do see ourselves as leaders of the industry, and we focus very hard on communicating we’re a trusted brand. So we work hard to differentiate who we are in the industry, but still be a leader in the industry,” he added.

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