How a Crying Bear Brought Us New Users [case study]
We all know that building relationships with customers is essential. But what if I told you there’s an option that’s often overlooked? Situational marketing—it’s like the social glue that binds your brand to its community. When you get situational marketing right, you’re not just getting eyeballs; you’re engaging hearts and minds.
I recently shared a case study on this, and here’s another one below.
The situation
Picture this: It’s February 28, 2024, and Bitcoin’s all-time high price was just around the corner. A voice in my head whispered, “Time for some situational marketing, my friend! 👿”
Here’s how it all went down—straight from our internal Slack convos. (Yes, you get a special behind-the-scenes scoop!)
Boom! BTC smashes through to $72k, an all-time high. As expected, the whole crypto world goes nuts. Time to put our strategy into action.
The marketing
Following the brilliant suggestion from Narek Vartani, god of memes at CoinStats, we swapped the Bitcoin logo with a crying bear icon across our app and web platforms.
Btw, for those interested in stats, I’ve included charts from Google Search Console and App Store downloads at the end of the article. 😉
We pushed out a notification that was just too tempting not to tap on. Btw, you can also check out CoinMarketCap’s (our competitor’s) push notification for comparison.
Who is Bobo, you ask?
For those not knee-deep in crypto culture, let me break it down. In crypto, a bull market is when prices go up, and everyone’s riding the hype train. A bear market, on the other hand, is when things go south—prices drop, people panic-sell, and the market goes into hibernation. Bobo is the meme hero of the bear market, and we thought it’d be fun to show him shedding a tear as the bulls took over.
Measuring the success of situational marketing isn’t just about the numbers, though they do matter (and yes, they’re coming up). The real value lies in the user-generated content (UGC). We received tweets, comments, and even memes—all organic, and many quite funny.
I’ve included only the most interesting user-generated tweets in this article. The screenshots are clickable, so feel free to explore all the juicy content at your own pace.
“I can’t stop laughing“
“I’m dead…“
Who engaged?
In crypto, big accounts do not often engage with brands without an incentive. This time, we saw users with large followings engaging. Here are some of them below.
“they are doing funny things with the icons from time to time“
Funny things = situational marketing :)
It looks like people got used to situational marketing and expect it from us.
“me“
“love your app! thanks for the lolz”
“lmfaoooo“
Bobo community
Bobo besides being a meme of the bear market, there is a memecoin as well - Bobo coin. They noticed the campaign and seemed happy.
“I approve….” 🤷
”pretty sure they're dead”
“well played”
“putting bears on suicide watch with that BTC icon”
Screenshot dump
4chan
I can’t include all the screenshots in this article, but if you’re curious, you can check out the main tweets on this Google Sheet.
Stats (for nerds marketers)
Social media
Here’s a snapshot of the engagement we tracked:
UGC tweets (comments are not included) – 74+
UGC total impressions - 145,000
CGC tweet impressions - 124,000 (organic + sponsored)
The total number of followers who tweeted – 1,678,000
Google search
Organic, branded Google search traffic reached its highest level in the past 16 months.
App Store search
App Store downloads from App Store search hit the 2nd highest in the last 12 months.
🔴 It’s worth noting that BTC hit $72k all time high on the same day. So, we don't know the exact attribution.
Credits:
Idea, icon design, social media: Narek Vartani
Execution: Tigran B. Mkrtchyan
What’s next
As we look ahead to BTC reaching $80-90k, we’re considering our next steps. Have any suggestions? Drop them in the comments!
Before you go, feel free to share your feedback—positive or negative, I’m all ears!
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