In just a few weeks, after regulators banned previous ads from a marketing campaign Floki Inu ran in 2021, the company is launching a new campaign that will include ads on city buses and train stations.
Floki Inu, a Dogecoin competitor, has launched an “aggressive” marketing campaign in London, plastering advertisements around the city’s train stations and on its famous red buses.
In an April 23 blog post, Floki Inu announced the new campaign, noting that “the people’s cryptocurrency” will begin advertising on the sides of 100 buses and on 203 posters in the city’s underground train stations on Monday, April 25.
The new meme coin campaign follows a similar marketing blitz in late 2021, which sparked outrage from London assembly member Sian Berry, who sought to ban all cryptocurrency advertisements on the city’s rail and bus networks.
Floki Inu’s most recent campaign included signs that read, “Missed Doge? “Find Floki.” Berry compared cryptocurrencies to gambling in a tweet in November, adding that public services should not promote “risky” schemes.
The campaign drew so much criticism that the UK’s Advertising and Standards Authority (ASA) intervened, banning the ad in a ruling on March 2 because it “exploited consumers’ fears of missing out, trivialized cryptocurrency investment, and took advantage of consumers’ inexperience.”
Despite the regulatory pushback, Sabre, the pseudonymous moniker for Floki Inu’s Director of Marketing, emphasized in the announcement that the team has no intention of standing down:
“In a sense, this second London campaign is an even bigger win for Floki and the crypto industry as a whole than the first, as our team has fought for the right to advertise our groundbreaking project to the public.”
Some wanted us to be completely banned here, and the anti-crypto agenda is still coming thick and fast in the form of smear campaigns and misinformation. “No matter what, the Floki Team will always stand our ground,” they added.
The ASA continued a slew of bans on crypto firms advertising in the UK earlier this year in January. The regulator halted two Crypto.com advertisements that promoted the ease of purchasing Bitcoin and earning yield rewards because they failed to disclose the investment’s risk.
The ASA banned six crypto firms from running ads in mid-December 2021 for “taking advantage of consumers’ inexperience” and failing to demonstrate the risk of crypto investing.
