How a Crowdsourced Ad Campaign Drove Super High Click-Through Rates

In a crowded market of productivity software, Coda partnered with creative company BUCK to stand out with a unique, sometimes polarizing out-of-home and digital campaign. 

The concept was that everything evolves - even documents. This culminated in a series of seven “evolved” characters - like a chicken with arms, or a plant that grows sushi - with out-of-home placement in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as digital ads. Although the campaign is still running, early results are promising.

The Evolution video increased Coda's video completion rate on LinkedIn by 43%, and it also has the highest click through rate compared to other video campaigns.

Here’s what made the partnership and campaign unique:

BUCK and Coda run on Coda, which was a critical tool in the creative process. BUCK is an avid user of Coda and together, they planned all aspects of the campaign in Coda. Instead of dealing with version control, BUCK worked with the “garage door open” so that Coda and BUCK were always on the same page and working from the same Coda doc.

BUCK and Coda crowdsourced the campaign at multiple steps. Coda has a company culture of transparency and collaboration, and once they had the idea for an “evolution” of animals, they opened up ideation to the entire company. The whole company voted on concept drawings at an all-hands meeting. And after the launch with the initial set of Evolution characters, Coda crowdsourced their next characters with an open call to the public, then decided on an eighth character to create.

The campaign was tested internally and externally at many phases. After asking the company to vote on top character choices, Coda used Google Surveys to confirm their initial set of seven characters and continued to test throughout the campaign.