IPFS / Filecoin on NY Times Square?

(TL;DR: Be aware of those seemingly legit advertisements on Times Square. They might or might not be scams.)

It has been a long time ago since the Protocol Labs team tweeted their updates on Filecoin. While many enthusiasts are waiting for their announcement, a Facebook post, which was written by a gentleman referring himself as "幣少爺", claimed that the team started their marketing campaign all over the world.

https://www.facebook.com/Epoch.Cryptocurrency/posts/220145578598336

 一早講左最近有filecoin 官方消息偷步流出
再一次證明我講既野係無錯
一早預測左 香港係今次首要最強第一節點filecoin 官己經係唔同既地方宣傳緊
要靠關係先會預先收到消息再一次證明我在ipfs 消息係領先全港
堅守信念 

The idea of that post is quite simple.

1. The Protocol Lab has started promoting IPFS and Filecoin globally.
2. Hong Kong is going to be the "strongest" node in IPFS.
3. The guy posting this had insider information of IPFS.

A picture showing an advertisement being shown on the billboard of NASDAQ Tower was attached to the same post too.

The picture itself looks genuine. Obviously it is not the case for the ad.

1. The font usage is inconsistent. The term "Filecoin" is fine but the term "IPFS" is not. In particular, the latter, which appears to be Cooper Black, is drastically different from the one used by the Protocol Labs (i.e. Brandon Text Medium).
   
2. The official site of IPFS mainly use Brandon Text. The ad, however, used Arial Black and Arial for the phrase "Best Places to mine Filecoin" and three places, respectively.

I won't say the ad is fake at the moment. Yet, I would had the designer fired for good if I had a chance to do that. The design is undoubtedly unprofessional.

Later, a video filming the ad being shown on the billboard was uploaded to the same Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/Epoch.Cryptocurrency/videos/220287535250807/

The video was uploaded to DTube. Click the link below if you want to watch it through DTube instead.

https://d.tube/v/lasso/cx3w8jes

The video is very likely to be real. For pictures, creating fake image by superimposition is extremely easy. With an online picture editor (e.g. Photofunia), you can essentially make any (artificial) image. I don't think the same can be easily done for videos. Moreover, the trailer of Arrested Development is for the latest season.

https://www.reddit.com/r/arresteddevelopment/comments/8mqexl/nyc_time_square_promo_video/

Working on a very recent stock footage sounds impossible for a crypto "expert".

Wait. What if the ad was really shown on Times Square?

It turns out that the solution is quite simple. Pay a small fortune and you can have your ad shown at there too!

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.w4004-16501008398.4.420c7cb8Nda5GY

There is an agency called "Stones_PR". One of its businesses is helping enterprises putting their advertisements on that billboard. The picture below is one of the successful cases. 

The package is not costly at all and only takes RMB 13,800 for you to become eligible for the service. The service package includes two parts - the first one is of course the billboard ad and the second one is promotion via 400 newspaper agencies. Once the campaign is finished, you get a few still pictures and a very short video showing the ad being displayed on the billboards.

The conversation with the agency was shocking. Many thanks for a hero providing this! The unprofessional translation is provided below.

1. Upper-Left: the guy asked whether the agency had been responsible for the IPFS promotion, as the pictures looked very similar.
2. Upper-Middle: the agency agreed.
3. Upper-Right: the agency provided the pricing details and said that no newspaper agency had been involved in the IPFS promotion.
4. Lower-Left: the agency confirmed the picture had to been designed on one's own, while there were templates available.
5. Lower-Middle and Right: the agency provided a preview of picture used in the IPFS promotion.

Protocol Labs is a registered corporation in the United States. I don't see why it has to look for a Chinese agent to do the advertising. Moreover, for a company which needs its product to be promoted, it is nonsense for that company not to accept the newspaper promotion campaign, which is free!

FYI, there is no new tweet from the official twitter at the moment.

The takeaway message is very simple. While this is not a scam, it is also not probable that the official team of Filecoin, would promote in such a surreptitious, unprofessional and incomprehensible way. If you want to promote something, you can pay and let others do the rest.

Be critical to the ads you see in Times Square.