Yuriy Mikhalevskiy was watching people scan QR codes at brunch in Thousand Oaks, California, in early 2021, when the concept hit him. He was freelancing at R/GA at the time, and the Coinbase CEO had approached a creative director there about making something disruptive for the Super Bowl — something like Reddit’s five-second spot.
That evening, Mikhalevskiy got on the phone with his CD and pitched the idea: a 60-second spot that was nothing but a QR code on a black screen. No logo. No voiceover. No Coinbase branding at all. “I was like, can they afford giving everybody that scans it 20 bucks?”
The CEO loved it. Then ghosted the entire team. Ten months later, Mikhalevskiy watched the ad play during the Super Bowl — and had what he describes as “an existential breakdown.” He’s now telling the full story for the first time on Murder Hornet’s The Super Duper Show, hosted by Tyler Pierce and Alex McInnis.
The idea that started at brunch
The timeline, according to Mikhalevskiy, starts in 2021 — not 2022. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong approached Kevin Koller, a creative director at RGA, about creating an anti-Super Bowl ad. Mikhalevskiy, working remote during COVID, noticed the new muscle memory people had developed around QR codes. “Everybody was pulling out their phones to scan QR codes,” he says.
He pitched the concept to Koller that night. Armstrong was excited. They built a presentation with the QR code as the lead concept among four ideas. They pitched. They thought it went well. Then Armstrong disappeared — and eventually hired another agency.
Watching your own idea on the biggest stage in advertising
Mikhalevskiy doesn’t watch football. He happened to have the Super Bowl on. When the QR code appeared on screen, he couldn’t bring himself to scan it.
His first text went to David Roth, who responded with characteristic bluntness: “I hated that stupid QR code.” Then Mikhalevskiy texted Koller. “Wasn’t that your idea?” Koller asked. “Yes,” Mikhalevskiy replied. “That was our idea.”
The tweet thread that rewrote history
The ad crashed Coinbase’s servers, sent the app to number one on the App Store and generated over a billion dollars in value. Then Armstrong posted a tweet thread claiming the idea came from in-house brainstorming — that “no ad agency would have done this ad” and that it could only come from “Silicon Valley engineer brain.”
Mikhalevskiy, who holds a Stanford engineering degree and spent his first two years out of school working in Silicon Valley, found that claim particularly rich.
Martin Agency CEO Kristen Cavallo publicly pushed back on Twitter, citing specific presentation pages her team had shown Coinbase with floating QR code concepts. A media firestorm followed. Mikhalevskiy watched from the sidelines.
Why he stayed quiet — and what changed
“I was convinced that it’s a normal thing,” Mikhalevskiy says. “Literally everybody I talked to had that story on major accounts.” He accepted the loss and threw himself back into work.
But every year the Super Bowl rolls around and the ad lands on another “best of all time” list — usually in the top five — the question returns.
He compares the advertising industry’s tolerance for idea theft to how stand-up comedy used to operate before Joe Rogan publicly called out Carlos Mencia. “That stuff stopped,” he says. “Why are we accepting this when millions of dollars and careers are on the line?”
Take credit. Claim your work.
Mikhalevskiy’s advice to other freelancers is direct: “Do not take that advice. Don’t shut up.” He’s particularly focused on younger creatives entering the industry. “Stop being scared of the structure. It’s inherently unstable. The worst thing you can do is allow someone else to take credit for your work, because your entire currency is the quality of your ideas.”
The Coinbase QR code ad is now on row one of his portfolio.
Pierce and McInnis, who run Murder Hornet on a model that openly leverages and credits freelance talent, used the conversation to advocate for a broader shift — one where freelancer credit becomes a standard part of contractor agreements, not a favor.
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