Blokhaus knew the AI conversation was getting loud, but NEAR had a different story to tell. While everyone else was talking about who’s building the smartest AI, NEAR was asking a better question: who gets to own it? The challenge? Getting people to believe they had any say in a future that felt already decided.
The brief that wasn’t really a brief
NEAR came to Blokhaus with something bigger than a typical campaign ask. They’d built tech that could power AI applications—the kind that puts users in control instead of big corporations. But in a space owned by OpenAI and Meta, NEAR needed people to believe there was actually an alternative.
“The challenge was that everyone felt the game was already over,” explains the Blokhaus team. “How do you get people to care when they think the winners have already been picked?” The answer came from an unexpected place: the language that rebels and builders have always used.
When “fork” became a fighting word
Here’s where Blokhaus got clever. They borrowed a word every developer knows: “fork.” In coding, when you fork something, you take what exists and build it better. Blokhaus said: what if we applied that to the entire AI game?
“Fork That” wasn’t just a tagline—it was permission. Permission to reject whatever big tech was serving up and build something different. The messaging worked because it didn’t talk down to people. It assumed they were builders, not just consumers waiting to see what happens next.
Visual poetry meets algorithmic anxiety
The creative execution lived in what Blokhaus calls “the uncanny valley between sleek commercial polish and surrealism.” Think Severance meets Wes Anderson—clean but strange, with intentional distortions and visual cues that signal something’s off. The aesthetic wasn’t accident; it was alarm.
Campaign videos showed perfectly composed scenes with subtle wrongness: manipulated realities, corporate boardrooms, and data visualization that felt simultaneously beautiful and unsettling. “That’s the point,” notes the case study. “It’s a wake-up call dressed in aesthetic precision.”
From landing page to rallying cry
Blokhaus activated “Fork That” across every touchpoint. The immersive landing page at near.org/forkthat combined the campaign’s visual language with NEAR’s technical substance. Paid social pushed specific scenarios where NEAR’s approach offered genuine alternatives. Email campaigns spoke directly to developers and creators about ownership and opportunity.
But the most interesting activation might have been the custom “Fork That” boxes sent to key opinion leaders. Instead of typical swag, Blokhaus created packages that encouraged recipients to share their own moments of bucking convention. “This invitation to amplify the message has started a conversation with the world about decentralized AI,” the agency reports. “It’s taking off.”
What happens when you position the alternative
Early signs suggest the campaign is connecting. The “Fork That” language is spreading beyond NEAR’s immediate circle, becoming shorthand for “I’m not buying what Big Tech is selling.” Blokhaus took a complex tech company and made it feel like a movement anyone could join.
That’s what good indies do—find the human story in complicated products. While big agencies might lead with features and technical specs, Blokhaus led with choice. Sometimes the best campaign isn’t about what you’re selling. It’s about what you’re helping people say no to.
The bigger fork in the road
NEAR’s “Fork That” campaign represents more than smart blockchain marketing. It’s a case study in how independent agencies can help clients reframe entire conversations. Instead of fighting for attention in an existing narrative, Blokhaus helped NEAR create new language that makes their alternative feel inevitable rather than aspirational.
As AI development accelerates and consolidates, campaigns like this matter. They remind us that the future doesn’t have to be written by whoever has the biggest budget or loudest voice. Sometimes it just takes the right agency to help people remember they have choices.
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