Anyone who assumed that the dog-related meme coin craze ended with the crypto market’s mid-year decline was clearly mistaken. As the market rebounded, meme coin enthusiasts made their way out of their caves with more swagger.
The number of dog meme coins is now in the thousands. However, one has caught the eye with its "aggressive" advertising campaign targeting commuters using London’s public transport system — Floki Inu. Across Underground stations, buses and trains, it is now a common sight to see the ad which reads, “Missed Doge? Get Floki.”
Floki Inu creators note on its website that the token was inspired by Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, who once made a tweet saying that “Floki” would be the name for his “Shiba Inu” dog. Worth noting is that both Shiba Inu and Floki Inu are now meme coin projects tapping into the Elon Musk hype which started with Dogecoin.
The ads across London are sponsored by a “large marketing treasury” that the Floki Inu project derives from “taxes” paid by new buyers. New buyers pay an instant 4% which is forwarded to the project’s treasury.
According to a Medium post, the team had set aside almost £1.1 million ($1.5 million) for marketing the project with the goal of legitimising it in the eyes of investors. The London ads are labelled as “full-out assault of the London public transportation system,” while the project also plans to “lock-down” the Los Angeles metropolitan area for the last three months of the year.
In other words, the advertising campaigns are probably not going away, not until regulators figure out a way to curb their spread. In September, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) revealed plans to clampdown on misleading crypto ads.
The agency has already issued warning orders to crypto exchanges like Coinfloor and Luno, whose Bitcoin ads were deemed to have violated advertising standards. The regulator apparently served the notices because of having full knowledge of the companies behind the ads.
In the case of projects like Floki Inu, however, the teams are usually anonymous and difficult to track. Transport for London, the UK government agency that manages the public transport system, told the Financial Times that it is “the client’s obligation to ensure [its ads] are compliant to run in the UK, and that “It is not TfL’s responsibility to carry out due diligence on the individual or entities themselves.”
Only time will tell whether the meme coin ads will be cleared from London or continue to gain momentum. Floki Inu (FLOKI) , like most meme coins, has a ridiculously high supply of ten trillion coins and has increased in price by over 1600% since its launch.
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