Zlodei Agency (BADS) and Eugene Lapitsky sold the Coffin Dance meme at the NFT auction to support Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine, April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A meme with African dancing pallbearers known as Coffin Dance was sold at the NFT auction for a record amount of 1,047,806 dollars (327 ETH). The winning bid was placed on April 9th. The meme was sold to support Ukraine, which is now fighting a Russian military invasion.

It is important to note that 25% of the revenue was sent to the "Back and Alive" charity fund  according to the prescribed terms of the smart contract. Another 25% will be used to pay for the assistance of well-known promoters from the NFT community. The remaining 50% will be spent for the development of African culture by the team of Benjamin Aidoo.

The birth of the NFT project

The project was initiated and organized by Zlodei (also known as Bads Agency), Ukrainian advertising agency together with PR manager Eugene Lapitsky, entrepreneur Dmitro Makarov, marketing specialist Mykhailo Vatazhok, IT specialists, and the Coffin Dance crew themselves. The team developed a marketing campaign, launched it, and ended up auctioning the meme as an NFT.

At first, the team was worried that they did not have enough time and small chances to succeed, knowing the stories and insides of selling other popular memes as NFTs. They started preparing the promo a month or two before the start of the auction and still decided to go for broke with a speed up approach to promotion. The war doesn't wait and every minute of delay could have cost the lives of Ukrainians.

The success of the project can also be described by the fact that this token entered the top 3 most expensive meme tokens. This NFT was sold for $1,046,079 (327 ETH) and this is an absolute record among memes on the Foundation platform.

Foundation link: https://foundation.app/collection/coffindance-ukraine

For comparison, the previous leader in value was the Nyan Cat meme (300 ETH).

By the way, the author of Nyan Cat, Chris Torres, also supported the team and the Coffin Dance project.

"Congratulations to the official owner of Coffin Dance world fame @3fmusic

We would like to say thank you to everyone who supported our NFT, especially guys from the @Bads_Zlodei: Dmitry Makarov, Eugene Lapitsky, Mykhailo Vatazhok" 

The original tweet: https://twitter.com/nanaotafrija/status/1512599165012148225 

The background

Many people on the internet are familiar with the dancing pallbearers. They have become incredibly popular all over the world, they are being parodied, invited to launch challenges, they are characters of memes and video jokes. They have been featured in global media such as The Guardian, CNN, BBC and The New York Times. The Coffin Dance meme was even posted on the official page of the US President Donald Trump (early 2020). In Ghana, dancing with coffins is a common practice and a tradition. Locals hire dancers for funerals to cheer the deceased on their last journey. Before the video was associated with the spread of COVID-19, now it's going to have a slightly different meaning, especially for the Ukrainians, who believe in victory and put efforts to help the Ukrainian defenders to fight the Russian invaders. 

More than a year ago, Eugene Lapitsky, the former manager of Morgenstern (Russian hip-hop artist who signed a direct deal with Atlantic Records last year) and Yuri Khovansky, was contacted by Benjamin Aidoo, the leader of a group of Ghananian dancers called Nana Otafrija Pallbearing Services. In order to help the guys create the Coffin Dance brand and collaborate for projects. 

Together with Bads agency, Eugene managed to develop successful marketing solutions and lead interesting projects that helped the guys to remain in the public space. Even though it was possible to build close friendship and partnership between the teams from Ukraine and Ghana, this did not bring significant financial success. Cooperation was based on simple human relationships and mutual assistance.

And at the moment when they finally reached the organization of the Coffin Dance USA Tour, it was planned to issue an NFT token to support the tour. But the plans fell through and the expectations of both sides were not met.

Meanwhile Russia attacked Ukraine. The war has begun. Eugene Lapitsky canceled all his Russian projects and his verified VKontakte page was blocked for covering the situation. The Zlodei agency's office in the very center of Kyiv city was temporarily closed, because lots of employees had to leave their homes due to the war. The advertising market sank heavily and many had to struggle. Seems like a catastrophe. But even in a remote format Ukrainians temporarily stuck in different cities and countries, together with dancers from Ghana, were able to cooperate and develop a successful strategy for the promotion campaign for the Coffin Dance NFT. Also, the Pallbearers recorded a video appeal to support Ukraine, where they urged everybody to do everything possible for Ukraine and help Ukrainian charity funds in addition to their NFT-donation.

As a result, it turned out to help both Ukraine ($250,000 donated to "Back and Alive" fund) and the Coffin Dancers who finally received $500,000 for further creativity and popularization of African culture. All the participants were strongly united and motivated for new achievements.

After the tremendous success of this NFT project, Bads Agency (Zlodei) is open for discussion of new projects related to cryptocurrency and NFT. They are willing to make use of their vast experience in the field to help Ukraine fight the invaders now and to recover afterwards. Their team plans to organize a tour of famous dancers in Ukraine nightclubs after the victory.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1797239/Coffin_Dance_Team.jpg