We knew we needed to reach as many people as possible, beyond the established core audience of coffee fanatics. Without any media spend, we knew we needed a PR-worthy idea. We turned to a channel normally ignored by brands but with a large, relatively engaged audience – Tor, the anonymous network. This segment of the internet has been growing actively since 2010. Per Tor Metrics, Russia is the network's second most active country, with 208,000 unique users logging on daily. An anonymous social survey has shown that one in three Russians are familiar with Tor.

The approach: break through the stereotype that coffee is a drug with a simple trick: launch the first online coffee store on the dark web. A legal product. Sold through an illegal network.

To grow our coffee subscriptions, we looked to increase our audience from niche coffee fans to a broader public.

Target audience

This was a local initiative, targeting Muscovites who understand the value of coffee straight from the plantation, locally roasted, and are willing to pay for it.

Platform:

A website at cherniyx23pmfane.onion in the anonymous .onion domain zone which allows users to buy coffee using Bitcoins – and Qiwi payment system – both standard on anonymous marketplaces but unique for coffee subscriptions.

Objective:

To double the amount monthly coffee delivery subscriptions by boosting awareness among a new target audience.

Our campaign centered on the complete imitation of "black market" products. We managed everything from the vocabulary ("Straight off the Columbian plantations", "Pablo Escobar Approves", "I've been a user since I was 16") to time of posting (exactly 4:20 PM) and using video content and music created by active dark web users. We published the first post on a popular news site highly aligned with our target audience about the first online store for a legal product on Tor network, simultaneously launching banners on dark web forums leading users to the shop website. The results were immediate. Users started pouring onto the site from the dark web. Over 300 opinion leaders posted about the new "store" on the dark web on Facebook (reaching 1.5 Million people in the first day). By Day 2, Chernyi Cooperative was featured in most major Russian and International news sites.

We opened the first coffee shop in the "black market" (Tor browser), the first actually legal product sold on illegal network. The idea comes from the simple insight about coffee being not healthy product, and the campaign become viral all over the world with 0$ media budget.

Chernyi (Black) Cooperative is a small coffee shop in the centre of Moscow that in addition to standard coffee shop fare, offers monthly subscriptions for its own roasted coffee beans. Chernyi came to us in 2016 with a request to double the amount of coffee subscriptions.