Bicycle Playing Cards (subnation)
How We Brought Bicycle Playing Cards Into the Bored Ape Yacht Club
A case study in Web3 community marketing — and what it takes to earn trust from one of the most discerning audiences in the NFT space.
Bicycle Playing Cards has been making magical moments since 1885. The Bored Ape Yacht Club launched in 2021 and quickly became the defining blue-chip NFT community — a 10,000-member club where owning an Ape meant holding a piece of internet culture. The question we set out to answer: could a 138-year-old card brand earn a seat at the table?
The answer was yes. But it required more than a press release and a branded hashtag.
The Brief
Bicycle had acquired Bored Ape #1227 and wanted to build a limited-edition "Community Deck" — a playing card deck featuring real Bored Apes submitted by BAYC holders. The task was to bring that concept to life across social channels, recruit the right Ape holders to participate, and build enough authentic brand presence within the BAYC community to make the launch land.
Our objectives were clear:
Drive a minimum of 18 Ape holders to sign up (stretch goal: 54)
Grow Bicycle's social following within the BAYC community
Create a live reveal activation on National Banana Day, April 19
Produce the creative and copy assets to support it all
The Strategy: Go Where They Live
The BAYC community doesn't respond to traditional brand announcements. They're vocal, knowledgeable about IP and Web3 norms, and highly attuned to inauthenticity. Winning them over meant operating on their terms — on Twitter (now X) and inside the private BAYC Discord server — in their language, in real time.
We launched the #1227CastingCall on March 14, running a daily activation across social, email, and a co-branded landing page for the next five weeks, building toward the National Banana Day reveal.
Three parallel workstreams drove the campaign:
1. Twitter Takeover We took ownership of the Bicycle Cards Twitter presence within the BAYC ecosystem — crafting a brand voice that felt native to the community rather than corporate. The Casting Call announcement kicked things off with a thread that racked up 22.2K impressions on day one alone.
To sustain momentum mid-campaign, we layered in a March Madness-style Joker Fan Vote bracket — a 15-day community vote via Twitter polls letting the BAYC community elect which two Apes would become the Joker cards in the deck. It drove 3,785 votes and 125,898 views across the bracket posts, keeping engagement high between signup waves.
2. Discord Presence We built Bicycle's presence inside the private BAYC Discord server — not as a promotional account, but as a responsive brand that listened, answered questions, and guided Apes through the participation process. Community management here was critical: 67 members joined our server and 41 direct conversations were handled through Discord.
3. Creative & Copy We produced and published 57 separate pieces of content across social, website, and email — from 3D motion assets and bracket graphics to story threads that walked through the history of the Joker card. The creative work kept the brand feeling visually consistent and culturally fluent throughout.
The Live Reveal
On April 19 — National Banana Day — we partnered with The Nifty Morning Show (presented by @niftygateway) for the live reveal of the selected Apes. Three branded segments aired across their simulcast on YouTube, Twitter Spaces, and podcast.
As part of the sponsorship, we also collaborated with the Nifty team to release a 1/1 Bicycle x Nifty NFT to their audience, driving traffic back to the Casting Call landing page.
Live Reveal Numbers:
3,100+ Twitter Spaces listeners
1,900 YouTube views
850 podcast plays
73,264 Twitter impressions
8,538 co-branded NFTs claimed
The Results
The campaign exceeded every benchmark we set.
MetricGoalResultApe sign-ups18 minimum / 54 stretch137 sign-ups from 121 unique holdersTwitter Views—302,655Twitter Engagements—4,287 (likes, replies, retweets)Follower Growth—+414Graphics Produced—57NFTs Claimed—8,538
Sign-ups more than doubled the stretch goal. Forty-seven Apes ultimately completed the full legal agreement and will appear in the Community Deck.
The Moment That Tested Us — and Made Us Better
Midway through the campaign, we were required to distribute a secondary legal agreement to verified Apes — just five days before the live reveal. The agreement, as initially written, drew immediate criticism from prominent community voices. Film producer and Ape holder Ramon Govea (@RamonGovea), a trusted IP expert in the BAYC world, publicly called it "the most lopsided predatory agreement" he'd seen in the space. His post hit 11,300 impressions within hours.
Rather than let the conversation spiral, we moved fast: individual outreach to Ramon and every Ape who voiced concerns, acknowledging the feedback, sharing our perspective, and committing to specific changes.
Within 72 hours, the agreement was revised. Ramon's public response: "Amazing! In record time, the team at @bicyclecards made swift adjustments and I would definitely sign this version, my fellow apes. Well done — you have my support."
What began as a potential reputational hit became one of the most credible moments of the campaign — evidence that Bicycle was listening, responsive, and committed to a fair partnership. The turnaround was visible to the broader Web3 community, and it built lasting trust.
What This Campaign Proved
Legacy brands can earn Web3 credibility — but only if they earn it. The BAYC community doesn't grant access based on budget or brand history. They grant it based on whether you show up consistently, speak authentically, and treat their IP and ownership rights with respect.
A few principles that drove our approach:
Native presence beats broadcast. Operating inside Discord and Twitter as a community participant — not just a brand publisher — made the difference in sentiment and sign-up volume.
Community management is crisis management. The speed and quality of our response to the terms backlash was only possible because we had people embedded in the conversation daily. Without that proximity, a negative tweet could have cascaded before we had a chance to respond.
Momentum is fragile. The legal agreement friction caused a steep drop in available partners from 137 sign-ups to 47 completed agreements. In high-engagement communities, anything that introduces friction between interest and commitment will cost you. Streamlining that handoff is the first fix we'd make in a second run.
Authentic collaboration amplifies reach. Partnering with The Nifty Morning Show gave the reveal event a credible platform and existing audience — rather than asking the BAYC community to show up on our terms, we showed up on theirs.
The Deck Ships
All of it — the Casting Call, the Fan Vote, the legal terms crisis, the live reveal — was building toward one thing: a physical product that people could actually hold in their hands. The 1227 Community Deck is now live.
Forty-seven Bored Ape holders who went through the full process — submission, verification, and a signed agreement — have their Apes printed as face cards in a limited-edition Bicycle playing card deck available at bicyclecards.com. Each featured holder also received a custom Bicycle NFT Joker card featuring their own Ape and a promo code for a complimentary deck. The community didn't just inspire the product. They became it.
One of the original post-campaign recommendations from the team was to make the product available as quickly as possible — to let the brand "speak to the product itself" while audience engagement was still high. That window is now open, and it matters. The community members who participated are proud. Several publicly posted about being selected. The "Ladies of BAYC" Twitter account called out the three female Apes featured in the deck by name. When @kobrakao thanked Bicycle for the partnership, Bicycle's reply — "We're here to stay" — wasn't just copy. It was a commitment the deck now backs up.
This is where the flywheel starts turning in the other direction. Before the launch, Bicycle was a legacy brand trying to earn credibility in Web3. Now they're a legacy brand with 47 community partners, a shipped product, and a pre-built audience of Ape holders who have personal stake in the brand's success. The 47 featured Apes alone represent a network with an estimated collective value exceeding $1 billion — and they're already advocates.
The work now is sustaining that momentum: new activations, new products, new reasons to stay connected. The Casting Call was the entry point. The Community Deck is the proof of concept. What comes next is up to how seriously the brand wants to build.
What This Campaign Proved, Start to Finish
The full arc — from a Twitter profile picture swap to a physical product in the hands of blue-chip NFT holders — took roughly two months and covered more ground than most brand campaigns manage in a year. A few things stand out in retrospect:
The promise held. The Casting Call announced winners on National Banana Day, exactly as advertised. In a space where overpromising is endemic, showing up on time — and with a real product — is itself a differentiator.
Community management is the campaign. Every Discord reply, every direct message to a skeptical Ape, every rapid revision to a legal agreement — that's not support work. It's the campaign. The goodwill Bicycle built by listening and responding fast is what made the deck launch land differently than a cold product drop would have.
The product closes the loop. One of the post-campaign recommendations was to "make products available" while momentum was at its peak. The deck being live now does exactly that — it turns earned attention into something tangible, purchasable, and collectible.
Relay specializes in Web3 community strategy, social channel management, and brand activation for companies entering the NFT and blockchain space. Interested in how we can help your brand find its footing in the next internet? [Get in touch.]