Coinbase’s Oscars Ad Turns a Video Game NPC Into a Financial Rebel

“Coinbase wants to proudly be a way out of this, an option and a way to take back control,” he said. “We’re encouraging people not to be passive observers. Taking action solves anxiety.”

Isle of Any, which worked on both campaigns, collaborated closely with Coinbase to capture the idea of disruption in different ways. Staples said the goal of “Everybody Coinbase” was to disrupt the viewing environment by getting audiences to sing along. The goal of “Your Way Out” is to disrupt the viewer’s internal sense of identity.

Story drives creative

The creative approach stemmed from the story Coinbase wanted to tell. According to Ben Brown, creative director at Isle of Any, the video game setting makes the message more relatable because audiences instinctively understand how rigid and pre-determined those worlds can be.

“At its heart, it’s a story about a hero escaping the way things have always been done and discovering his freedom as he gains control of himself and moves towards a big, bright future,” Brown said. “You root for and relate to the character more by the end because you’ve seen him reject everything the video game represents.”

The production choices were equally ambitious. Instead of relying entirely on visual effects, the team built the video game world with real actors and physical sets.

Actors wore printed masks that flattened their faces, along with cheek prosthetics that gave them rigid, angular features. Sets were designed to appear low-resolution and intentionally drab. The approach helped ground the story in something human, particularly for the NPC protagonist.

“It was really important to us that you feel the humanity in the hero. To do that, we quickly realized that you need a real person in there,” Brown said. “Making this in real life was obviously a massive challenge but it felt like the only way to really pull this off properly.”