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

What if the background character in a video game suddenly refused to follow the script?

That’s the premise behind cryptocurrency platform Coinbase’s new campaign, “Your Way Out,” which encourages people to break away from the financial systems they’ve always known.

Created by Isle of Any and directed by Oscar Hudson through MJZ, the spot will air during the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday (March 15).

Set inside a video game world, a non-playable character (NPC) goes about his pre-programmed life until he decides to take control and break free. In a dramatic sequence, he makes a daring escape and eventually arrives in a new world populated by real humans.

The ad closes with a tagline that sums up Coinbase’s message: “Your way out of the system.”

It marks a sharp shift from the brand’s unconventional Super Bowl work. Last month during Super Bowl 60, Coinbase aired “Everybody Coinbase,” turning living rooms across America into karaoke sessions set to the Backstreet Boys’ hit “Everybody.”

Two years earlier, during Super Bowl 56, the brand simply ran a bouncing QR code that resembled an old screensaver. The ad baffled and intrigued viewers. About 20 million people scanned the code, crashing the landing page within minutes.

“The Super Bowl was our chance to bring people together and play a game with 136 million people where we got to say, ‘we’re in this together,’” Joe Staples, vp creative at Coinbase, told ADWEEK. “At the Oscars, the take is that we’re all in this thing and maybe it’s not serving us as well as it could.”

The spot will continue airing throughout 2026, including during the NBA Playoffs.

Different vibe, same theme

Despite the creative shift between “Everybody Coinbase” and “Your Way Out,” which are airing just 35 days apart, Staples sees them as connected. Both are rooted in the idea that people often interact with the world by default. Coinbase hopes to spark a different way of thinking, especially when it comes to financial freedom.

“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.”