Stunning and Brave

Please watch this ‘documentary’ on Matt Damon's ridiculous Crypto.com ad

Fortune “favours” the blowhards.

By now, you have probably been made aware of Crypto.com’s new ad campaign featuring Academy Award winner Matt Damon as its new, manly man spokesman. It is a very bad ad.

Although the “Fortune Favours the Brave” ad has been circulating during TV commercial breaks and before movie trailers for a little while now, the internet’s snowballing roasts are a very enjoyable sight to behold. And let me clue you in on a little secret, if you don’t mind: Crypto.com’s “The Making Of” behind-the-scenes video is somehow even better.

The ‘Avatar’ of 1-minute cryptocurrency ads — Alright, so first off, I want to take a moment to extend an apology for the four minutes of your life that Matt Damon and his slim-fit v-neck stole from you. You did not deserve that. Still, I do think it’s of vital importance that we all watch Crypto.com’s “behind-the-scenes” upload, if only to bear witness to what future historians will look back upon as an apex in Bloviating Bro Culture History.

“25 COUNTRIES. 5 CONTINENTS. A WORLD RENOWNED DIRECTOR. AN ACADEMY AWARD WINNING ACTOR. 1 AUDACIOUSLY BRAVE CONCEPT,” Crypto.com’s introduction promises us of its one-minute bland commercial about how apparently only people with Courage are investing in MuskCoin these days.

What then ensues is some of the most impressively self-serious upselling of Dogecoin I have ever seen. “The first time I heard ‘Fortune Favours the Brave,’ my mind was blown,” confesses Crypto.com CMO Steven Kalifowitz soon after, setting a depressingly low bar for blowing someone’s mind.

To see buying and selling cartoon monkeys equated to scaling Mount Everest, going to space, and pioneering flight takes us so far into the realm of the absurd that it genuinely boggles the mind.

There are detailed analyses of how the commercial was envisioned (use the British spelling of ‘favor’ to show you’re serious, etc.), the “cutting edge” technology used to film said commercial (an expensive, straight-line track for the camera), and the movie magic employed to bring it all together (green screens). If you only heard the audio, you could be forgiven for assuming the filmmakers are discussing Avatar or a new Star Wars release instead of an ad about Bitcoin that plays while you take a pee break during The Bachelor.

Paging Matt Damon — Perhaps my favorite section of the BTS video is the part you don’t see: Matt Damon. While Crypto.com could snag the director, VFX artists, and company top brass to wax poetic on their project, Damon is completely MIA. Apparently, the actor’s contract did not include a brief hype-man cameo for his hype man cameo commercial.

In all likelihood, Damon was on set for approximately 45-minutes, during which time he filmed a couple takes, smiled affably, signed some autographs, and promptly left as soon as possible. It all combines to something so pure in its stupidity, so perfect in its awfulness, that it somehow makes the commercial itself seem legitimate in comparison.

And you know what? God bless ‘em for it.