Isle of Any’s Coinbase campaign is meant to mess up your TV

“Coinbase is known for its progressive, irreverent work with a real focus on quality and craft,” Isle of Any co-founder Toby Treyer says. “It meant that from beginning to end there was a real desire to find new ground and lean into the idea all the way,” contextualising the NYC creative agency’s partnership with the cryptocurrency company. “We were looking to find a bold and disruptive way to land a new message for Coinbase and crypto,” fellow co-founder Laurie Howell adds, looking to shift the general perspective of crypto from being a futuristic thing to being a contemporary one – but do so in a way unexpected in the industry. “This is how we arrived on the System Update idea,” Laurie says, approaching Coinbase’s 2025 advertising campaign with irreverence over technicality or eccentricity. 

The campaign’s narrative is led by an infamous – and famously annoying – system error: the blue screen of death (BSOD), transforming lines of error code into satisfying, imaginative scenes formed by ASCII art. Drawn to BSOD as a creative and storytelling device, especially due to the familiarity of the error in popular and digital culture, Toby saw the potential in what it could represent, becoming a sign and symbol for the changes to come. “It’s a trigger and a messaging device at the same time. It’s pavlovian, whenever you see it, it immediately tells you ‘something up with the system’,” he says, signalling the call for (and arrival of) fundamental change. “We liked the idea of making the experience of seeing the work as part of the message,” Laurie adds, with the films designed to initially feel like an authentic error. “The work is made for the moment, the NBA Playoffs, so we knew we’d have a captive audience on TV,” he says, “so we were looking to play with that attention and to be as disruptive as possible.” 

The design of the campaign film additionally references the construction of crypto, existing – at least at the beginning of the film – purely as code, the very same foundation as the blockchain. “Using only code, how could we take you on a ride, communicate the benefits of crypto and find a feeling?” Laurie asks, detailing how pure code could then become something more. “We were really interested in finding our own thing,” Toby says, “finding something that felt true to the BSOD / ‘Code come to life’ idea,” landing on ASCII as the aesthetic of choice. Equally native to digital culture, like BSOD, ASCII felt appropriate to the audience and context while offering an exciting narrative opportunity. “We didn’t want it to be an ASCII art filter,” Toby explains, “so we were keen to push it and find our own language,” working with Buck Design for the complex animations – leading to much trial and error. “From here we then moved into a combination of bespoke character animation alongside fluid modelling,” allowing Isle of Any to precisely control every element of code.

Aware that code in isolation is, ultimately, quite sterile, Laurie stresses how important it was for them to find feeling and “soul” within the sea of blue and lines of numerals. “We’d prototyped the work at IOA with the Jamie XX track from the beginning so we loved the feel and how hypnotic it was,” he says, referencing the film’s soundtrack. “As we developed the films, we would take early animations from Buck and cut them with Cartel NY,” responsible for the editing, “and sketch sound design with Wave Studios NY (Sound),” culminating in an overtly collaborative process. “It worked really well as we could deliberately find the different shaped bits,” Laurie ends, “avoid over-polishing and get to the right irreverent feeling.”