Xbox set out to deepen its cultural relevance and reassert what it stands for. While new titles were giving gamers a reason to pay attention to the brand, Xbox wanted to let everyone know what they stand for: in a world that increasingly feels designed to sedate us, Xbox is here to wake up the human inside.

Wake Up is a modern fairy tale about an anthropomorphized rat who uses Xbox to tap back into his own humanity. The film actualizes the proverbial “rat race” as a surreal metropolis inhabited by anthropomorphic rats. The rodent society we observe is one that’s unquestionably their own, yet undoubtedly familiar.

This film brings the common expression “rat race” to life in an extraordinary way. “Rat race” is often used to describe the self-defeating pursuit of the life society tells you to live.

In recent years, a pervasive feeling has developed among Gen Z and Millennials: The pursuit for the life they were promised hasn’t fulfilled them. Infinite scrolling, easy everything, and a culture of sameness have lulled them to sleep at the wheel of their own lives. There’s a desire for change, for an antidote to this modern affliction. Young people want to be snapped out of their routines. To wake up.

We follow Horatio, our furry protagonist, and discover a world burdened by routine. The daily grind has stripped all the rodent citizens of their spark—well, almost all of them. Horatio comes across a few rats who’ve found a simple, yet profound joy that rekindles their humanity: Xbox.

This production required live action, VFX, plenty of set builds, and an obsessive amount of planning to create environments that enhanced the film's magical realism. In each of the 152 production setups, every set and prop served to immerse the viewer in a world that’s familiar, yet strange. There isn’t a single frame that doesn’t include a charming, rodent-centric detail of this world. Even the license plates say “Squeakattle.”

Multiple scenes required 50-100 actors wearing motion capture masks that were meticulously integrated into the practically built sets afterwards. The sets were then augmented with an array of digital elements that added to the narrative: rat streets and billboards to rat pneumatic tubes.

The film struck a chord with Xbox fans, shining a light on a truth they know all too well: the daily grind can make you forget your own humanity, but the joy of gaming is the perfect tonic.

Within the first few days of launch, the film took over entertainment and gaming press, generating $19.4M USD in advertising value equivalency and a potential news reach of 352M (on the live date alone), ultimately reaching over 3.63B.

Wake Up garnered consumer reactions across different metrics, indicating strong delivery against the objective of improving Xbox brand health.

The film received thousands of comments across social. Fans expressed enthusiasm for Xbox’s return to bold, unconventional gaming ads, quoting “this gave me 2000’s vibes” and “man I want more of this from Xbox—a creative ad showcasing Xbox being played on multiple devices, allowing us to game freely how we want, but also ending the device and principal in which Xbox was originally formed.”

Press featured the ad in roundups of the week’s best creative work, with headlines like “Video game commercials are art.”