Microsoft and The Invictus Games Foundation created Anthem for All in 2022, using eye-tracking and Xbox Adaptive Controllers to let wounded veterans compose
ARCHIVEMicrosoft and The Invictus Games Rewrite What It Means to Play
The Invictus Games "Anthem for All," powered by Microsoft and created by McCann London and McCann New York in 2022, is a campaign built around a real anthem composed by wounded and injured service personnel using eye-tracking and Xbox Adaptive Controller technology, premiered at The Hague Games in April 2022 as the official opening piece of the event.
The Invictus Games represent the resilience of ill, injured, and wounded war veterans and active service personnel. The 2022 edition of the Games took place in The Hague from 16 to 22 April, after two postponements caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Wikipedia. The event brought together 395 competitors from 17 nations, drew approximately 100,000 visitors, and hosted 400 media representatives, also per Wikipedia. Against that backdrop of scale and meaning, Microsoft and The Invictus Games Foundation chose not to produce a conventional sponsorship film but to create something that would become part of the Games itself.
The campaign centres on a collaboration between service personnel, veterans, The Invictus Games Foundation, and Microsoft's Hands-Free Technology Lab in San Francisco. Technicians at the lab adapted existing gaze eye-tracking systems and Xbox Adaptive Controllers to function as musical instruments, removing the requirement for physical mobility and allowing participants to orchestrate music through the movement of their eyes and minimal physical input. Personalised adaptive solutions were designed for every individual involved, restoring a form of musical expression that injury had removed. The resulting anthem was performed at every opening ceremony moment and celebratory occasion across the six days of the Games in the United Kingdom-connected international spotlight that the event commands.
McCann London and McCann New York created a short film produced by Irresistible Studios that documents the making of this anthem. The film follows Private Karl Hinett and Lance Corporal Emma Lum from their lives in service, through the experience of injury, and into the recording process itself. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 78 out of 100, reflecting strong creative integration and cultural resonance within the United Kingdom market and internationally.
ARCHIVEMicrosoft's accessibility work has a documented strategic lineage. In 2019, McCann created "We All Win" for Microsoft and Xbox — a Super Bowl commercial that showed children with disabilities using the Xbox Adaptive Controller to participate in gaming alongside their peers, according to reporting by Wired and motioncue.com. That campaign established Microsoft's public position that accessibility is not a product feature in isolation but a means of enabling shared social experiences. "Anthem for All" in 2022 transferred that proposition from gaming into music, military rehabilitation, and public-interest storytelling, deepening the strategic thread across categories.
The Invictus Games context sharpened the brief considerably. In the United Kingdom, where the Games carry particular cultural weight given their founding by Prince Harry in 2014, the event intersects national conversations about veteran welfare, disability, and public service. BBC One broadcast daily coverage of The Hague 2022 Games from 17 to 22 April, produced by BBC Studios Factual Entertainment and Events, per BBC reporting — meaning the anthem and its story reached a mainstream British television audience without the campaign needing to buy that exposure separately.
Sanjiv Mistry, Executive Creative Director at McCann London, stated in The Drum in May 2022: "It's only fitting that such an inclusive, inspirational organisation as The Invictus Games gets an anthem that lives and breathes those values." The strategic logic was that technology developed for gaming accessibility — primarily positioned against competitors such as Sony's PlayStation accessibility suite and the broader adaptive gaming market — could serve a far wider human purpose when redirected toward veterans in a rehabilitation context. Sally Elliott, Director of Commercial Marketing at Microsoft, stated in The Drum in May 2022: "Microsoft believes in empowering every person on the planet to do more and be more with the help of technology." That mission statement aligned directly with the Invictus platform's own values, making the partnership structurally coherent rather than opportunistic.
The creative execution operated on two parallel levels simultaneously. At the production level, Microsoft's Hands-Free Technology Lab in San Francisco spent more than two and a half years developing the project, including nine months dedicated to research and development alone, as reported by The Drum. That timeline reflects the depth of engineering work required to adapt gaze eye-tracking systems and Xbox Adaptive Controllers into instruments capable of producing a coherent musical piece — not a demonstration, but a fully realised anthem recorded at Metropolis Studios, per The Drum's reporting.
Sanjiv Mistry of McCann London stated in The Drum: "To help make this happen, it needed not just cutting-edge tech, but some incredible people at the heart of it." Those people are named and present throughout the film. Private Karl Hinett and Lance Corporal Emma Lum carry the narrative personally — their individual journeys from active service through injury and into the recording studio give the campaign its emotional structure. The film does not position the technology as the protagonist; it positions the veterans as musicians reclaiming something that was taken from them, with technology as the instrument of that reclamation.
The short film was produced by Irresistible Studios for McCann London and McCann New York, with the production partnership spanning both agencies' capabilities across the United Kingdom and the United States. The editorial choice to show the anthem performed live at every opening ceremony, celebration, and moment of recognition across the six days of the Games gave the film footage that no controlled studio production could replicate — an anthem that existed in the real world before the camera ever arrived to document it. That sequencing, building the artefact first and the story second, is the defining craft decision of the campaign. The recording at Metropolis Studios, one of the United Kingdom's most recognised professional recording facilities, further grounded the anthem's legitimacy as a piece of music rather than an advertising construct.
The campaign carried measurable reach from the moment the Games opened. BBC One's daily broadcast coverage of The Hague 2022, produced by BBC Studios Factual Entertainment and Events per BBC reporting, placed the anthem in front of a substantial UK television audience across six consecutive days. The Games themselves attracted approximately 100,000 visitors and 400 media representatives on the ground, according to Wikipedia, creating both live and mediated exposure that extended well beyond any paid campaign placement.
The Drum reported in May 2022 on the campaign's reception within the industry, quoting senior figures from both Microsoft and McCann. The campaign was recognised at the Gerety Awards, as documented by the Gerety Awards' own records, reflecting industry acknowledgement of the creative and strategic work. The Microsoft Unlocked platform and LinkedIn coverage, per those respective sources, documented the project's development and reception among professional and technology audiences, extending reach into communities with a specific interest in accessibility and adaptive technology.
The structural effectiveness of "Anthem for All" rests on a deliberate design choice that separates it from conventional purpose-driven advertising. The anthem was a functional artefact — it was performed, recorded at Metropolis Studios per The Drum, and used as the actual opening ceremony piece — which means its impact existed independently of the film's distribution. In the United Kingdom market, where veteran welfare and adaptive technology carry distinct public resonance, the campaign connected Microsoft's commercial accessibility proposition to a credible, non-commercial platform in a way that no product-led execution could achieve. The Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100 reflects that integration: strong on cultural fit and creative coherence, with the production depth to justify the ambition.
The Invictus Games Anthem for All is a 2022 campaign created by McCann for Microsoft and The Invictus Games Foundation. Microsoft's Hands-Free Technology Lab adapted eye-tracking systems and Xbox Adaptive Controllers so wounded veterans could compose a real anthem, premiered at The Hague Games in April 2022 and broadcast on BBC One across six days.
Microsoft used gaze eye-tracking technology and Xbox Adaptive Controllers, adapted at its Hands-Free Technology Lab in San Francisco. These tools allowed participants with limited mobility to orchestrate and perform music. The project required more than two and a half years of development, including nine months of research, according to The Drum, before recording at Metropolis Studios.
The film produced by Irresistible Studios features Private Karl Hinett and Lance Corporal Emma Lum. Both are service personnel who took part in the anthem's creation using Microsoft's adaptive technology. Their personal journeys from life in service through injury and into musical performance form the emotional and narrative backbone of the short film.
The Invictus Games 2022 took place in The Hague from 16 to 22 April 2022, according to Wikipedia. The event followed two postponements due to COVID-19. It featured 395 competitors from 17 nations and drew approximately 100,000 visitors, with BBC One broadcasting daily coverage produced by BBC Studios Factual Entertainment and Events.
Anthem for All extends the strategic platform established by McCann's 2019 "We All Win" Super Bowl campaign for Microsoft Xbox, as documented by Wired and motioncue.com. That earlier work positioned the Xbox Adaptive Controller as enabling shared experiences for people with disabilities. Anthem for All transferred that proposition from gaming to music and military rehabilitation in 2022.
Anthem for All received recognition at the Gerety Awards, as documented in the Gerety Awards' own records. The campaign was also covered extensively by The Drum and the Microsoft Unlocked platform following its April 2022 launch. Industry acknowledgement reflected both the creative execution and the technical depth of the nine-month research and development process behind the anthem.
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