Montréal International's 2021 film campaign 'We are Montréal: Get in the game!' by Rodeo FX showcases the city as a world capital for VFX, animation, and video
ARCHIVEMontréal International Puts the City on the Global Creative Map
Montréal International launched 'We are Montréal: Get in the game!' in April 2021 as a 60-second film designed to attract foreign investors, entrepreneurs, skilled workers, and students to the city's world-class video games, visual effects, and animation industries in Canada.
The campaign positions Montréal as one of the world's leading capitals for creative industry, a distinction it earns not through abstract claim but through the collective participation of 18 Montréal studios that contributed characters, films, and production work directly to the film itself, as reported by Little Black Book. That structural choice transforms the campaign from a civic advertisement into an industry-wide statement of confidence. The city is not described — it is demonstrated.
Produced by Rodeo FX, with the initial concept originating from BLVD MTL, the film responds to a 2020 brief from Montréal International that sought a new promotional tool to showcase the city's creative strengths to an international audience, according to montrealinternational.com. The campaign spans the gaming and movies categories, operating simultaneously as an investment-attraction vehicle and a talent-recruitment platform. Its single media asset — the film — carries both mandates without splitting its creative focus.
In Canada, where Montréal has established itself as a genuinely significant node in the global entertainment and technology economy, the campaign speaks to a real and defensible position rather than an aspirational one. The hashtag #MTLcreative extended its reach across social platforms, and the campaign generated 886,170 views with 131 likes according to clapboard.com, reflecting meaningful organic reach for a government-adjacent economic development film. The Clapboard Campaign Score for this work is 63 out of 100.
ARCHIVEMontréal International identified a strategic gap between the city's actual industrial standing and its international perception among mobile talent and potential investors. The 2020 brief, as documented by montrealinternational.com, explicitly sought a promotional tool capable of reaching foreign entrepreneurs, skilled workers, and students — three distinct audiences that share little except an interest in where the world's most ambitious creative projects are made.
The strategic logic is grounded in Montréal's genuine density of creative infrastructure. The city hosts studios working across video games, visual effects, and animation at a scale that few cities globally can match, with Ubisoft — whose Assassin's Creed protagonist Ezio serves as the campaign's central character, according to lbbonline.com — among the most prominent operators in the local ecosystem. Competitors for international talent and investment, including Vancouver and Toronto within Canada, as well as London and Los Angeles internationally, each present credible alternatives. What distinguishes Montréal is the concentration of studios and the collaborative culture that allowed 18 of them to contribute to a single civic campaign.
The global video games market stood at approximately US$175.8 billion in 2021, according to GlobalData, while the animation and VFX market reached approximately US$167.9 billion that same year with a forecasted compound annual growth rate of 11.5% through 2030, according to Marketstatsville. In that context, a city seeking to attract a share of that industrial activity has clear commercial justification for investment-grade promotion. Montréal International's campaign arrived at precisely the moment when remote-work normalisation and post-pandemic talent mobility made international recruitment not only possible but urgent for studios competing at global scale.
Rodeo FX anchors the creative execution of 'We are Montréal: Get in the game!' as both the production studio and the primary creative force behind the animation. The initial concept was developed by BLVD MTL, with Rodeo FX then expanding that foundation through extensive animation work, as reported by lbbonline.com. The result is a film that functions as a live demonstration of the very capabilities it promotes — the VFX and animation craft on screen is produced by the same industry the campaign is designed to celebrate.
Yohann Rabusseau, Visual Communications Manager at Montréal International, is credited as the graphic designer who submitted the campaign, according to lbbonline.com. His involvement signals the degree to which the campaign was shaped from within the client organisation as much as by external creative partners. The decision to centre Ezio from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise as the film's lead character is notable: it uses one of the most globally recognised intellectual properties associated with Montréal's gaming industry to signal creative pedigree immediately and without explanation.
The participation of 18 Montréal studios in the film's production is the campaign's most distinctive creative decision, as documented by lbbonline.com. Each studio's contribution — whether characters, footage, or production assets — means the film's visual texture is inherently pluralistic, reflecting the ecosystem rather than any single studio's aesthetic. This is a difficult production challenge to manage and its execution represents genuine craft ambition. The film medium, distributed digitally with a social extension via #MTLcreative, suits an audience of globally mobile creative professionals who make platform-native viewing decisions. Production credits beyond Yohann Rabusseau, Rodeo FX, and BLVD MTL are not fully documented in available sources.
The campaign accumulated 886,170 views according to clapboard.com, a figure that represents substantial reach for a government-adjacent economic development film competing in a media environment dominated by entertainment content. For context, investment-attraction campaigns rarely generate organic viewership at this scale, which suggests the film succeeded in crossing from institutional communication into content that creative-industry audiences chose to watch and share.
The 131 likes and 7 comments recorded by clapboard.com indicate modest direct engagement relative to total views, a ratio consistent with a campaign that functions more as a broadcast statement than a community activation. The #MTLcreative hashtag created a measurable social extension, though precise social media reach data is not publicly available from verified sources. No verified awards for the campaign are documented across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on its participatory production model. By involving 18 studios, Montréal International created an artifact that the industry itself had reason to distribute — every contributing studio became a natural amplifier. That organic distribution mechanism, built into the production process rather than the media budget, is among the most commercially intelligent features of the campaign's design. For a campaign targeting foreign investors and skilled workers in the video games, VFX, and animation sectors, earned distribution from credible industry voices carries more persuasive weight than paid placement. The Clapboard Campaign Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign with genuine strategic clarity and production ambition, held back by limited documented measurable outcomes beyond view count.
'We are Montréal: Get in the game!' is a 60-second film produced for Montréal International by Rodeo FX, launched in April 2021 in Canada. It positions Montréal as a global hub for video games, VFX, and animation, targeting foreign investors, entrepreneurs, skilled workers, and students considering the city's creative industries.
Rodeo FX produced the film, expanding on an initial concept from BLVD MTL, as reported by lbbonline.com. Yohann Rabusseau, Visual Communications Manager at Montréal International, was the graphic designer credited with the campaign. Eighteen Montréal studios contributed characters, footage, or production assets to the final film.
Eighteen Montréal studios participated in the production of 'We are Montréal: Get in the game!', according to lbbonline.com. Each studio contributed creative assets — characters, films, or production work — making the film a collective industry statement rather than a single-studio production, which also gave contributing studios direct incentive to share the campaign.
Ezio, the protagonist from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise, appears as the central character in the film, according to lbbonline.com. Ubisoft's Montréal studio is among the city's most prominent gaming operators, making Ezio an immediately recognisable signal of the city's global creative credentials to international audiences in the gaming and entertainment sectors.
The campaign holds a Clapboard Campaign Score of 63 out of 100, according to clapboard.com. This archive rating reflects strong strategic clarity and a distinctive participatory production model involving 18 studios, balanced against limited publicly documented performance metrics beyond the 886,170 views the film accumulated on its primary distribution platform.
Montréal International targeted video games and VFX because Montréal is a globally significant hub for both sectors, as documented by montrealinternational.com. The global animation and VFX market reached approximately US$167.9 billion in 2021, according to Marketstatsville, making talent and investment attraction a commercially urgent priority for the city's economic development mandate.
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