Ubisoft and Sid Lee Paris launched 'Even dream cars have a dream' for The Crew Motorfest in 2023, blending live action and VFX to reach US car culture and
ARCHIVEUbisoft and Sid Lee Paris Reframe Car Culture for The Crew Motorfest
"Even dream cars have a dream" is a 2023 live action and VFX launch campaign created by Sid Lee Paris for Ubisoft's The Crew Motorfest, an open-world driving game set on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu, designed to reach gamers, car enthusiasts, and lapsed drivers across the United States and global markets through an 80-second anthropomorphic film titled "Life is Better at Motorfest."
The Crew Motorfest marks the third installment in Ubisoft's global action-driving franchise. The game's move to O'ahu on the Hawaiian island represents the franchise's first departure from mainland North America, establishing a new creative and geographical identity for the series. The campaign's central brief was to capture an audience wider than committed racing-game fans — drawing in anyone who associates driving with freedom, sensation, and identity.
The strategic hook is rooted in cultural tension. Ubisoft and Sid Lee Paris identified that, in an era of expanding traffic regulation and the gradual rise of autonomous vehicles, the visceral thrill of driving is receding from everyday life in the United States and beyond. The Crew Motorfest positions itself as the space where that thrill survives — and the campaign's creative premise answers that brief with irony: what do dream cars themselves dream about? The answer, delivered through the film, is the unbounded, festival-grade driving experience the game provides. In the United States, where car culture carries deep emotional and subcultural weight from coast to coast, that premise lands with particular resonance. The game's Playlist structure, exclusive prototype vehicles, and ever-changing festival activities within O'ahu's open world give the campaign concrete product truths to dramatise. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 74 out of 100.
ARCHIVEUbisoft identified a genuine cultural anxiety to anchor The Crew Motorfest's market position. The erosion of uninhibited driving — through speed limits, urban congestion, and the approaching normalisation of self-driving technology — creates a latent emotional gap that a festival-framed driving game is structurally placed to fill. That insight gives the campaign a strategic foundation beyond product feature communication, reaching audiences in the United States who may not self-identify as core gamers but who hold strong emotional attachments to car culture.
The console gaming market provides the core commercial context. According to Newzoo, as reported by Game World Observer, the global games market reached an estimated 184 billion dollars in 2023, with console games generating 53.2 billion dollars and growing 1.9 percent year over year. In the United States, console gaming remains the dominant premium gaming format, placing The Crew Motorfest in one of the most commercially significant segments of the entertainment landscape. The global gaming population reached 3.38 billion players in 2023, a 6.3 percent increase, according to thegadgetdigest.com, intensifying pressure on publishers to differentiate at launch through campaign quality rather than volume alone.
Within the racing and open-world driving genre, The Crew Motorfest competes directly with established franchises including Forza Horizon, published by Microsoft, and Gran Turismo, published by Sony — both of which have built loyal audiences through cinematic advertising and aspirational car culture positioning in the United States. Sid Lee Paris's decision to approach the launch through emotional anthropomorphism rather than conventional gameplay footage represents a deliberate effort to cut through a crowded genre conversation and reach audiences who might otherwise dismiss a racing title as outside their interest. The campaign's ironic premise — that even dream cars have aspirations beyond their daily existence — reframes the product as culturally relevant to anyone who has ever romanticised the act of driving.
Sid Lee Paris constructed the campaign around a single 80-second film. The piece deploys a live action and VFX production approach to animate a world in which cars possess inner lives, aspirations, and desires that mirror the human fantasy of total driving freedom. The creative conceit is ironic in structure: the very machines that exist to deliver driving thrills are themselves shown dreaming of an experience grander than their daily reality — the festival environment of The Crew Motorfest set across Hawaii.
The film's soundtrack is "The Sweet Escape" by Gwen Stefani featuring Akon, a choice that amplifies the campaign's tonal register. The song's title functions as a direct thematic statement — driving as escape, the game as liberation — while its pop-cultural familiarity provides immediate emotional access for audiences in the United States who may encounter the campaign outside a gaming context. The combination of an anthemic track and VFX-enhanced car anthropomorphism positions the film closer to a music video or cinematic short than a conventional gaming trailer, a register Sid Lee Paris has developed across its work with Ubisoft over multiple years, including earlier cinematic productions for the Assassin's Creed franchise, as documented on Ads of the World.
Although the film was designed to evoke the Hawaiian landscape central to The Crew Motorfest's game world, production records indicate that principal photography took place in Miami rather than on location in Hawaii, per adruby.com. VFX work bridges the gap between the Miami shoot and the O'ahu world the game depicts, demonstrating the campaign's investment in visual craft. Production credits for the "Even dream cars have a dream" campaign, including the director, production company, post-production house, and editor, are not publicly documented in available sources. The creative team at Sid Lee Paris responsible for the campaign has also not been identified in publicly available records at the time of writing.
The Crew Motorfest achieved the franchise's highest-rated title and its best first week across total unit sell-through, overall consumer spending, and season-pass adoption rate, according to Ubisoft's announcement on September 19, 2023, as reported by News Ubisoft. These performance markers confirm that the launch, supported by the "Even dream cars have a dream" campaign, produced a commercially meaningful result relative to the series' prior history.
No specific numerical sales total, sales lift, market-share figure, campaign-attributed conversion rate, or return-on-investment figure was disclosed by Ubisoft, per news.ubisoft.com. No verified media spend, impressions target, or reach figure has been made publicly available. Audience reception documented on Reddit's r/The_Crew community ahead of launch described the trailer as "great" and "charming," with particular enthusiasm for the anthropomorphised car creative, the cinematic quality, and the tonal contrast between the mundane and the spectacular, according to reddit.com.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on a precise alignment between product truth and creative premise. The Crew Motorfest genuinely offers a festival-grade, open-world driving environment set in Hawaii — and the film dramatises that offer through an emotional lens rather than a feature list. In the United States, where racing-game competition from Forza Horizon and Gran Turismo is sustained and well-funded, the decision to lead with cultural sentiment over gameplay demonstration reflects a considered creative risk. The franchise-best first-week results, as stated by Ubisoft via news.ubisoft.com, suggest that risk was commercially justified. No trade press reviews from Campaign, Ad Age, or Adweek specifically covering this campaign are available, per the research record.
"Even dream cars have a dream" is a 2023 live action and VFX campaign created by Sid Lee Paris for Ubisoft's The Crew Motorfest. The 80-second film, titled "Life is Better at Motorfest," anthropomorphises cars to dramatise the game's Hawaiian open-world driving festival. It launched in the United States alongside the game's September 2023 release.
Sid Lee Paris created the launch trailer for Ubisoft's The Crew Motorfest. Despite the game being set on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu, principal photography took place in Miami, according to adruby.com. VFX production bridges the Miami footage and the Hawaiian game world. The director and production company are not publicly documented.
The Crew Motorfest live action launch trailer uses "The Sweet Escape" by Gwen Stefani featuring Akon as its soundtrack. The song's title directly reinforces the campaign's central theme of driving as liberation and escape, aligning the musical choice with the game's festival-set open-world environment in Hawaii.
The Crew Motorfest achieved the franchise's highest-rated title and best first week for total unit sell-through, consumer spending, and season-pass adoption rate, according to Ubisoft's announcement reported by news.ubisoft.com on September 19, 2023. No specific numerical sales figures were disclosed publicly by Ubisoft or its partners at the time of launch.
The Crew Motorfest campaign differentiates from competitors Forza Horizon and Gran Turismo by leading with emotional anthropomorphism rather than gameplay footage. Sid Lee Paris built the film around the cultural anxiety of disappearing driving thrills, a strategic angle designed to reach US audiences beyond the committed racing-game fanbase that established rivals already command.
The Clapboard Score for Ubisoft's "Even dream cars have a dream" campaign for The Crew Motorfest is 74 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong creative premise and franchise-best commercial launch results, balanced against the absence of publicly verified media metrics and limited trade press documentation at the time of evaluation.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
