Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort and Jimmy Kimmel's Kimmelot Hyped Autodesk at Oscars

And the winner is … an amusing Autodesk campaign that ran during last night’s Academy Awards.

Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort and Jimmy Kimmel’s Kimmelot developed the three-spot mockumentary series, which purportedly feted Hollywood pioneer Otto Desinski, aka Otto Desć. In fact, the work hyped Autodesk’s software used by filmmakers, producers and creative pros worldwide.

The work boasts a flashy cast, with Elizabeth Banks, Ron Perlman, cinematographer Mandy Walker and VFX expert Paul Lambert bringing the funny.

“He changed game-changing,” Walker quips about the nonexistent Otto at one point.

“Autodesk has been a secret weapon for Hollywood’s artists for decades, and what better way to highlight that than to create a fake man of vaguely Germanic descent to receive an award that doesn’t exist?” says Reynolds in campaign materials. “If you’re thinking Otto Desć looks suspiciously like Academy Award nominee and Free Guy VFX supervisor Swen Gillberg, you’d be wrong. No further questions!”

Tagged “Make Anything,” the push represents an effort to “humanize” Autodesk and bring its functionality out from behind the scenes, brand CMO Dara Treseder tells Muse.

“While we’re a well-known name to our core customers, we’re not a name that a broader audience might hear and say, ‘I know what Autodesk does!’ Treseder says. “We wanted to play with that reality a bit, turning our name into the made-up name of this fictional character—a legend who represents all our amazing customers making incredible things from award-winning movies and greener buildings to cleaner cars and life-enhancing robots.”

“This campaign is part of a broader effort to go beyond marketing just products to marketing the possibilities of what customers can accomplish with our technology,” she says.

Feted films from 2022 that used Autodesk to create design and F/X elements include Avatar, Pinocchio and All Quiet on the Western Front.