As if plastering its name across a stadium in downtown Los Angeles wasn't enough, Crypto.com scooped up movie star Matt Damon as its face — an endorsement that drew wider notice online after the cryptocurrency exchange's ad aired on "Sunday Night Football."
"Fortune favors the brave," Damon said in the heavily produced, 55-second advertisement.
"Fortune also quite often favors the fortunate, but go off," one user tweeted in response.
In an attempt to show moments of audacity, Damon describes history made by people who "embrace the moment" as figures such as astronauts and adventurers flash by the screen — an effort to convince watchers that buying dogecoin is, in fact, comparable to landing humans on the moon.
"MATT DAMON [striding through a futuristic room]: History is filled with brave men who spent $378,000 on a cartoon ape," tweeted another user.
"The guy who irresponsibly bought a zoo is going to give us investment and purchasing advice?" tweeted another.
Though the ad is for Crypto.com, Damon doesn't say the name of the company once — its logo pops up in the last five seconds of the ad. If you stop at 50 seconds, the ad could be for any grandstanding tech company trying to make its product or service seem like the most important invention in history.
"As a general rule any time a commercial only tells you what it’s about at the very end after 55 seconds of generic slogans that’s a bad sign. it’s like when someone waits until the fifth date to tell you they own a bunch of illegal exotic pets," read a now-deleted tweet.
"The script for this ad makes it seem utterly, fantastically heroic to do a currency exchange. I don’t get it," tweeted another.
The ad, which first debuted in late October, is part of Crypto.com's $100 million advertising push, which brought in Damon as a spokesperson and Oscar-winning filmmakers David Fincher and Wally Pfister to produce the commercial. Crypto.com has also bought ad time in the Super Bowl, which means Twitter critics will have more fodder soon.