Time to Fly

To gain insights into the user experience, Alto went right to the source: the people using Codex every day. Again and again, the same analogy kept popping up.

“It feels like flying”

The story of Codex is about a lot more than productivity at scale, it was about a feeling. It was about energy and exhilaration. Of staying in flow. Of building momentum. Of suddenly discovering that the thing you weren’t sure you could build, becoming real before your eyes. So we crafted a campaign about flight.

To do this right, it needed to pack an emotional punch. It had to feel real, tactile, and distinctly human. It had to be a celebration of creativity and handmade craftsmanship.

Working with director Mark Molloy and SMUGGLER, we built a world you could touch. Old school stage mechanics, lighting techniques, in-camera effects, and entire sets constructed on enormous custom gimbals so rooms could tilt, shift and seemingly lose their relationship with gravity. Props moved for real. Actors took flight for real. The physics they were fighting were real. Which meant the reactions were real, too.

The result is a world that becomes increasingly unbelievable while somehow continuing to feel completely possible.

Authenticity was key. Developers are known to scrutinize the screens and monitors in every commercial to spot any inconsistencies or inauthentic representations of coding. With that in mind, Alto partnered with OpenAI's in-house team to authenticate every action and every prompt in the film, while also planting an Easter Egg for those who were looking extra close.

One of the characters in the spot appears to be developing a video game. It wasn’t just a fictional piece of production design, it was an actual game called ‘Time to Fly’, which OpenAI described as a "cosmic logic puzzle about orbital rotation." Viewers who picked up the clues could track the game down and actually play it, with a chance to win $1000 worth of tokens/credits. The promo became so popular that OpenAI eventually ran out of promo codes.

“Time to Fly” first aired during Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals and quickly took off across social. The film sparked widespread conversation and an overwhelmingly positive response to how it captured the feeling of using Codex.

Across OpenAI’s owned channels, the campaign significantly outperformed recent engagement benchmarks. That momentum carried into the hidden game, where people followed the clues, competed on the leaderboard, and claimed every available reward within hours.

The campaign didn’t simply tell this generation of developers how Codex was changing the way they build. It captured how that change can make them feel.