ELEANOR Depicts "A World Without Options" for Cboe
After a year in the making, Cboe Global Markets has debuted a groundbreaking new campaign, a masterclass in premium visual storytelling and meticulous worldbuilding that flips the finance category on its head.
Created in partnership with TMS and directed by Adrian De Sa Garces through Eleanor, this surrealist, cinematic campaign expresses a powerful, culture-first insight: a world without options is no world at all.
In a series of bold films—led by the :60 hero spot “A World Without Options”—viewers are dropped into the unsettlingly familiar world of NoOptionsVille, a dystopian universe where sameness is the status quo. From barbershops offering just one haircut to vending machines stocked with identical snacks, the campaign playfully skewers the absurdity of limited choice.
Shot over six days across more than a dozen stylized, surreal locations in South Africa—including fully built sets, practical effects, and CGI interventions—the campaign required months of world-building, design coordination, and editorial ambition.
One Sole, One Bran, One Cup. The One Daily. To pull off this otherworldly portrait of monotonous monopoly, the creative team crafted seven fictional brands for the protagonist to interact with throughout his optionless routine.
It is that attentive execution that allows “A World Without Decision’s” meticulous symmetrical, uniform compositions lean into an aesthetic of whimsical uncanniness. The narrative parallels the common vignettes of everyday life in the film’s visual language of surreal uniformity.
Executed with Orwellian restraint and Fincherian precision, the campaign captures a world where conformity is quietly terrifying—and one vivid green sneaker becomes a symbol of possibility.
“The ambition of this campaign was massive,” said Sophie Gold, President and Executive Producer of Eleanor. “From the sheer scale of production to the obsessive detail in every frame, we built an entire world to expose the quiet horror of limited choice. Our mission was to make that constraint visceral, delivered with elegance, intelligence, and craft at the highest level. And we did.”
At a moment when creative advertising is often risk-averse, this campaign crafts a vastly bespoke and audaciously original storyworld. Satirical and precise in its cinematic worldbuilding, this epic campaign leverages it’s visual storytelling to highlight the unique power of options trading. The modular campaign includes six hero films, multiple cutdowns, cinemagraphs, and social assets, offering a flexible toolkit for both broadcast and digital platforms.
