CarMax Scores With Comic Spots Starring Sue Bird and Steph Curry

Sure, NBA icon Steph Curry trails WNBA legend Sue Bird in several key categories, such as championships won and all-star appearances.

Still, the Gold State Warrior assures us he’s “working on it” and plans to catch up to the Seattle Storm dynamo, someday, in a cute CarMax commercial, part of an appealing new flight from The Martin Agency and Wasserman Media Group.

Bird solos in a pair of equally amusing ads below. First, she shares her front-gate code…

That’s G.O.A.T., people! And as for her middle name, it’s not really “Buckets”…

…but it probably should be.

Finally, Curry returns to clear up some confusion about how to pronounce his name…

…in a self-deprecating turn that underscores Bird’s status as the campaign’s big scorer, while Steph (don’t call him STEVE-en!) provides some well-timed assists. In a broader sense, the work, a continuation of the “Call Your Shot” campaign, celebrates the upward trajectory of women’s basketball and female sports in general. It acknowledges the greatness of both players and maximizes their pitch-potency through good-natured ribbing perfectly suited to teammates.

Owing to Covid limitations, Bird and Curry were never on set together, reports Adam Zimmer, executive producer at Valiant Pictures, which helped develop the work. “The ‘Quality Cars’ spot was shot with Stephen Curry in San Francisco and Sue Bird in Connecticut two months later. We needed to match the weather patterns and sunlight across the state lines,” he says.

What’s more, in the “Home Delivery” spot, “our production designer built a living room set inside the Connecticut CarMax showroom to save time. We shot the interior scenes with Sue there, while a splinter crew filmed the exterior shots in L.A.,” Zimmer says.

Director Danny Corey makes it all effortlessly hang together, delivering one of the brightest sports-themed tie-ins so far this year.

The spots began popping up on Twitter last weekend, generating retweets from sports stars and Hollywood celebs and nearly 2 million views so far on that platform:

The perfect commercial doesn’t exi…? pic.twitter.com/w9AecQ2E66

— Jessica Slate (@thejslate) March 28, 2021

CREDITS

Client: CarMax
Jim Lyski, CMO
Laura Donahue, VP of Marketing Services
Michael Reeder, Director Brand Video & Sports Marketing
Emily Layman, Manager – Marketing Operations
Shannon Troyka, Manager – Marketing Operations

Agency: Wasserman Media Group
Christa Newcomb, Vice President
Nick Lennon, Director
Zach Sansavera, Manager
Houston Greenberg, Associate Manager

Agency: The Martin Agency
Myna Sharma, Account Executive
Graham Unterberger, Creative Director
Dustin Dodd, Creative Director

Production Company: Valiant Pictures
Matthew D’Amato, Founding Partner & EP
Vincent Lin, Founding Partner & EP
Adam Zimmer, Executive Producer
Danny Corey, Director & DP

Editorial: Valiant Pictures
Danny Corey, Editor
Dan Edwards, Colorist
Bryan Curt Kostors, Composer

Audio Post: Trailblazer Studios
Eric W Johnson, Sound Mixer
Aurelia Belfield, Sound Coordinator