CarMax’s purpose is to make the car shopping process “the way it should be,” standing for humanness and against the soullessness of the category. So in Dec 2020, when CarMax became the Official Auto Retail Sponsor of the NBA, we extended the sponsorship to the WNBA, making CarMax the first auto retailer to form such a partnership. The brief asked to highlight CarMax's purpose using league personalities in new and authentic ways.

Take the equal treatment you can expect from a CarMax, and playfully extend it into the world of sports. Our commercial opens with an Associate enamored with a customer who happens to be a “four-time champ”. With Stephen Curry standing before him, we play into the audience’s assumption that the athlete to whom he’s referring is Curry. But when Stephen corrects him with “Three-time champ,” the Associate holds his ground and surprises both Curry and the audience with the revelation that he was talking about Sue Bird. with “11-time All Star appearances, can you imagine?” Curry self-deprecatingly admits he's "working on it,” creating a final moment of audience re-appraisal that leaves us all wondering why we don’t celebrate Female achievement in the same way. Because that's the way it should be.

To show that CarMax is a champion of “the way it should be” in all arenas.

We knew that CarMax’s customer experience (like no haggling) would be important to show, but also realized there was a bigger opportunity to make a statement about an important societal issue: gender bias in professional sports. It's no secret that male and female athletic achievement are valued differently (monetarily and in culture). The WNBA is often treated as secondary to the NBA. Male players like Stephen Curry are readily included in the GOAT conversation, while living legends like Sue Bird (a 4x Olympic Gold Medalist, 4x WNBA Champion, and an 11x WNBA All-star) are rarely recognized in the same way. Until now.

Designed to be adjacent to sports and more specific basketball content, we leveraged premier sports-figures to drive relevance and salience for the brand in that space to speak to that audience. The content was developed to surround the media partnership with TNT and the NBA and WNBA leagues. The concept was developed in November, and shot earlier this year, making its debut first in local Seattle and San Francisco markets to align with the players home team cities in early-March, before making its way into national media in early-April. This spot and others in the campaign will continue to run through the WNBA season.

The earned conversation around this spot and the positive narrative that ensued earned a combined 809MM in PR/social impressions, 1200+ social mentions netted a 98% positive sentiment and was a 865% increase in daily average mentions. Notable influencers like the first woman to play in a Power Five college football game Sarah Fuller, Serena William’s husband and founder of reddit Alex Ohanian, women’s pro soccer player and activist Megan, and former NBA player Dwayne Wade. Looking deeper into social sentiment, the top word theme used in describing how people felt after watching the spot and engaging with the discussion was, “important.”