Sonic Automotive: Jokes With Jokic
This offbeat series of videos features Nikola Jokic, a seven-foot NBA player who hails from Serbia. He was relatively new to the NBA at the time we tapped him to work with EchoPark Automotive, a used-car dealership based in Colorado (owned by our client Sonic Automotive, the fourth largest dealer group in the country). The team I worked with at The Tombras Group agency was tasked with increasing visibility and social media followers for then-nascent EchoPark.
Jokic played for the Denver Nuggets and was pretty well known, but just beginning to achieve true stardom. It was a perfect opportunity to tap a celebrity on the rise with a growing fan base. My boss at the time, the account director, and another strategist on the team, found Jokic and got him onboard.
Where I came in was with creating content and selling in the ideas to the client. The deal we struck with Jokic gave us limited access. We were given a single afternoon in which to create enough content for a series of posts that would help boost Instagram and Facebook followers.
After getting a feel for Jokic’s casual, almost cavalier tone on his own social media channels, we settled on something offbeat. Rather than force him into a stuffy spokesperson roll that was neither genuine nor believable, we decided to lean into his deadpan style and young, edgy vibe by having him recite dad jokes. The concept dovetailed with EchoPark’s anti-establishment ethos—one which sought to reinvent the car-buying experience—by shirking stereotypical salesmanship.
Jokic immediately liked the idea and dove into it with gusto. (It was his idea to sit at the tiny table in the dealership’s kids-play area and smack the toys to the floor after his punchline.) I selected the jokes. Our excellent videographer set up each shot. He and I co-directed while I snapped photos for other posts opportunistically (including the one of him on my homepage). We managed to crank out footage for half a dozen videos in just a couple of hours, despite the language barrier and constant foot traffic at the dealership.
A few of the executions include a nod to irreverent shows like The Office, with a quick zoom-in for the punchline. This was an idea that our videographer came up with and a result of the kind of creative collaboration I try to foster on every project. Another colleague wrote the clever captions for each post. It was a fun shoot, despite the time pressures and dealing with a celebrity and his entourage. Keeping cool and enjoying the work is another dynamic I strive for.
The engagement these videos received on Instagram was more than 10 times that of typical EchoPark posts. This series, together with savvy giveaways with Jokic (NBA tickets, signed memorabilia, etc.), was instrumental in helping EchoPark close in on the 10,000 mark for followers on Instagram—a number they have since exceeded.
