The notion that professional athletes should stick to athletics is not exactly new, but it has rarely been executed with such cheerful literalness as in Sprite's latest campaign.
The soft drink brand, which has been an NBA marketing partner since 1986 and has built much of its advertising identity around basketball, is introducing a global campaign called "Never Stop Refreshing the Game." The centerpiece is a partnership with Nikola Jokić, the Denver Nuggets center who has won three Most Valuable Player awards and one championship ring, and who is now being asked to do something he is apparently not designed to do: tell jokes.
The commercial places Mr. Jokić in a small comedy club, where he sips from a can of Sprite and proceeds to deliver a set of intentionally flat material. "What do you call a factory that makes okay products?" he asks. "Satisfactory." The audience response is approximately what you would expect.
The strategy appears to be a kind of anti-charisma play, positioning Mr. Jokić's well-documented awkwardness as a feature rather than a limitation. (Whether this constitutes refreshing honesty or an elaborate way of acknowledging that your spokesman is not a natural pitchman is perhaps a matter of interpretation.)
Sprite, which is part of the Coca-Cola Company's portfolio of brands, has long relied on basketball figures to sell carbonated beverages, from Grant Hill in the 1990s to LeBron James in more recent years. The choice of Mr. Jokić extends that tradition while also taking the campaign outside the United States, where the Serbian-born player carries considerable appeal in markets that American soft drink brands have been working to cultivate.
Mr. Jokić, for his part, did not need to be funny to win those MVP trophies. The same may now be said of his commercial work.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Sprite Enlists Nikola Jokić to Take Its NBA Play Worldwide"