It’s easy to miss all the Caitlin Clark advertisements and promotions running in March, but Xfinity set itself apart this week with a commercial featuring a Phoenix-area city planner, coincidentally also named Caitlin Clark, getting schooled in the ways of basketball magic by the Iowa superstar.
The ad, which aired over the weekend during a University of Arizona game and is scheduled to run through the NCAA tournament, sees the city planner tripping over herself through basketball drills before the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer shows her how it’s done.
Axios reports the two never met during filming, but the Phoenix Clark has become a big fan of her commercial costar.
“She is insane in the best way,” Clark told Axios Phoenix. “Just an outstanding player.”
Xfinity reportedly contacted Clark directly to cast her as a doppelgänger for its celebrity NIL partner. The city planner had limited basketball talent and struggled through the drills, just like she was supposed to.
They kept telling me, ‘Try your hardest!’ And I’m like, ‘I am trying my hardest!’ So that’s embarrassing,” Clark told Axios.
A lot of companies and networks are trying to ride the Caitlin Clark wave. ESPN has its own Caitlin Clark beat reporter, and countless companies are engineering ads to show off college basketball’s biggest star.
For now, you would have to say Xfinity gets the crown for the single best deployment of Clark in an ad. Deploying a clueless city planner from across the country to contrast with Clark’s basketball brilliance is chef’s-kiss stuff.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.