Funniest Advertisements Featuring the ‘Dunkman’ Shaquille O’Neal

LA Lakers & NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal is truly the master of all trades. The big fella has conquered it all from shiny NBA Championship to successful marketing mantras, he knows it all. In his ‘NBA TV’s – Storytime with Shaq‘ with Ro Parrish, he talked about his legendary advertisements and the stories behind them. Obviously this interview was from the time of the post-COVID 19 crisis.

Shaq clearly knows how to build an empire out of the brand via the advertisements and the right endorsements. Ro asked O’Neal about his tactics and when did he start to think of building his own merchandise? To which Shaq replied at first he started to view things from the perspective of what things will be sellable in the future. So he thought of merchandise, like Shaq shoes, T-shirts, hats and he even got the ‘dunkman’ trademark, inspiration from obvious Jordan’s ‘Jumpman’.

While listening to his ideas, the professor laughed. He said, “I see you have put a lot of thought, but this will never work.” Shaq asked ‘why’? To this professor replied with “big guys don’t sell”. Listening to this Shaq came back to his dorm and he notices one thing that this one ‘dumb’ dog is all over places. Spuds MacKenzie was a fictional dog in advertisements and people liked him because he was funny. This got O’Neal in thinking that he is already funny and he should use that aspect of his personality in advertisements. After this, 3 times Finals MVP decided to do designing of his own in the advertisements.

Shaquille O’Neal: The Funny Guy

The first funny advertisement, which he did for Pepsi became an instant hit. In that advertisement, he is using his humungous hands to bend the basket pole and then dunking the ball in it. Not to mention, in that advertisement kids were also playing in the court.

 

Parish then asked Shaq about his second advertisement with Pepsi, where all things are small for Lakers Legend. Shaq explained the thought process of the director behind that adv. He said when he was walking with the director in the Beverly Hills Hotel, he bumped his head and literally fell on the ground. And then by taking inspiration from this instance, the director decided to do that advertisement next week.

It is not easy being big:

Another legendary advertisement that 1 time MVP talked about was the Buick Car adv. He told how once he was stopped by a policeman and when he noticed that Shaq is driving the car. He removed his glasses and said, “OMG you really do fit”.

 Do check out for that ‘finger’ thing which Shaq described in the interview.

 

These all advertisements are iconic and so do the story behind them. But still, there is one advertisement which is greater than all. Yes, we are talking about that iconic shimmy advertisement, that 4 times NBA champion did for ‘GoldBand’ power spray.

 

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