The DFW-based company Home Zone dropped a series of commercials to air during the broadcast of Luka Doncic’s first game back against the Mavericks in Dallas.
DALLAS — Same as seemingly everyone else throughout the Metroplex, Jason Adams was conflicted about Luka Doncic’s return to Dallas for his first game since the Mavs’ controversial trade of their star player to the Los Angeles Lakers — but still eager to see how it would all play out.
Where Adams’ story differs from so many others planning to idly watch the game from home, though, is that as the owner and president of the Euless-based furniture company Home Zone Furniture, he decided to get in on the action himself.
Along with his his wife Bree Barber, the company’s founder and spokesperson, Adams devised a three-part ad campaign to run during the game’s WFAA broadcast — one that parodied the trade that has fully thrown Dallas sports fans, and the franchise at the center of the transaction, through a loop since it first came down on that fateful late Saturday night in February.
“We were just brainstorming and having a laugh,” Adams said when reached by phone during the game and asked how the ads came to be.
The campaign — which centered around Barber deciding to trade one of her store’s most popular sectional couches, then defending the move in the face of criticism before ultimately regretting and undoing the transaction in the face of uproar — aired in serialized form throughout multiple commercial breaks during the game.
“We were just trying to capture the emotion of the moment,” Adams said. “We’re a Texas company. We love Luka and we love the Mavs. It’s kind of like, you can’t root against either one. We’re rooting for both of them. [The campaign] was just trying to capture the emotion of the moment – and keep it light.”
The lore of the campaign, with its onscreen acknowledgements of its multi-part nature and its “To be continued…” signoffs in the earlier installments, was impressive, to say the least. And the early returns on the campaign, Adams said, were quite positive.
“We’ve seen several people posting positively about it,” he said. “And we’ve gotten some emails, too. Everyone we’ve heard from loves it.”
And that’s the exact reaction Adams hoped the ads would elicit.
“We’re local, so we’re caught up in the emotion of the trade just like everyone else,” he said. “We didn’t want to be too critical of the organization, but I don’t think there’s anyone who lives around here who doesn’t want the best for Luka, too.”
As for Adams, he got a kick out of seeing the ads run while watching the game from his own home sectional.
“It’s bittersweet, as it is for everybody,” he said as the Lakers led the game in the third quarter. “But it’s been a great game. And, holy cow, Luka’s been on fire.”
In the end, Doncic and the Lakers would have the last laugh on Wednesday, besting the Mavs 112-97 behind a 45-point effort from the man everyone tuned in to see.
Or, actually, maybe it’s Home Zone that laughed last.
The last line of dialogue in the third ad perhaps summed up the sentiment of the night best of all.
“See?” one of Home Zone’s spokespeople says in those waning moments of the commercial. “Some trades are better when they’re not made.”
