Carvana Dispenses Shaq From One of Its 39 Vending Machines

Shaquille O'Neal has a Hall of Fame ring and a résumé full of big brand deals.

And now he has a new job title to go with it.

Carvana named him chief vending officer and moved him into one of the 39 glass car towers it operates nationwide.

These towers cost real money to put up, and the used car platform is getting ad inventory out of them, too.

O'Neal has already helped sell a larger-than-life car-buying experience through the "Shaqvana" partnership.

The new spot, titled "The Big Diesel Has a New Office," is the next chapter of Shaqvana.

Produced by Good Behavior and directed by Win Bates, the campaign continues a collaboration that began last year.

The brand partnership has an unusually specific origin.

The NBA legend's interest in the online platform's vending machines helped spark the relationship.

It gave Carvana an instant connection between its celebrity partner and one of its recognizable brand assets.

"Shaq doesn't do anything small, so of course his next move was setting up shop in one of our largest vending machines," Ryan Keeton, Carvana co-founder and chief brand officer, said in a statement.

"This spot marks the next chapter of our partnership with him, and we're excited to keep finding new ways to bring his big personality to life."

The setup also gives Bates room to play with O’Neal’s reputation for being larger than life.

The director recalled meeting the former basketball star during production, including an exchange that gave him a direct assessment of who would get the blame if the ad missed.

"Shaq was hilarious and surprisingly not that tall," Bates said.

"He shook my hand and said, 'If the commercial is good, it’s me. And if it’s bad, it’s you.' I really hope I did not let him down."

The effort puts a celebrity, a comedic premise, and a piece of Carvana-owned real estate in the same frame.

Each one gives the brand something to reuse in the next installment.

A Glass Tower With a Corner Office

The new spot places O’Neal inside a Carvana vending machine as the "Chief Vending Officer," using the glass structure as his unlikely workplace.

Two car buyers spot him and ask if he lives there.

"Don't be ridiculous, Janice. Best office in Atlanta!" he replies. 

The ad ends with O'Neal closing the deal, letting that "little hybrid go down, and the diesel back up."

The setting does more work than it looks like. Carvana counts the machines as marketing property alongside their pickup duties.

It operates 39 machines across the country and credits them as drivers of word-of-mouth publicity and brand awareness.

The company has also continued growing the digital side of the Shaq partnership.

The Shaqvana platform also includes "Shaqbot."

It's an AI-powered assistant designed to help shoppers browse vehicles and interact with Carvana using O’Neal’s voice and personality.

The partnership now runs in three places. Customers meet Shaq at the tower, in the ads, and inside the shopping tools.

Spreading one partner across this many touchpoints turns a media buy into part of the product itself.

The Marketing Value of Owned Real Estate

The campaign serves as a useful lesson in pushing brand identity through an asset customers recognize in an instant. 

Carvana’s business has also been growing alongside these marketing efforts.

It sold 197,325 retail units in the second quarter of 2026, up 38% year over year, on revenue of $7.38 billion.

Full-year 2025 revenue reached $20.3 billion on 596,641 units sold.

Growth at this pace gives the towers a bigger audience every quarter, which makes each one a better place to shoot an ad.

Here's what marketers can learn:

• Give celebrity partnerships a proprietary setting: Carvana places Shaq inside an asset only the brand can credibly own, giving the partnership a stronger connection to the business.
• Build campaigns with room for sequels: The "Shaqvana" premise can support new storylines and formats while keeping the same characters and world.
• Push the idea across customer touchpoints: Carvana carries Shaq from advertising into its digital shopping experience, giving the partnership more jobs than awareness alone.

Overall, the larger opportunity for marketers is consistency.

When a campaign has a popular character and a distinctive setting, each new execution can add layers to the story without asking audiences to learn the premise again.

Our Take: What Makes a Partnership Worth Repeating?

Celebrity deals usually rent a famous face and hope the brand sticks to it.

We see Carvana coming out ahead here because it already owned somewhere to put him.

The glass tower was a landmark that people photographed for free even before Shaq signed on.

Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard fronted Carvana ads for years from a living room and an app screen.

Any competitor could have rented the same setting.

Shaq sitting in a glass box is funny once, and Carvana already spent that joke.

The next spot has to give him something to actually do in there.

Looking to build campaigns that don’t rely on starting from scratch?

Explore these top brand strategy agencies in our directory to turn existing equity into something that still lands.