Actors Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are tapping into their Motor City roots to sell used cars.
The couple, who are both from Michigan, will star in a new ad campaign for online used-car retail giant Carvana, the company said Thursday. In the ads, the couple will play themselves to show how Carvana’s “simple online process has improved the car buying and selling experience making it fair, easy and fun,” Carvana said in a statement.
Shepard and Bell, both known for comic wit, will star in a series of national commercials and social videos that will launch this summer featuring scenarios showing “how Carvana drives its customers happy,” the company said.
“Carvana was conceived with the idea that people needed a better way to buy and sell a car, and over the last ten years, that’s what we’ve worked to build,” said Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer Ryan Keeton in a statement.
Keeton said that Shepard and Bell starring in the new campaign will reach and resonate with more consumers.
Michigan couple in Hollywood at a Red Wings game
Bell, 43, who was born in Huntington Woods, is best known for her roles in “Frozen,” ”Veronica Mars” and “The Good Place.” She also starred in the Netflix parody of thrillers called “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.” Earlier this year, Bell donated $2,500 to a GoFundMe campaign for a Detroit family who lost their home and everything they owned in a fire.
Shepard, 48, is best known for “Idiocracy,” “Let’s Go To Prison” and in the television show “Parenthood.” In 2021, Shepard started co-hosting the motoring series “Top Gear America.” He was born in Ypsilanti and raised in Highland and Milford, according to an article in MLive. He graduated high school from Walled Lake Central in 1993.
The couple met in 2007. First, briefly, at a dinner party and then again two weeks later at a Detroit Red Wings game against the Kings in Los Angeles, according to an article in InStyle magazine. They got married in 2013 and have two children.
The couple will introduce a new Carvana product feature
Carvana declined to share details about the ads with the Detroit Free Press, but spokesperson Kristin Thwaites said Shepard and Bell “will be in two TV national commercials and four social videos about online car buying and selling with Carvana, including to promote a new product feature, launching in the coming weeks.”
People can check out the newest Carvana ad on TV and online, including social content when the national campaign launches next month.
Carvana, based in Tempe, Arizona, could use a marketing shot-in-the-arm from the Hollywood couple. It has struggled financially in recent months as used car prices dropped and it had high debt. Since it went public in 2017, it has lost money most quarters because it pushed for sales growth instead of short-term profits, according to a CNN article.
More:New, used car prices appear to be leveling off; good news for car buyers
More:Kristen Bell learns about herself on West Michigan vacation
But it has been doing aggressive cost cutting and inventory management to lower its debt and improve cash flow and stave off bankruptcy concerns. Wall Street rewarded it with a 40% surge in its stock price on Wednesday. But on Thursday its stock price fell as much as 17.5% in trading as analysts downgraded the stock and “investors wondered if shares rose too high too fast,” the Motley Fool reported.
Late Thursday, CEO Ernie Garcia told Bloomberg that Carvana was in “much better shape” than many believed before the restructuring of its debt, and it never neared bankruptcy.
Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.