or mysterious person leaving miniature ducks around the office. An employee who eats the food at a packed lunch without contributing. A price that goes on the head of a worker. A fallback to documentation when computers fail. Or my favorite: a visit to another disguised showroom to see the competition.
It’s The Dealership, a weekly TikTok series brought to you by Mohawk Chevrolet. It was filmed just like the popular TV show The Office. And it’s a hit, garnering close to 6 million views in the past two months alone. Mohawk can sell Chevrolet. But its marketing team is producing a Ferrari.
Dealership is the brainchild of recent graduate grace Kerber, who handles the show’s script, direction, graphic design, strategy and content planning. According to one episode, Kerber is also a choreographer, but never mind. Viewers simply know her as Grace, the show’s protagonist who happens to look like Dawn, the original receptionist from Ricky Gervais’s UK show.
“My teammate Ben Bushen and I do the episodes,” Kerber told social media strategist Rachel Karten in a blog profiling the series. “We’ll have an idea (sometimes inspired by real-life events at Mohawk) and think it through to get a loose story of what the episode is going to be.” Kerber says she helps direct everyone, “but they’re all so naturally funny that they don’t even need it.”
What makes the series so special? Kerber is loved. Jasmine, Lukas, Michael, Ben, Justin, George, and the other employees whose job it is to sell and service cars aren’t actually that bad at acting, especially when you realize they’re all improvising. Ben’s shaky camera and realistic lighting (not tiny) really resemble the look and feel of The Office. The sound is surprisingly professional.
Certainly, the show lacks polish. But the episodes – which are generally under five minutes – are true to their subject matter. And of course there are funny moments.
Like Kerber’s presentation to her boss about ways to improve the showroom (“plants” and “inspirational writing on the wall”) that inadvertently includes a drawing of her crush in the next exhibit she visited. Her love of ‘rados’ (as in Chevy Silverado and Colorado … get it?). Her inability to gracefully enter or exit the trucks her dealership is selling, despite her intent to target more female buyers. Even the team’s direct response to the failure of their computer systems (a likely reaction to the June ransomware attack that crippled thousands of auto dealerships across the country) showed how they react to a problem with balance…and humor .
Kerber says the focus of the series is “promoting our dealerships in a way that most dealerships don’t” with the end result of selling more cars. And given the surge in web traffic generated by their videos, I don’t doubt it. But Mohawk has succeeded in a much more important way: showing not only customers, but potential employees how great it is to work there.
All I hear from my clients are complaints about the tight job market and their challenges attracting and retaining good talent. I’m not sure how easy it is for a car dealership in upstate New York to find and motivate employees. But after watching The Dealership, who wouldn’t want to work at Mohawk? The people there look great.
These are people you’d want to hang out and laugh with, and they come across as caring workers. I’m not sure you’d find much “left alone” in this country. If anything, Kerber is only destroying the argument for working from home. Great businesses like Mohawk have great cultures and you just can’t do that remotely.
While Kerber deserves credit for this successful marketing campaign, let’s not ignore the company’s owner, Andrew Guelcher, who (I’m assuming) gave the project the green light. More than a few of my clients would have balked at the idea of paying for equipment and then hooking up their employees for hours every week to make a series of TikTok videos, let alone going with someone’s vision. just nine months out of college.
Like the series’ inspiration, will we one day see Guelcher burning his leg on a George Foreman grill? An office Olympics? An appearance from Steve Carell himself? With this kind of crowd and Kerber’s smarts, I wouldn’t be surprised. One thing I’m sure will happen: an increase in sales and an influx of people who want to work at Mohawk Chevrolet.