Chevy Responds To Meme Mocking World Series MVP Presentation Flub Exactly The Right Way

from the technology-and-stuff dept

All too often it seems as though companies take themselves entirely too seriously these days. With branding being seen as all important, too often the concept of actually behaving in a human and awesome way is lost, leading to a total lack of personality. Chevy, on the other hand, showed everyone else exactly how to handle the internet’s cruel mockery.

If you’re even a casual baseball fan, you probably watched some part of the game 7 World Series final the other night. If you stuck around for the presentation of the MVP trophy to pitcher Madison Bamgarner, you witnessed local Chevy guy, Rikk Wilde, attempt to give the sponsored trophy away. It did not go well.

While it is certainly understandable how a local guy with probably limited experience with speaking publicly before a national audience might fall victim to nerves in this scenario, the internet is a cruel observer and it went nuts with this video. In particular, Wilde’s attempt to sell the world on the sweetness of Chevy vehicles due to the inclusion of “technology…and stuff” was instantly transformed into the meme du jour. Twitter blew up with #technologyandstuff tags, and some enterprising memesters came up with stuff like this.

All this was inevitable of course, because the internet loves to take a mistake and multiply it into a cultural thing for poops and giggles. It can’t help itself. And, of course, Chevy just wouldn’t be able to help from completely freaking out that what was supposed to be a carefully orchestrated sponsorship marketing opportunity had turned into a massive joke. They’d simply have to go into damage control. Except they didn’t. Nope, not even a little bit.

Truck yeah the 2015 #ChevyColorado has awesome #TechnologyAndStuff! You know you want a truck: http://t.co/0NcEoDRSUZ pic.twitter.com/RMiRic8ATF — Chevy Trucks (@ChevyTrucks) October 30, 2014

That’s right. Instead of freaking out, Chevy decided to full on embrace the whole thing. Many commentators have suggested that Chevy should be thanking Wilde for his less-than-perfect pitch of the Chevy line and it seems that the company agrees.

Chevrolet spokesman Mike Albano, in an email, confirmed that Brian Sweeney, U.S. vice president of sales and service for Chevrolet, called Wilde on Thursday to tell him the Chevy team was behind him. Chevrolet spokeswoman Cristi Vazquez said the company saw a “large spike in hits” at Chevrolet.com on Wednesday night, with visits seven times higher than normal.

No kidding. Embracing the meme, even as it mocked the company, was exactly the right thing to do. That said, it isn’t always the easiest move to make. Good on Chevy for embracing the meme to its own advantage when using technology and stuff.

Filed Under: #technologyandstuff, advertising, embracing, memes, mistakes, technology and stuff, world series
Companies: chevrolet, chevy