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Chicago Tribune Phil Rosenthal column [Chicago Tribune](Chicago Tribune (IL) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 30--Here's to you, Rikk Wilde, you big, sweaty, hyperventilating sales genius. The World Series error you were pegged with after Game 7 on Wednesday night had been changed to a hit by Thursday morning. #ChevyGuy, you get the win. Credit the save to #TechnologyandStuff. San Francisco pitcher Madison Bumgarner's five shutout innings in relief en route to the Giants' championship and a Chevrolet Colorado pickup as Series most valuable player were memorable, to be sure. But people also were talking about the Wilde pitch from the Kansas City-area regional zone manager for Chevy who handed Bumgarner the keys to "the latest and greatest, uh, technology in our truck lineup which is the all-new 2015, uh, Chevy Colorado" which he said "combines class-winning and leading, um, you know, technology and stuff." How could we not talk about it? Has there ever been a sponsor's presentation of an MVP award after a big sporting event that wasn't instantly forgotten? Nothing looked or sounded right, but that was its saving grace. Marketers spend much time and money trying to come up with viral messages half as potent as the one Wilde stumbled and mumbled into after the visiting Giants beat the Royals. "We believe baseball fans in Kansas City and elsewhere can relate with Rikk's authentic emotions," Chevrolet said in a statement. "While not perfect, Rikk did have his facts correct, the Colorado does come with a lot of 'technology and stuff.'" It was an old Chris Farley bit dropped unexpectedly into a noncomedy program with Wilde, a 47-year-old who's been with the carmaker 25 years, seemingly a bit panicked, clutching a white notecard before fishing the truck keys out of his pocket. Twitter lit up. #ChevyGuy and #TechnologyandStuff began trending. It's always something. Last year it was Erin Andrews in a tug of war with Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig over a microphone. This year it was this. At first the response was not particularly kind. Viewers (and I was among them on Twitter) reflexively pointed and laughed for the most part. Then empathy kicked in, and people started to realize this was an ordinary guy thrust into extraordinary circumstances on national TV. Watching the commentary in real time, Chevrolet management had a choice to either embrace the moment or hide from it. It chose to turn into the skid. That anyone remembered anything about the MVP presentation the next day proved that, no matter how bumpy the road, it was the right path for Chevrolet and their Colorado. "We could see the sentiment shift from negative comments about the actual presentation to people kind of standing up for him, that he's just an ordinary guy, cut him some slack," said Michael Albano, Chevrolet's director of communications. "They liked the truck guy. They liked technology and stuff, and quite honestly, he wasn't off message. "Our social media team quickly realized that maybe we had something here and leveraged it and sentiment's turned a little bit," he said, noting the company was using the #TechnologyandStuff hashtag to drive traffic to the Colorado's website. "Now we've got an opportunity to have a two-way conversation with our consumer truck customers, and that's all we can ask for." Nothing went the way it was supposed to go, yet Chevrolet got exactly what it wanted: A flurry of interest in the Colorado, last in the news earlier this month when faulty wiring on air bags led to a recall. Albano said the truck's website traffic, as of Thursday morning, was up 70 percent. Still unanswered is the question of why Wilde -- back on the job, serving as a liaison between area dealers and headquarters in Detroit, and unavailable for comment Thursday -- was the guy repping Chevrolet center stage after Game 7 of the World Series. "Sometimes it's reserved for senior leaders in the company as it's a high-profile opportunity. But we know Rikk is an authentic Chevrolet guy," Albano said. "He's a great ambassador for the brand. We knew he was a Royals fan. We felt it would be a great honor for him to make the presentation last night. I'm sure he was hoping he'd be presenting to a Royal." Chalk that up as one more thing that didn't go as planned for the Wizard of Uhs that ultimately didn't matter. In a world where so much is scripted and test-marketed ahead of time for efficiency and effectiveness, only the unexpected, distinct and unique truly stand out. Like Bumgarner's performance, this was simply something we'd never seen before. That in and of itself made it more powerful. When it was happening, Selig, in his last World Series as MLB commissioner and a former Chevrolet dealer himself, looked like he was going to tear his hair out. But when he was in the car business, social media was a holiday card or a calendar. In today's Twitterverse, elocution will lose out to authenticity every time. Leo Burnett, the legendary advertising man and Chicago agency namesake, used to talk about the value of roughing up ad copy a bit. When the pitch is too smooth and too slick, he'd warn underlings, it wouldn't stick with consumers. The message would just slide right by. People needed something to snag, to catch their attention. That's true as ever today. "The fact that people are paying attention to Colorado today is a great thing," Albano said. "It's a great truck loaded with a lot of technology and stuff." [email protected] Twitter @phil_rosenthal ___ (c)2014 the Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |