At about 8:30pm (CST) during the 2005 baseball all-star game FOX showed a “renegade” banner hung in the outfield that said hhrya.com. The broadcasters even pondered what it could mean. Joe Buck said something like, “Someone just unfurled a banner with the letters HHRYA… Whoever did it must have gone through a lot of effort. What could it mean?” Tim McCarver then said, “It makes me think of the word hooray.”
hhrya.com wouldn’t load at the time. A google search for hhrya lead to a Horse Slaughter Awareness Campaign by “Harness Horse Retirement & Youth Association.”
When I finally got hhrya.com to load a couple hours later, it was a site promoting the new Chevy HHR, not anything about protecting horses from becoming glue. At hhrya.com you can upload your digital photos of the letters HHR and enter to win a custom Chevy HHR. As of 10:50pm a few hours later, there are no new photos on the site.
Maybe people are out there composing their photos now. Or maybe Chevy is counting on bloggers to talk about it (just like here).
But gee, guess who is the advertiser for the All-Star Game? It’s Chevrolet. Nice guerilla marketing there, Chevy. Pulled the wool over our eyes. How does this affect your trust in Joe Buck and Tim McCarver?
Joe Buck is pretty good. Though he tends to be a little too corporate PC sometimes. Tim McCarver is a self-righteous bonehead. As far as their role in the HHR guerilla marketing campaign; I think they’re just doing their job. Someone told them to read those silly lines and they did. It’s part of their job. Broadcasters have never just broadcasted the game. Since the beginning of radio broadcating, the broadcasters have had a role in advertising. This is HHR thing is simply a silly, clever way of doing advertising. It’s part of baseball. Anyone with a sense of marketing can see through their silly little comments about “Whoever did it must have gone through alot of effort” and “it makes me think of the word hooray”.
falls flat? you went searching, a lot others did too. If that’s a failure, what’s a success?
thanks for the info on HHRYA. i saw an ad on TV and it wouldn’t load. now I know i shouldnt waste my time its a stupid ass car ad. thanks again!