The clothing and apparel brand Lids responded to a massive marketing flub involving Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy in hilarious fashion Thursday night.
The saga started when media mogul Dave Portnoy posted a screenshot of an Instagram DM conversation between him and the brand to Twitter.
The brand reached out to Portnoy with an offer to send him a free product and employ him in a marketing campaign. Portnoy, incredulous that a massive figure such as himself wasn’t being offered a real, paid advertising campaign, responded tongue firmly in cheek. “Ohhhhhhhhhh. Freeeeeee proddddduccctttttttt! How old is the idiot intern sending me this?”
Thank god I’ve mellowed or else I would have ranted and raved about what an idiot Lids is pic.twitter.com/qmSn7Bofce
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) March 14, 2024
Lids, to their credit, rolled with the punches beautifully. The brand tweeted out a photo of an employee, presumably the “idiot intern” who sent the original offer to Portnoy, wearing a hat that says “Free Product.” (RELATED: Legendary Baseball Slugger Trends Online For Unbelievably Absurd Reason)
The photo was accompanied by a caption, again presumably in the idiot intern’s voice, which read “Sorry man, I messed up.”
Sorry man, I messed up. https://t.co/n9Q6oMpKkX pic.twitter.com/J0Wdoe3bvG
— Lids (@lids) March 14, 2024
HAHA. This is hilarious. Hats off to Lids. This is how to, not only own a mistake, but actively capitalize on it. If only Bud Light had pivoted this quickly. Maybe they wouldn’t have lost millions of dollars in sales and done irreparable damage to their brand in the wake of the Dylan Mulvaney debacle.