Memes in Advertising / Corporate Memes - Life of a Meme, from birth to Corporatization

I dunno if this counts, but I recall when people were talking about how cringe it was when Wendy's was unironically using impact font memes in a commercial from about a decade ago, but then when Wendy's hired a social media person that they allowed to just go full "act like a smug little shit" suddenly people were praising Wendy's as a "brand that gets it."

I always cite the Ed Ed 'N Eddy episode "It's Way Ed" to explain this phenomenon.