GM CEO Mary Barra guest stars in Mohawk Chevrolet's viral video parody on TikTok

The Chevrolet dealership in upstate New York that went viral for promotional videos parodying “The Office” got General Motors CEO Mary Barra and other top executives in on the act during a visit to the automaker in Detroit.

Episode 11 of Mohawk Chevrolet’s weekly TikTok series, “The Dealership,” features Grace Kerber, one of the videos’ creators, pitching a rebrand of the Silverado pickup to Chevy CMO Steve Majoros and global brand chief Scott Bell. Kerber suggests shortening the 2026 model’s name to “Rado.”

“When you take the ‘Silve’ out of the Silverado, what do you have left? ... Me, the road and the Rado,” Kerber says. “Why do we not need silver? Because silver does not equal gold, and the Silverado is gold.”

She shows the executives an image of the truck with the new name badge written in Comic Sans, which she explains is “a timeless font loved by everyone — very nostalgic.”

Majoros then jumps in to offer similar ideas for other Chevy nameplates: “We could take Trax and make that the Ax. Same thing with the Nox.” He starts to suggest truncating the name Tahoe before thinking better of it.

Barra, who earlier in the video finds Kerber spinning in the CEO’s desk chair, briefly looks in on the presentation and gives the rebrand idea a thumbs-up. “Rado — I think I like it,” Barra says.

In real life, Kerber, a recent University of Kentucky graduate who started at the Ballston Spa, N.Y., dealership late last year, was selected as its employee of the month in June for her work on the video series. She made that award the subject of another recent episode that shows her teaching co-workers to play “Hot Cross Buns” on recorders as part of a “team bonding day.”

The series is an example of how cheap, homemade content has the potential to outperform more expensive advertising, if done right. It quickly caught the attention of GM execs who invited the Mohawk crew to Detroit to shoot the 11th episode, which went live on TikTok on August 5 and has already drawn more than 300,000 views.

“We were so honored to be invited by Chevrolet to visit GM headquarters,” Kerber said in a statement. “We had an absolute blast making this episode and even being so far from Mohawk we felt right at home with the corporate team. Meeting Mary was such a cool experience, she was so kind and fun to shoot with, we loved that she wanted to be a part of the series!”

E.J. Schultz of Ad Age contributed to this report.