Home › Blog › Best April Fools' Marketing Pranks
April Fools’ Day is just around the corner and we can’t wait! This is not because we harbour some kind of anarchistic love for pranks but because it’s a day which offers unparalleled marketing opportunities for any brand daring enough to make a statement and have a little fun. After all, the digital age has brought a lot of noise with its advent. The Internet is an open space where an unfathomable amount of companies are vying for consumer attention. That’s why it’s vital for companies to seize any opportunity they can to stand out of the pack by doing something individualistic. Corporate giants like Google engage in some type of annual tom-foolery as a means of maintaining consumer engagement. However, smaller companies should also get in on the act as it is a novel way to build up consumer awareness. So here are some of Plus 1 Digital’s favourite pranks from April Fools’ gone by:
Google’s Pokémon Challenge: Google is a master of the April Fools’ Day prank. Its annual hoaxes have become events worthy of anticipation since its premier prank the “Mentalplex” back in 2000. Adamant that it doesn’t lose its crown as the biggest prankster around, Google hit us with an onslaught of jokes last year which included the new Gmail feature “shelfie”. Billed as a way for people to share selfies via email it was created with the notion that “you shouldn’t be selfish with your selfie,” the blog post went onto explain that:
Google Plus also got in on the act with a feature that added a lurking David Hasselhoff to a user’s photo by clicking on the short-lived and much-missed AutoAwesome Photobombs icon. However, the real winner of the day was the Google Maps’ contribution to the smorgasbord of jokery. Google hid 150 pokémon in its maps app for iOS and Android. Users were then told to “catch them all” by physically visiting these sites to find the animated critters and add them into their pokédex for a chance to win a trip to Google HQ.
These pranks are all incredibly fun but the discerning marketer can probably determine a not so subtle marketing strategy being employed by the Internet giant. Every major Google product was spotlighted via some prank or another (I haven’t listed them all but a quick snoop on YouTube will lead you to some humorous playlists). For instance, the much maligned Google Plus network saw a boost in activity as tickled users’ indulged in some Hasslehoff action. One of the great things about well administered stunt-marketing is that it helps showcase the feature set of a particular product/service. The maps promotion had people engaging with the app and the Gmail shelfie had people perusing mail options that may normally go overlooked.
Groupon Buys April 1st :Back in 2011 events curator, Groupon, pulled the, quite cute, stunt of claiming that it bought April Fools’ Day outright. It did this to protect consumers from purchasing confusion so that they didn’t buy into something that wasn’t real.
This is quite an intelligent joke by Groupon as numerous April Fools’ pranks have resulted in consumer confusion and attempted purchases of hoax products. Alongside positioning its service as a consumer watchdog it further establishes the offers on their site as peerless in value, while still managing to poke fun at themselves.
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest: The first ever use of a TV broadcast to stage an April Fools’ hoax was in 1957. The venerable BBC news programme panorama shot a three minute segment about Switzerland being in the midst of a bountiful spaghetti harvest. Richard Dimbleby dryly narrated lines like the “virtual disappearance of spaghetti weevils” leading to an enormous response from the audience with many calling up the BBC to know how they too can grow a “spaghetti tree”.
Panorama is not a programme known for levity but a key mission for any brand is to be relatable. Showing a sense of humour engenders prolonged engagement with a consumer base as it establishes a feeling of familiarity. People create relationships with things they identify with; things they feel have a personality and cracking a decent April Fools’ joke can go a long way in giving a brand an identity.
April Fools’ Day 2015: Given the sheer epicness of past stunts it’s hard to guess what fun might be in-store for us this year. It’s become a running joke in the office that Google might attempt to purchase the moon this year, I mean, it has set the bar pretty high! So what predictions do you have? Do you think Amazon will declare books a dead medium and shoot vines of it burning its stock or will we see HBO troll Game of Thrones fans with a spoof ending to the series? Hit us up on our socials with your wildest guesses and come back tomorrow as we’ll be covering the best pranks of the day!