On Saturday, several brand managers hopped on the chance to participate in April Fools’ Day—and hopefully garner attention, online engagement and coveted headlines for their hijinks.
The Verge published a round up of Google’s April Fools’ jokes, which included a Ms. Pac-Man game on Google Maps and several fake products, such as “Haptic Helpers,” “Google Wind,” “Google Play for Pets” and “Google Gnome”:
Amazon also went with a pet-centric theme by introducing “Petlexa,” another version of its smart-home tool:
Hulu introduced “Hu,” which caters to viewers’ decreased attention spans and cuts all its shows down to eight seconds:
Introducing #Hu, the fastest way to watch your favorite shows. Micro content, massive scale. https://t.co/T1KqGVSVaA http://pic.twitter.com/vPlsW35Gg0
— hulu (@hulu) April 1, 2017
Hulu tweeted examples of the fake product with “The Mindy Show,” “Empire” and “Seinfeld.”
Win a contest with how much TV you can now watch. @SeinfeldTV, now streaming quickly on #Hu. https://t.co/T1KqGVSVaA http://pic.twitter.com/FBKJ6EUB3H
— hulu (@hulu) April 1, 2017
Lyft—probably trying to grab publicity from the endless string of headlines about Uber—premiered “Mono,” which is an automated ride-hailing tool you wear on your hand:
Burger King offered toothpaste flavored like its menu staple, the Whopper:
Jimmy John’s introduced a “White Apron” service—a play on the food ingredient delivery service Blue Apron:
Snickers went the cheeky route, by debuting Snickers “knickers”:
No-one knows nuts like SNICKERS. So we’ve launched a new underwear line offering #satisfying support where you need it most. http://pic.twitter.com/mVvepUUxVO
— SNICKERS® (@SNICKERS) April 1, 2017
Most brands’ jokes highlighted their products and services—whether it was through a fake extended offering of their current product, or one that showed off the organization’s prowess (Snickers’ “We know nuts”).
Other brand managers went further, pranking their visitors with a few “gotcha” moments.
The Knot, a wedding website which helps couples plan their weddings, emailed its roughly 1 million active accounts that their checklists might have been part of the 500,000 that were deleted:
Upon visiting the website, however, brides and grooms who were on the verge of collapse learned that the joke was followed up by several partner deals, such as a free fitness class by Classpass or money off a jewelry purchase at Baublebar.com.
PornHub also pranked visitors—who perhaps fell for it more easily after Congress voted to scrap internet privacy rules last week. The site’s users were greeted by a message that said their browsing history would be auto-shared to their social media profiles:
@BenFeibleman That's funny
— Susan E. Brookshire (@SusanBrookshire) April 2, 2017
Ben & Jerry’s opted out of launching a “new” product or faking out consumers with a joke for April 1, but instead gave visitors tips on pulling the perfect prank.
It published a blog post titled, “Pint pranks: 7 ways to fool your friends on April Fools’ Day.” Ideas included the “flavor swap”:
Take two pints out of the freezer and let them sit just long enough to be able to remove the all the ice cream at once. Then swap the pints and wait for your friend to come looking for their favorite flavor.
What did you think of these efforts, PR Daily readers? Were there other pranks or fake products that you loved—or hated?
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