As this year’s April Fools Day fades away in the rearview mirror, it’s a nice excuse to look at some of the best and worst pranks made by brands in the name of ‘harmless’ fun.
With so many different brands in the commerce space, it’s a constant competition to stand out from the crowd. April Fools Day is a great opportunity for brands to draw attention to themselves and get consumers talking in a light-hearted way.
Coming up with a comedic prank to roll out on April 1st is a great way for brands to really humanise themselves and show a playful side, something that may not be as easy to convey through everyday marketing activities. A successful April Fools gag can strengthen the bond between brand and consumer, enhancing the perception of the brand to both existing and prospective customers.
There’s a fine line between successfully pranking your customers into believing something harmless and misleading them under false pretences. A good April Fools prank should make your customers laugh both at the point of introduction and again when they discover it’s a ruse, not send them into a panic or nurture false excitement. It doesn’t even need to be a full ‘prank’, just offering consumers something comical is a great way to get in the spirit of April 1st.
Less than successful April Fools pranks
Unfortunately, many companies have fallen victim to a sour April Fools gag in the past.
On April 1st 2016, Google added a new button to Gmail as a way for people to ‘have the last word’. This button, known as ‘Mic Drop’, would send an email, automatically attaching an animated GIF of a minion from Despicable Me dropping a microphone. Any email sent using this new feature would not be able to receive replies.
On first impressions, this seems like harmless fun, however, when brought into a corporate environment, things took a less-than-funny turn. The button was actually located right next to the usual send button, meaning it could easily be selected by accident. People claimed to have missed out on job opportunities due to this prank, with others stating they literally lost their jobs due to accidentally triggering this feature.
For April Fools Day in 2018, Elon Musk jokingly declared that Tesla had gone bankrupt, despite the company openly experiencing hard financial times right before this. He tried to keep it comical by tweeting that the electric car manufacturer would be undertaking a “mass sale of Easter eggs” as a “last-ditch effort” to save the company.
It’s safe to say that this wasn’t taken in a light-hearted manner by investors, as the announcement was quickly followed by a 7% drop in Tesla stock.
In more recent years (2022), a subscription-based alcohol company, Bier, executed a poorly considered April Fools prank. It notified a large number of