Brands Pity the Fool

By Kelly Heisler

For many of us April Fool’s day brings back heinous flashbacks of Vaseline covered phone ear pieces and saran wrap covered toilet seats. Turns out in this digital age, pesky brothers aren’t the only ones having a laugh as brands have come out of the woodwork to show off their pranking ingenuity.

It was truly a day of marketing chaos. Retailer, American Eagle, fooled us with the ironic Skinny, Skinny jeans, while even brand giant’s like P&G had Scope plaster its new “bacon flavored” mouthwash all over it’s Facebook page. Virgin was flying high with ads featuring glass-bottomed planes and Redbox confused and intrigued customers by announcing sales of lunchmeat from their kiosks.

Tricks were not kept strictly to products as social media platforms and search engines joined the games. Twitter introduced a no vowel option on tweets and YouTube created chaos with the announcement they were shutting down. Google, a longstanding participant in April Fool’s Day, had not one but two gags releasing both “Google Nose” and blue Gmail.

Question is, as a consumer what is the consequence of these types of interactions? When brands pull the wool over your eyes, do you find it humanizes them or does it seem like a cheap trick? Is it worth the risk of backlash to be timely?

As pressure for brands to actively respond in real time increases, we are bound to only see more brands hop on the bandwagon. Mark your calendars for next year!