It’s starting to become popular for businesses to play April Fool’s Day pranks and stunts, which someone dubbed as “Prankvertising”. A few years ago it was novel and fun, but is this a trend that is getting old? What’s the point? Sure, you can get some laughs and show that your business has a fun side to it. But you can also risk pushing your customers away by seemingly wasting thousands of dollars on fun and games, instead of putting that money into improving your business.
Should your business play April Fool’s Day pranks? In the end, it’s about who your customers are and what they appreciate. Are they fun-loving? Do they appreciate a good laugh? Will they forgive you if a prank goes wrong? Or would they rather have you spend that marketing money on lowering your product’s price by 0.2%? Also, think about your employees. Is this something they would find funny? Is this something that would help them enjoy their work more? Or would they find this distracting and pointless?
Google usually has several April Fool’s Day videos they create every year. Most of them are fun. But this year one of them backfired. Their Mic Drop function allowed users to “have the last word” by sending an email and not getting any future replies. Except one of their users posted in the Google Help Forum that he lost his job because of this prank. He’s a writer that accidentally used the Mic Drop function to send his writing to his boss, but didn’t get his boss’ reply back with the changes necessary. The writer woke up to an angry voicemail from his boss about not responding to the email. Oops.
Pranks sometimes backfire. Four years ago I played a prank on my wife which I thought would be hilarious – she didn’t agree and was very angry with me. Oops.
I’m the type of person that likes pranks. It takes creativity and risk to pull off a good prank. These are also qualities which I love in a business. I like working with businesses that aren’t always serious. I like businesses that are fun-loving and don’t take themselves too seriously. But that’s just me.
Here’s are 5 pranks for this year that I really enjoyed:
Google’s New Door-to-Door Delivery Technology (Better Than Drones)
Baby Mudder – “This Generation of Children are A Little Weaker Than Normal”
Selfie Shoes – “Now Both Hands are Free to be in the Photo”
Golden State Warriors Finals MVP Pranks His Teammate – “You’ve Been Let Go”
Genuinely “Tree to Toilet” Toilet Paper – Come with us as we roll back 100 years of innovation”