Every year on April 1st, brands of all sorts pull a fast one. Many are inventive, some are even funny. All are rooted in making their most valuable constituents into (April) fools.
In 1996 Taco Bell announced it had purchased the Liberty Bell and would be renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell.
Burger King created a fake menu item in the form of a chicken fries-flavored milkshake, testing how easily disgusted (or not) their customers might be.
BMW once mock-introduced a convertible with an air-flow device that touted the ability to keep rain out even while the car was parked.
Caribou Coffee made light of a product complaint (stained teeth) by introducing the world’s first clear coffee beverage.
Lipton Tea last year announced the discontinuation of its hugely popular Peach flavor. Its post got high engagement among devout fans who became the butt of the joke as they voiced their dismay.
For such pranks to “work” they have to be somewhat ridiculous, but just believable enough to come from your brand. This relies on two elements: the character of your brand, and the trust it has built with its customer base.
It’s that second part that makes the April Fool’s Day prank ill-advised. A brand in prank mode is preying on its fans’ trust — a most delicate thing to build, and the hardest to regain.
Sure, it’s all in good fun, and one hopes we haven’t lost our collective sense of humor so that we can’t laugh at ourselves for falling for harmless misdirects.
(Nevermind that the responses to today’s pranks will be filled with trolls claiming aggrievement for clicks. Such thieves of joy should be ignored, muted and cast out of society.)
But is it really helpful to a brand — even one whose flagship product is named the Whopper — to deceive those who trust you most?
Look. I like a good prank as much as the next brand consultant. I’ve pulled more than my share in personal and business settings.
In high school, I wrote a fake letter from a hotel to my church youth group leader demanding compensation for rooms trashed like a rock band had occupied them rather than a group of Christian do-gooders on a mission trip.
One year I sent a phony will from the executor of a recently deceased aunt’s estate to each of my siblings, informing them of a financial windfall that was too good to be true.
And then another fake letter from a hotel to my first boss, demanding compensation for rooms trashed like a rock band had occupied them rather than some mild mannered Oscar Mayer brand ambassadors.
As funny as my pranks were, they didn’t exactly endear me to friends and family. The church youth group leader threatened to ban me from future trips. My sister, who began mentally spending her fake inheritance, is still pissed 15 years later. And I came awfully close to having my keys to the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile taken away and being stripped of the title Hotdogger.
People will laugh, and they’ll get over your brand’s joke at their expense. But is very public deception, even for a laugh, the best use of resources?
Particularly if humor isn’t a part of your brand — but even if it is — think twice before you undermine your credibility by making your customers the fool.
Mike Walsh graduated from putting cellophane on the toilet seat and gluing the hand sprayer on the kitchen sink to "on" so that it would spray the next person to wash a dish. Having retired his fake cat poop and mostly stopped calling people to ask if their refrigerator is running, he resides in Chicago in a state of low grade shame.
