April Fools!!!

I love April Fool’s Day.  I love to play pranks on people. There are some corporations that have been known to try to play some jokes on the general public – some good, some bad, and some ugly.

The pranks help illustrate that the company has a fun side and are often created in or released to the media from the organization’s marketing or PR department. However, be careful, many pranks can have unfortunate endings that end up alienating, angering, or frustrating your stakeholders.

Some of the top corporate pranks pulled include (Sources: Columbia Missourian, Wikipedia, New York Daily News and MSN TV):

• Get a Pepsi Tattoo: Many people still may have a souvenir of this prank. The Pepsi tattoo prank was in 1994 when NPR announced that anyone who got the Pepsi logo tattooed on their body would receive a ten percent discount for life on any Pepsi products with the same label. NPR received calls for months after the initial broadcast from angry fans attempting to claim their prize.
• The Bank Teller Fees Prank: In 1999 the Savings Bank of Rockville in Connecticut placed an ad in a local newspaper announcing they would be charging customers five dollars for each visit to the teller. The bank lost over 1,000 customers, and when they announced the joke the next day, most of the customers did not return.
• The Free Eminem Concert Prank: A pair of enterprising disc jockeys from 98.1 KISS in Chattanooga, TN decided to promote a fake, free Eminem concert to be held in a store parking lot. Bumper-to-bumper traffic and near-riot reactions caused chaos as fans tried to get to the free concert. The DJs were jailed for creating a public nuisance.
• Google Pranks: Google has, by far, mastered the corporate prank and have done so since 2000. A few of the more memorable ones are…
  • Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP), a fictitious free broadband service that would make use of a standard toilet and sewage lines to provide free Internet access. Check out Google’s TiSP website.

  

  • Google changed the login page for Gmail to announce a new service called Gmail Paper. The service would allow users of Google’s free Gmail service to convert e-mails to a “Paper Archive”, which Google would print (on “96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum”) and mail via snail-mail. Check out Google’s Gmail Paper website.                                        
  • Googlunaplex (a.k.a. Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E). This one is my personal favorite. In 2004, Google posted fictitious job opportunities for a research center on the moon. According to Google’s website mentioned later, one reason for creating the Googlunaplex is “tapping unlimited solar energy to…power innumerable arrays of massively parallel lava lamps.” As previously stated, Google even went to great lengths to create a whole website on the lunar job opportunities, complete with illustrations and diagrams. A very good read.

  

  • For more Google pranks check out Google Hoaxes on Wikipedia

• Another favorite of mine is the South Park prank. In 1998, Comedy Central was supposed to air a highly anticipated “South Park” episode in which Cartman’s father was to be revealed. Everything seemed normal for the first couple of minutes as they ran clips from previous episodes setting up the revelation. After the setup, a message flashed onscreen stating that it was all an April Fools’ Day joke. The rest of the episode revolved around the fictional show-within-a-show and very flatulent characters Terrence and Phillip. The reveal of Cartman’s father was scheduled for May 20 of that year. Due to the uproar by irate fans, Comedy Central urged South Park’s creators to push up the reveal episode, which they did, and it aired on April 22, 1998. Buzz is already swirling regarding whether or not South Park will do it again this year as they have an original episode scheduled to air tonight.

In regards to why many companies do this. Well… the last quote from a Comedy Central spokesperson in the article from the New York Daily News source mentioned above about the South Park prank says it all “‘We’ve created a real debate…You can imagine the benefit we’ll ultimately realize. More people are now talking about ‘South Park’ than ever before.’” Of course, use common sense. You don’t want to make your stakeholder angry or push them away.