Is celebrating April Fools’ Day a good idea for content marketers? If your brand thinks of April Fools’ as a one-day joke, don’t do it. While we don’t yet know what’s in store for this year’s prank, next year’s April 1 celebration may come from a student. Lessons learned: If humor is appropriate one day a year, it should be part of your brand voice throughout the year. Create distinct but related content While Burger King uses April 1 to launch “new” products, Rent the Runway used the day to launch a “new” service, which Patrick Burke, chief marketing officer at Grapevine, shared with us. As this Fortune article details, the mic drop prank caused consumers to bombard Google’s product forums and social media pages with complaints. We’re truly sorry.” Lessons learned: Don’t develop a promotion that disrupts your audience’s use of your products or services. (Perhaps all content marketers should try this one any time of the year.) Invite your audience inside your humorous content efforts and enlist their help in spreading the fun on social media. Is your brand celebrating April Fools’ Day?
Three hundred sixty-four days a year, brands work hard creating content to build and strengthen trust with their audiences.
But on a single day in April, many brands suspend those trust-building efforts and throw them out the window by publishing content deliberately meant to fool (or worse, make fools of) their audiences.
Yes, it’s time to usher in April’s annual day of pranking.
It’s a tempting conundrum for content marketers. To earn a reputation for quality content, you’re taught to avoid spammy clickbait headlines or sales pitches thinly disguised as content. But April 1 seemingly gives you a reason to break the rules – deceiving your audiences by crafting fake content, writing absurd headlines, and even promoting faux products.
Is celebrating April Fools’ Day a good idea for content marketers?
Probably not.
If your brand has never used humor or the element of surprise in its content, April 1 is not the time to start.
If your brand thinks of April Fools’ as a one-day joke, don’t do it.
If your brand isn’t prepared to devote significant resources to develop a thoughtful, well-executed campaign, don’t do it.
If your brand leaders can’t weather criticism, don’t do it.
If, after all those caveats, you think April Fools’ fits with your brand, read on for some inspiration. And if you recognize April 1 isn’t a day for your brand to celebrate, read on for some universal lessons to use all 365 days of the year.
Integrate into your brand
Burger King frequently uses humor in its content. “BK is hilarious on Twitter,” writes Lindsay Welgarz in The Most Genius Tweets from Burger King’s Twitter Account.
The company told USA Today earlier this year: “We like to playfully joke around with what the Internet and news outlets are saying, but never to be mean spirited.”
That approach to humor perhaps is why April 1 is permanently circled on its creative calendar. The brand historically launched “new” products on the day, including the Left-Handed Whopper (redesigned by moving condiments 180 degrees) and the Chocolate Whopper.
“April Fools’ has become a major date for Burger King and our campaigns have generated massive engagement with a younger, and often harder to reach, audience,” said Fernando Machado, Burger King global chief marketing officer, in the recent announcement.
While we don’t yet know what’s in store for this year’s prank, next year’s April 1 celebration may come from a student. Given that Burger King’s April 1 product releases attract a young audience, the brand strengthened that audience connection by partnering with the Clio Awards for the King’s Fools’ Challenge. The winner of the Clio’s 2019 Student Integrated Campaign category will become an honorary creative director at Burger King and will be tasked with bringing its caper for 2020 to life.
“We thought this would be a great way to challenge up-and-coming creatives to show us how they would cut through the noise and hijack popular culture with the ultimate prank,” Fernando said.
Lessons learned:
- If humor is appropriate one day a year, it should be part of your brand voice throughout the year.
- Think about how you can use a seemingly one-time encounter as a kickoff…
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