Being Clever is Key

By: Grace Midtgard, Social Media Manager

Brands That Have Mastered the Art of April Fool’s Day on Social Media 

Every April 1st, social media managers have the opportunity to turn brand pages into a playground of pranks, fake products, and hilarious announcements. What used to be a day where you prank your friends and family has transformed into a full-blown marketing opportunity for companies to surprise, delight, (ideally) go viral, and maybe even test the waters on future products or markets. But how do they pull it off? Let’s break down how brands use social media to prank their followers this year—and why it worked. 

Starting out with some probiotic soda brands—Olipop and Poppi both had some fun with a similar approach. Both brands teased the launch of new products in collaboration with other brands. This is something we saw become popular this year. The marriage of two seemingly unrelated brands, joining together for the ultimate prank. 

Olipop announced the release of four new flavors: Ranch, Jalapeño Ranch, Hot Honey Ranch and Garlic Ranch. On April Fool’s eve, they teased the release with a blurred post. On April Fool’s they announced, in a collaborated post with Hidden Valley, the new flavors including flavor profiles for each. And on April 2nd, they goofily apologized for the prank with a giveaway of items including Olipop and Hidden Valley Ranch merch. While no one was fooled by this prank, there were a surprising number of users claiming they’d be willing to try this saucy soda. For me, I’ll pass on the soda but give the brands an A+ on April Fool’s execution. 

In similar fashion, Poppi, another prebiotic soda brand, collaborated with Tower 28 Beauty, a skin care line. On March 31, they teased the release of something new with an up close video of the spray, followed by a post on April 1 announcing the release of a Poppi-flavored facial mist. This is a better example of a prank that isn’t as unrealistic as others as we saw a lot of food and beauty collaborations throughout the past year, such as Crumbl Cookies and Dove. I applaud the execution of this, but maybe that’s just because I’m a sucker for a silly infomercial style video. 

Another beauty brand that we saw participate in the fun was Dyson. If you haven’t heard of Dyson, the ridiculously expensive (but magical) hair dryer has been going viral on social media for quite some time now. Which is why they decided to lean on that virality and introduce a new product in the same line: the Dyson Airbrow. They executed this April Fool’s day prank beautifully with a TikTik video in the style of all their other content. One of the top comments: “wait I’d actually buy this,” shows a great example of using April Fool’s day to test the waters of perhaps outlandish products you wouldn’t have thought your customers would actually be interested in. As someone with bushy brows, HMU with one of these Dyson Airbrows, please! 

April Fool’s Day isn’t only fun for social media users, but social media managers love it, too! It allows us to think far outside the box, and have quite a bit of fun. Here’s how we participated with our &Barr clients. 

Our long-term clients at Space Coast Credit Union have a beloved mascot – the Watchdog. &Barr brought Watchdog to life, launched a campaign featuring him (which won several awards, brag) and now we wanted to have a little extra fun with him. As we all know, there are two types of people in this world—dog people and cat people. I think you know where this is going. On April 1, it was announced (with many cat puns)that Watchdog was out and Watchcat was in! Followers loved it, with posts garnering hundreds of comments of fans either mourning Watchdog or ecstatic over the new Watchcat. The following day, we announced that it was, in fact, just a prank. However, after some fun feedback, perhaps there is room for two pets in SCCU’s house in the future!

For our virtual kitchen clients, Rebel’s Hot Chicken and Secret Sauce Barbecue, who are under the restaurant group Bottleneck Management, we decided to go the forbidden scent route. Who doesn’t want their house to be filled with the aroma of spicy, hot, eye-watering chicken or the essence of smoke scent. If you’re hosting, it’s a good way to convince your friends that you did the actual cooking, and bonus: there was noooo delivery service involved. Maybe next year we should consider extending the line with some meltable wax cubes… 

Lastly, for our client City Works Eatery and Pourhouse, also under the Bottleneck Management umbrella, we decided to introduce a new beer on tap. Since they already have over 90 beers, we figured we’d convince our followers that we took the extremely popular, limited-time only item, Crab Rangoon Mozzarella Sticks, and turned it into a perfectly-paired brew. 

Our team wants to send a sincere thank you to our clients for allowing us to have some fun on April Fool’s Day, and also a shout out to the social media managers who kept us all entertained on the first day of April. We can’t wait to see who fools us next year.