You’d never want to play your customer for a fool, unless of course it’s April Fools’ Day. And then, all bets are off. Everyone loves a good April Fools’ Day prank, and if you can make people laugh while generating positive brand awareness, you’ve got an opportunity to capture a huge audience on a day when fun-seekers are actively looking for laughs.

The best marketing campaigns tend to be the ones that appeal to our emotions, and there’s no better emotional response than laughter. In fact, a study by Ace Metrix shows that nearly every top 10 Super Bowl ad for the last three years used either humour or animals (or both) as a key creative technique. Catching your audience by surprise with a prank they didn’t expect can also work well to generate attention and awareness.

Here’s a look at a few ways you can use April Fools’ Day to capture your audience’s imagination, entertain prank seekers and turn laughter into sales.

Poke Fun at Your Product

Does your product have uses your customers might not have thought of? Can you poke fun at a trend or play up an aspect of your brand that tickles consumers’ funny bones? Sure, marketing is serious business but having a little fun at your brand’s expense is not only a great way to get people laughing with you, it can also endear people to your company.

Twitter achieved this brilliantly in 2013 with an April Fools Day campaign that poked fun at the trend in tech companies dropping vowels from their names. It published a blog post announcing a two-tiered service in which consonants were free to use but vowels would cost $5/month. This new revenue model was also purported to encourage a tighter and more efficient communication style.

Guinness, too, chose to poke fun at its product, known for its excessive beer head, with a campaign that literally turned the beer on its head for the day, while Nike posted a video revealing that the air in Nike Air shoes is actually breath captured from some of the world’s best athletes.

Announce an Absurd New Product

If you can walk the line between the realm of possibility and the totally absurd without making the joke too obvious, then you’ve got yourself an April Fools Day prank in the making. Blend fantastical features into an existing product and you can announce a brand extension or new product line that may leave consumers scratching their heads in wonder and amusement.

Scope pulled this off perfectly last year with its bacon-flavoured mouthwash announcement. Building on last year’s bacon craze, Scope claimed the miracle product would taste like bacon without leaving any trace of bacon-breath. It was a bit too good to be true.

Microsoft picked up on the retro-is-cool trend to bring back the pager. Its Windows pager announcement actually managed to fool many readers, who claimed it could actually be useful. Google took a similar tack with its fake Google Maps for Nintendo 8-bit product.

Use April Fools’ Day for Special Offers and Contests

Once you’ve hooked your audience with a hilarious brand extension, make the most of their attention with a special offer.

American Eagle couldn’t actually sell the literally painted on “skinny skinny” jeans featured in its April Fools Day campaign, but it took the opportunity to offer viewers a coupon for $10 off any pair of existing jeans.

Meanwhile, over at WestJet, which announced its faux Furry Family campaign, a bid to ease restrictions on animals in the cabin by allowing any animal that fit on the plane to roam free, the April Fools Day ruse was also accompanied by a very real fare sale.

Ready to launch your April Fools Day promotion? We can help. Our social promotions platform makes it easy to engage your customers across platforms. Contact us for more info.