I do not plan on posting my passion blog this week,
APRIL FOOLS! Many companies have shown they are anything but fools, by deciding to use April Fool’s Day as a marketing tactic. Marketers put out phony advertisements on April 1st to appeal to their buyers with good senses of humor and to at least inspire double takes from those without. Social media allowed companies to receive immediate feedback on these ad campaigns as viewers ‘liked’, commented upon, or ‘shared’ their ads on Facebook or retweeted them on Twitter. The most successful pseudo advertisements seemed to be the ones that either sounded very close to true, but with surprise, or the ones that were completely outrageous.
Whereas many ads are ignored by consumers, these April Fool’s advertisements were popular. Proctor and Gambel’s Scope brand ran Facebook postings promoting bacon mouthwash, which were shared over 90,000 times. Virgin Atlantic Airlines put an advertisement up on a blog promoting glass-bottom planes. They claimed that this would give passengers an “unparalleled flying experience.” One bath store advertised a vertical bathtub to allow for a more compact bathing room to save money in this bad economy. These are just a few examples of the ridiculous promotions that occurred on April Fool’s Day. Because of the popularity of social media many of these pictures and factitious advertisements went viral in a matter of hours. Whenever there is a social media ‘storm,’ other media tend to pick up the story, as happened in this case with many news articles describing the advertising pranks. Usually false advertising is a bad thing, but one day a year it can be great.
The real trick to these jokes was the use of the social media. This mass marketing over the span of one day would be much less effective if marketers could only use print ads. The Facebook shares and Tweets allowed these faux promotions to be spread cross-country and even worldwide in an extremely short period of time. The social media can be a huge asset to marketing campaigns if utilized creatively. Most people in the United States are users of a social media site or have friends who use social media sites. Using these popular websites to advertise is not only profitable, but in my opinion, necessary. Whether it be for real advertising campaigns or April Fool’s jokes, the social media is a great way to market.