April Fools Day 2021 was a welcome relief in a tough year. While many sat out the annual April 1 jokester fest during pandemic lockdown, this year saw brands coming out for some badly needed cheer. As we took in the flurry of fake announcements and funny social moves, our team at Kite Hill PR observed some hits and misses, but here are a few that really stood out to us.
For starters, we applaud Cartoon Network for their “Cattoon Network” re-brand and loved their thoughtful and fully cat-themed schedule. Are you ready for Keeping up with the Katdashians or Game of Paws? Note to the network: we would totally tune in!
Volkswagen experienced backlash with their sudden name change “Voltswagen” stunt. While we give them props for using a rather detailed press release to underscore their more climate friendly tech, their decision to go out with the stunt early -- several days before April 1, confused the public and ticked off journalists. The deception also didn’t help given the brand is still climbing back from an earlier scandal.
On the other hand, TaskRabbit leaned into their brand ethos with the enlightened the mood of their joke introducing Task Bunnies to keep clients company while taskers do their thing. What made this move all the more meaningful was that the company also pledged to donate up to $4,000 to nonprofit rabbit rescues to give back as part of their April Fools bunny move. April Fools Day is also a great time for a brand or individual to apply some self-deprecating humor to their known quirks, and on that note, Lego gets kudos from us. The world knows that stepping on Legos is everyone’s worst nightmare. We loved how Lego announced the arrival of Lego Smartbricks, which detect your walking path and automatically slide away from you while you were walking. (A few of the parents on our team were a bit bummed to learn that it wasn’t real though!)
Velveeta embraced its guilty goodness with a prank ad touting its new expansion into skin care: “V for Velveeta.” The ad encourages you to "indulge your indulgences" and "immerse yourself in the serenity of smoothness." While we are all for adding more cheese to our day, we were more thinking about consuming it, not wearing it. Speaking of food and body care, Jack Ink’s Jerky promoted a giveaway of a cologne for men that has the scent of their jerky.
As a tech PR firm, we LOL’d pretty hard on Stack Overflow’s introduction of The Key to make “copy+paste” easier to execute in a strain-free way. While on the topic of tech, we also noted Satechi’s cybermouse prank, which hopped onto the surge in electric battery interest among investors. The EV-powered cybermouse was purportedly made out of bulletproof “super-tough” aluminum with LED lights. Although the product was fake, we like that Satechi offered a real consumer coupon.
In the category of pranks that could one day become a real thing, we salute Bentley Motors for touting a coffee machine integrated on its dashboard for an on-demand espresso. Many of us car aficionados would truly appreciate this kind of feature, as long as it was accessible on the passenger side, naturally.
What April Fools 2021 demonstrated is that the marketplace is ready to laugh again. The brands whose pranks were in line with their existing brand personalities, or ones that featured a mission-driven or consumer-oriented initiative like donations or discounts were the winners. But humor is hard. Those whose timing or message were a bit off were cautionary tales for the PR fallout that sometimes accompany a prank gone wrong.
Julian Cannon, Account Associate