When March expires, we all digest personal and professional messages with a bit of skepticism. When a friend’s April Fool’s prank goes awry, the embarrassment is usually slight. But when a major company chooses to put its brand on the line for a laugh, it better pay off. This year, one hit a humor home run, while a few struck out badly.
Esurance turned to its usual pitchman, Jon Krasinski to offer election insurance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGjHi9lyioE
The phony coverage was the brainchild of Britt Nolan and his creative team at Leo Burnett Chicago. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive. With more than 140,000 views just on esurance youtube page, more than a thousand gave the spot a thumbs up, while only 17 turned a thumbs down. Time magazine named it one of the best pranks of 2016, along with this spot from Plant Fitness offering tandem exercise bikes.
https://www.facebook.com/planetfitness/videos/10153536298514856/
One thing you don’t want to do after your well planned prank, is have to apologize. Within six hours of launching a “mic-drop” feature in Google’s Gmail, the company issued this statement, “Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. Due to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We’re truly sorry”. Among the complaints, professionals sent important emails that ended with an immature mic-drop. At least one person complained that news from their funeral home was punctuated by a mic-drop. Yes, embarrassing for Google and many Gmail users.
But Google’s fail wasn’t the only one. An online grocer offered endangered animals such as panda, tiger, and whale. An Irish news site lost credibility after posting a picture claiming ISIS has taken land in Ireland.
News consumers who rely on this site were not amused.
A good joke gone viral can be valuable in building a relationship with customers, but the damage from a misstep can linger.
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