If you were look­ing for­ward to arti­sanal, bespoke, small batch toi­let paper that is “hand-pulped and hand-per­fo­rat­ed” and “gen­uine­ly tree-to-toi­let,” we have some bad news: It’s April 1. How­ev­er, it’s most like­ly, like Portlandia’s hand­craft­ed arti­sanal light­bulbs, that you had a hunch some­thing wasn’t quite right. And that, in a nut­shell, is the gist of April Fools’ con­tent in 2016: Con­sumers are in on the joke and can play along.

But pranksters shouldn’t despair. Prankver­tis­ing still has a time and place – just not on April 1 any­more.

Fool Me Once…

On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell issued ads in sev­er­al major news­pa­pers, along with a press release say­ing it had pur­chased the Lib­er­ty Bell to help ease the nation­al debt and hence­forth this nation­al trea­sure would be known as the Taco Lib­er­ty Bell, result­ing in thou­sands of calls to the Nation­al Park Ser­vice, includ­ing staff aides for sen­a­tors from New Jer­sey and Nebras­ka. Twen­ty years lat­er, the world is a dif­fer­ent place. With every minute hol­i­day, brands roll out con­tent, like Piz­za Hut on Pi Day, IHOP on Nation­al Pan­cake Day and Mole­sk­ine on Nation­al Hand­writ­ing Day, mean­ing con­sumers in 2016 are not only savvi­er and have more resources at their dis­pos­al to debunk brand hoax­es, they’ve also been desen­si­tized and are more sus­pi­cious this time of year. Look at recent sto­ries about the Pep­si Light Dumb­bell Bot­tle and the Jurys Inns Hotels duvet suit. Both imme­di­ate­ly raise red flags even though the brands/agencies report­ed­ly insist­ed they were not pranks – although the Pep­si agency lat­er con­firmed the bot­tles were nev­er man­u­fac­tured or dis­trib­uted.

Both imme­di­ate­ly raise red flags even though the brands/agencies report­ed­ly insist­ed they were not pranks – although the Pep­si agency lat­er con­firmed the bot­tles were nev­er man­u­fac­tured or dis­trib­uted. Even Chipo­tle sell­ing ham­burg­ers seems fishy, but the brand filed a trade­mark for “Bet­ter Burg­er,” so it may be legit. And when Ama­zon Dash, the brand­ed Wi-Fi con­nect­ed devices that enable con­sumers to reorder items with the press of a but­ton, was announced on March 31, 2015, the brand­ed in-home effort seemed so out­landish, it also gen­er­at­ed April Fools’ skep­ti­cism. (Although what a dif­fer­ence a year makes as Ama­zon is now gar­ner­ing praise for the release of Ama­zon Dash for con­doms.) So with con­sumer skep­ti­cism at an all-time high in 2016, is it pos­si­ble to pull off brand­ed April Fools’ exe­cu­tions any­more?

I Pity The Fool

Brands still try – in part because pranks retain a cer­tain appeal. If exe­cut­ed prop­er­ly, they can attract huge atten­tion – like the Dev­il Baby Attack for the movie “Devil’s Due”, for exam­ple, which has near­ly 53 mil­lion views to date on YouTube alone. How­ev­er, it’s worth not­ing this video debuted in Jan­u­ary 2014, not April.

Last year, Momen­tol­ogy looked at how brands can suc­cess­ful­ly prank con­sumers and found brand­ed pranks typ­i­cal­ly fall into one of three cat­e­gories — fun­ny and quirky; warm and fuzzy; and scary and/or mean – like Ford Mus­tang Speed Dat­ing for Valentine’s Day 2015, WestJet’s 2013 Christ­mas Mir­a­cle and Budweiser’s Blind Taste Test, which debuted dur­ing New York City Beer Week in March 2015. In oth­er words: None of these pranks were for April Fools’ Day, which means they were car­ried out when con­sumers weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly expect­ing them.

What A Fool Believes

There’s anoth­er rea­son brands con­tin­ue to roll out April Fools’ efforts in the dig­i­tal era. These well-mean­ing pranks not only human­ize the brands behind them, they also help forge mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions with con­sumers who then have a new point of ref­er­ence. How­ev­er, instead of trick­ing con­sumers as Taco Bell was able to do, there’s been a shift toward sim­ply sur­pris­ing and delight­ing them. In oth­er words, brand­ed April Fools’ cam­paigns in recent years are eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able, which let con­sumers in on the jokes, so they can laugh along­side brands. Case in point: There’s the Hon­da­HAIR in-vehi­cle hair-groom­ing tool, the BMW P.R.A.M., or Post­na­tal Roy­al Auto Mobile, and the Learn How to Bark at Your Dog e‑Learning Course from Groupon.

“It’s fun­ny enough to share and sil­ly enough to iden­ti­fy as a prank,” said Tra­cy Willis, con­tent strate­gist at cre­ative mar­ket­ing agency N2Q Con­sult­ing, of the Groupon prank. Indeed, Scott Hamu­la, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor and chair of the Depart­ment of Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Roy H. Park School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Itha­ca Col­lege, said pulling off a prank can mean either “the tra­di­tion­al, ‘Ah, ya got me!,’ which is very dif­fi­cult to do,” or, “Oh, that’s awe­some.” Fur­ther, Hamu­la adds, “With every­one expect­ing some­thing on April 1, it’s more like­ly that a brand will be suc­cess­ful at this sec­ond approach, main­ly, cre­at­ing an unex­pect­ed, super-cool April Fools’ prank-like idea, flaw­less­ly exe­cut­ing it in a 360-degree way…with the result being the audi­ence gets a sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence with­out the ‘gotcha’ moment.” It also helps to tie a prank-like idea to a pre­dom­i­nant cul­tur­al theme, like BMW did with the roy­al baby or Scope did with its bacon mouth­wash “for breath that siz­zles” in the bacon-crazed era that was 2013.

Foolhardy

And that’s pre­cise­ly what brands are doing for April 1, 2016. Quilt­ed North­ern’s Rus­tic Weave https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRlBtabKRFM&feature=youtu.be Toi­let paper brand Quilt­ed North­ern, for exam­ple, is the com­pa­ny behind the afore­men­tioned arti­sanal, bespoke toi­let paper, Rus­tic Weave. “This hand­craft­ed, small-batch prod­uct will be unlike any­thing on the mar­ket today and estab­lish­es the brand as an unlike­ly entrant into the craft space,” the brand says. “The demand for sim­ple, hand­craft­ed, her­itage prod­ucts is stronger than ever, but no toi­let paper sat­is­fies this grow­ing sec­tor.” Rus­tic Weave is part of Quilt­ed Northern’s Designed to be For­got­ten cam­paign, of which Jason Ippen, senior brand direc­tor at par­ent com­pa­ny Geor­gia-Pacif­ic says, “The best bath­room expe­ri­ence is one you don’t remem­ber.” Designed to Be For­got­ten aims to intro­duce the brand to younger con­sumers, so it includes humor­ous takes on how hard the brand works to cre­ate a prod­uct con­sumers don’t remem­ber. In fact, Ippen calls Rus­tic Weave a “fun­ny lit­tle riff” on the craft move­ment as the brand seeks to inject itself into con­ver­sa­tions and rein­force its mes­sag­ing. “I don’t think any­one will be sur­prised by this video,” Ippen said. “We’re jok­ing around…this is a fun way to engage con­sumers and per­son­i­fy our brand and build on the per­son­al­i­ty we’ve built out over the course of the last year.” Esurance’s Elec­tion Insur­ance

Sim­i­lar­ly, in a video and press release, insur­ance com­pa­ny Esurance says it will offer a home­own­ers pol­i­cy, Elec­tion Insur­ance, to pro­tect aban­doned homes for four years while home­own­ers flee after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. “Every four years, we hear from count­less dis­sat­is­fied Amer­i­cans who threat­en to leave the coun­try if the ‘wrong’ can­di­date is elect­ed into office,” said Alan Gell­man, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer at Esurance, in the release. “This year…if your pre­ferred can­di­date los­es the elec­tion, Esurance will pro­tect your home so you can move out of the coun­try wor­ry free.” Per Esurance, home­own­ers can choose between stan­dard pol­i­cy options that include week­ly home main­te­nance and pre­mi­um options like “hol­i­day over­achiev­er,” in which “your hol­i­day lights and yard décor will keep up with the Jone­ses.” The video and press release also come with a clear dis­claimer that note “Elec­tion Insur­ance is not avail­able in any states.” The Zebra’s In-Car Self­ie Pre­ven­tion Alarm

For its part, car insur­ance com­par­i­son start­up The Zebra says it is releas­ing a fake com­mer­cial for a fake prod­uct called ICSPA, or the In-Car Self­ie Pre­ven­tion Alarm, which “detects van­i­ty” in cars and acti­vates a smart­phone kill switch if van­i­ty exceeds cer­tain lev­els. “It’s fun­ny and very tongue-in-cheek as it mocks self­ie-obsessed peo­ple,” said Alyssa Con­nol­ly, man­ag­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy. “How­ev­er, we ulti­mate­ly dri­ve toward a pur­pose­ful mes­sage to raise aware­ness of dis­tract­ed dri­ving. We’ve built a fake web­site for the fake prod­uct and writ­ten a blog post about dis­tract­ed dri­ving that round out the ele­ments of the cam­paign.” Ibex Out­door Cloth­ing’s Dog Fur Fiber

Riff­ing off of the Ibex promise to source the finest fiber on the plan­et and pulling in the brand’s dog cul­ture, Social Media Man­ag­er Evan Kay says the idea of Ibex’s D.F.F., or Dog Fur Fiber, was born for an April Fools’ exe­cu­tion in 2015. The brand took advan­tage of one of its part­ners vis­it­ing from New Zealand ear­li­er that year and used his accent and fiber exper­tise to add cred­i­bil­i­ty to the sto­ry, Kay said. The brand also cre­at­ed a ton of con­tent, includ­ing an Ibex-brand­ed D.F.F. logo, new prod­uct SKUs, fake fab­ric labels, an email cam­paign and fake prod­uct pages on the web­site. In addi­tion, YouTube and Face­book received new cov­er pho­tos, Ibex sent out an embar­goed press release and it ran a live Periscope on the 1st.

It also sent D.F.F. prod­uct to five influ­en­tial out­door media edi­tors a week pri­or. “This in my opin­ion was key, because on April 1, you’re com­pet­ing against every­one else in your mar­ket,” Kay said. “If you can get in front of the key influ­encers before­hand, it’s going to make your cam­paign that much more suc­cess­ful.” As a result, Kay says the brand gen­er­at­ed a ton of expo­sure that last­ed for weeks, con­vert­ed new cus­tomers, brought in a lot of rev­enue, and it fooled a lot of peo­ple, includ­ing “a fiber spe­cial­ist from Patag­o­nia who sent our CEO a con­cerned email.”

How­ev­er, Kay also notes the goal wasn’t to real­ly fool con­sumers per se. “We put a lot of hints in the video to demon­strate that it was joke. For instance, one of the fake fab­rics was a cross between 50 per­cent shih tzu and 50 per­cent bull­dog, or bull­shit,” Kay said. “The oth­er was when we dis­cussed the side effects, ‘clean­ing with your own sali­va’ and ‘it retains odor very, very well.’ We cre­at­ed it with the mind­set that some peo­ple would fall for it, and, yes, it would be a good way to engage with our cus­tomer. Our cus­tomer ser­vice had a great time talk­ing to peo­ple on the phones.” So per­haps the final les­son here is that if you’re going to attempt a brand­ed April Fools’ exe­cu­tion, you’d bet­ter back it up with a lot of con­tent, whether or not you expect con­sumers to believe it.

“If you can get in front of the key influ­encers before­hand, it’s going to make your cam­paign that much more suc­cess­ful.” As a result, Kay says the brand gen­er­at­ed a ton of expo­sure that last­ed for weeks, con­vert­ed new cus­tomers, brought in a lot of rev­enue, and it fooled a lot of peo­ple, includ­ing “a fiber spe­cial­ist from Patag­o­nia who sent our CEO a con­cerned email.” How­ev­er, Kay also notes the goal wasn’t to real­ly fool con­sumers per se. “We put a lot of hints in the video to demon­strate that it was joke. For instance, one of the fake fab­rics was a cross between 50 per­cent shih tzu and 50 per­cent bull­dog, or bull­shit,” Kay said. “The oth­er was when we dis­cussed the side effects, ‘clean­ing with your own sali­va’ and ‘it retains odor very, very well.’ We cre­at­ed it with the mind­set that some peo­ple would fall for it, and, yes, it would be a good way to engage with our cus­tomer. Our cus­tomer ser­vice had a great time talk­ing to peo­ple on the phones.” So per­haps the final les­son here is that if you’re going to attempt a brand­ed April Fools’ exe­cu­tion, you’d bet­ter back it up with a lot of con­tent, whether or not you expect con­sumers to believe it.

So per­haps the final les­son here is that if you’re going to attempt a brand­ed April Fools’ exe­cu­tion, you’d bet­ter back it up with a lot of con­tent, whether or not you expect con­sumers to believe it.