When Brands Choose Chaos.

_{Day 48/100 (Nearly half way. Crazy sauce).}

Hey - It's Tim.

Everyone does roundups of this year's April Fools. Yawn. Let's dig into the legends instead. The pranks that went so viral they became marketing lore.

_{Estimated read time: ~3 minutes}

Three Brand Pranks That Changed The Game

1/ The Left-Handed Whopper (1998)

Burger King took out full-page ads in USA Today announcing a new "Left-Handed Whopper" with all condiments rotated 180° to prevent spillage for lefties. Same price. Same ingredients. Just... rotated.

The punchline? Thousands of customers flooded stores specifically requesting it by name. Thousands more insisted on the "right-handed version."

BK's press release claimed their "left-handed chefs" had been developing it for years. News outlets picked it up. No social media needed.

Brilliant because it played on something just believable enough that people didn't question it. The perfect prank sits right on the edge of reality. And it cost virtually nothing to execute.

2/ Gmail's Launch (2004)

Google announced Gmail on April 1st with 1GB of storage when Hotmail and Yahoo offered a measly 2-4MB.

The announcement claimed users would "never need to delete another message." It promised search that "just works." And it had this weird invite-only system where each person got just 5 invites.

People thought it was fake. The storage claim seemed physically impossible. The date seemed too convenient. The press was skeptical.

It wasn't fake. Not even a little.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin later said: "We were trying to decide the perfect day to launch Gmail and April 1st seemed like the obvious choice."

The ultimate power move - launching something so revolutionary people dismiss it as fiction. As Seth Godin says, "If your idea isn't absurd, there's no hope for it."

Gmail invites became a hot commodity. People sold them on eBay for $150+. And the product that everyone thought was a joke? Now has 1.8 billion users.

What’s even crazier is Notion, yes that Notion, has follow in the Big G’s footsteps and done the same thing.

3/ Virgin Atlantic's Glass-Bottom Plane (2013)

Virgin claimed they'd created planes with glass floors so passengers could see the ocean below while crossing the Atlantic.

25,000+ shares in 24 hours.

Branson understood virality before it was a word. The best pranks aren't just funny - they're shareable because they make you go: "Wait, did you see this?"

Two Quick Examples That Became Cultural Moments

1/ BBC's Spaghetti Harvest (1957)

The BBC aired a documentary about Switzerland's "spaghetti harvest" showing farmers picking pasta from trees.

Eight million viewers watched it. Hundreds called asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees.

If you’ve never seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch this. Peak. Absolute peak.

Pre-internet virality at its finest. Reminds us that people have always been willing to believe the unbelievable when it comes from a trusted source.

2/ Taco Bell Buys The Liberty Bell (1996)

Taco Bell took out full-page newspaper ads announcing they'd purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell."

White House press secretary played along: "We're also selling the Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Co. It'll be the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial."

Cost: $300,000. Free publicity generated: $25 million.

The lesson? Go big or go home. Half-measures don't create legends.

One Memorable Fail

Volkswagen's "Voltswagen" rebrand (2021).

VW announced they were changing their name to "Voltswagen" to signal their electric vehicle commitment.

But they botched it. Released the news days before April 1st. Confirmed it as "not a joke" to journalists. Then admitted it was fake.

Stock jumped 5%, then crashed. SEC investigated.

The line between brilliant prank and PR disaster? Plausible deniability and timing.

Remember (for next year) - great April Fools' campaigns follow three rules:

1. Create something just believable enough

2. Make it shareable (would you text a friend about it?)

3. Know exactly when to reveal the joke

What's your all-time favorite brand prank? Hit reply and let me know.

✌️ Tim "It's Just A Prank Bro" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

P.S. Nothing today. It’s Monday. Go kill it. Regularly scheduled fun things in the PS return tomorrow.

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