Digital Marketing Agency RocketMill
Ahh yes fun! April Fools you just got to love it. The one day of the year where companies and organizations can legitimately appear to be externally funny rather than carrying on with their normal daily activities.
Yesterday, we saw some interesting pranks. Scotland received a lot of attention from the tabloids, with Scotland’s vote for independence coming up. The Telegraph reported about future plans for coins being minted with Alex Salmond’s head (See right) and the Guardian with a nice feature on Scotland switching to driving on the right if they gained independence.
Moving forward, Google was on form with plenty to choose from, and there was conCERN about a 3 year old sky diving and Tescos introducing a tablet for couples to cosy up to.
Firebox was also literally on fire with too many too mention from Cranston Pickle based on Breaking Bad and growing your own chickens.
And below is a selection of the wittiest/funniest April Fools over the years. Let’s get you Cat-nected and relive those moments:
Introducing Bing Basic
Bing.com, April 1st 2013. Bing announces on their blog Bing Basic, “learn more about how our world would look if we hadn’t evolved”. Typing Google into the Microsoft search engine would produce a page that millions may be oh-so familiar with. SearchEngineLand writes up a nice description as it happened. The traditional “I’m feeling lucky” button replaced with “I’m feeling Confused” was a nice touch, although more of a dig than an April Fool.
Introducing Opera Face Gestures
Opera, April 1st 2009. Opera introduces an update to their browser – a shame their Face Observation Opera Language didn’t take off. Health Warning: Not good for wrinkles.
Branson Buys Pluto (the planet)
Virgin, April 1st 2011. The Virgin boss, Richard Branson, loves a good prank. A lot of people felt that Pluto should be reinstated as a planet, and this prank led a few of them to admire his abilities in doing so especially with his sights into space tourism.
Annncng: Twttr
Twitter.com, April 1st 2013. The popular micro-blogging platform announces a two-tiered service where basic-free account holders are encouraged to use a more efficient and “dense” form of communication by eliminating vowels all together. Joan rivers was even in on the prank.
Hotelicopter
YOTEL, April 1st 2009. Everyone wishes they could stay aboard a luxury hotel/helicopter if one was available. A viral video that fooled a lot of people into questioning if it was actually real – imagination bordering on meeting reality.
Shibasphere
Toshiba, April 1st 2013. If only Toshiba made a games console, especially with titles such as Stare Down.
YouTube A Rick Rollin’
Google/YouTube, April 1st 2008. Rick Rolling needs no introduction but in 2008 a lot of people were pleasantly surprised to be rick rolled when YouTube redirected every featured video on its home page to a page featuring “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Introducing CatBlock
AdBlock, April 1st 2012. Even when it wasn’t going to fool anyone, when AdBlock thought about introducing cats that mispeld as an extension for the Chrome browser which replaced one annoyance with another (and admittedly much cuter) – they were always onto a winner.
Google Maps for NES
Google, April 1st 2012. Google maps in 8 bit. It never fooled anyone but getting Nintendo involved and the cool factor alone, was… well, ’nuff said.
That’s it for now, there’s too many to choose from. Long live April Fools – yolo!
