A “Don’t Hate It” April’s Fool Stunt

I will fess up right off the top that I’m not a big fan of corporate April Fool’s Day jokes. (Or any April Fool’s Day joke.)

I’m all for using humor in our communications, but to me the whole thing is lazy and usually cringe-worthy. (I’m looking at you, Dura).

Worse yet, they are usually pointless. Other than garnering some attention, they don’t advance any business objective.

Even worse yet, they inevitably make people look like fools. and that can’t be good for building long-term relationships.

If you are going to burn bridges, (CNBC was not amused) I thought the recent Volkswagen maneuver was at least a good way to draw attention to something important for the company. So if you have to do a prank, this is the type I can endorse.

In case you didn’t see, they “leaked” a press release that they were going to change their name to Voltswagen.

They did it well before April 1 and for a few days, there was a lot of comment on it. For those days, VW was able to tell a story about a company being focused on electric cars, just as General Motors did with its Will Ferrell Super Bowl spot (NORWAY!).

Here’s the payoff. If you google Voltswagen, you see this.

So, for at least being on message and paying the whole thing off with some quality SEM, I don’t hate it (as they say on “House Hunters.”)

I think it is also interesting that both of the ads used humor to tell their story. Normally, the car industry likes drama—electric cars driving on ocean cliffs. It may well be that they are concerned about the issue of electric cars landing in our polarised world and becoming contentious. They’d rather make us laugh and feel as if they are just embracing what is happening anyway (hello Norway) than act like they are creating the change. From a messaging standpoint, that’s interesting to me.