Don`t be fooled

Don’t be fooled:
the 1st of April is a perfect
opportunity to get people talking
brandboost
Intelligence Series
brandboost Intelligence
01
April Fool
The 1st of April is a perfect opportunity
to get people talking
April fool’s is an age-old tradition, where everyone, from children to colleagues and even presidents, get to show their sense of humor. Newspapers, TV and radio have repeatedly used the
day for some elaborate and large-scale pranks,
taking advantage of their natural platform. With
the arrival of the internet and social media, however, a similar reach has become more readily
available to other brands and corporations too.
Especially YouTube is a great platform to show
some creativity and humor, since it can be easily
shared and (re)discovered. In this edition we will
discuss some of the possibilities and the great
reach these campaigns were able to generate.
APRIL
1
April Fool’s Day has a long history reaching back
to the 16-th century and is the one day in the year
when we’re allowed to do just a little bit more. It’s
still relevant as ever, despite its lengthy existence.
Especially during the last decades the internet has
brought this old tradition to a new and global platform. Pranks can be shared with everyone now, as
long as they are caught on camera. The internet is
also a great place to distribute any joke you might
be playing. They can be easily sent on, shared on
social media or posted on various blogs.
For brands this is an excellent opportunity to show
a little charm and a good sense of humor. It isn’t
even necessary to actually “fool” people, as some of
the cases we analyzed show. Videos that are very
obviously an April fools can still perform very well at
spreading across the social webs. It has become almost an expectation for big brands to come up with
original ideas and new hoaxes every year. With the
rise of YouTube, the share of pranks using the site as
their video-platform has greatly increased. Comment videos and social engagement surrounding
April 1st amplify the effect, and have increased over
the last years as well.
02
brandboost Intelligence
April Fool
April Fools Videos Reach on YouTube
+80%
+50%
+65%
2011
2012
2013
2014
Source: Year over year reach of the top 300 “April fool’s” videos Reach calculated as a weighted score on Views & Social Engagement.(excluding
outliers, viral videos).
Not only is the number of 1st April videos rising, but
they tend to perform very well too, both in reach
and social engagement. To illustrate this we took 21
channels from the DIVIMOVE Network that posted an
April fool’s video on the 1st of April 2014 and we compared these with videos they posted on other days.
Even after testing for outliers (by serially leaving out
the channels with the top five videos), the results remained pretty similar. In the end, we only left out the
hugely successful April fool’s video by BosshaftTV
“Von Salat schrumpft der Bizeps” (translation: salad
makes your biceps shrink) solely due to its largesse
(9.4 Million Views).
Video reach per publish date
1,8
1,6
Views (millions)
1,4
1,2
KW 12
2014
01.04.14
KW 13
2014
KW 15
2014
120
100
1
80
0,8
60
0,6
40
0,4
20
0,2
0
0
Likes
Dislikes
Source: 21 DIVIMOVE Channels that posted an April fool’s video in 2014
Both views and engagement beat out videos posted
on any other date within a month’s time. It is obvious
that for these channels their April fool’s videos stood
out for them. Of course this doesn’t automatically
mean that your video will go viral, but the chances are considerably higher. Especially if it’s funny
and clever enough it should succeed at generating
some good reach even without going “viral”.
Comments
Views
Social engagement (thousands)
140
brandboost Intelligence
03
Top 5 Brands in April fool’s Day 2014.
In order to provide a better idea we will present
the Top 5 April fool’s videos from last year, ranked
accordingly by their popularity on YouTube. All
of them were uploaded to YouTube directly by
the respective brands and prove its power as a
platform.
Gotta catch ’em all
Published: 31.03.2014
Views: +16M
Likes & Dislikes: 120k
Comments: 20k
Published on 31-st of March 2014 this video created
a real snowball effect, spreading quickly and becoming the trend of the day. The video featured an
original prank from the Google Maps Team as they
announced a challenge on gathering Pokémon’s all
around Maps and the winner would have been employed in Google. “Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge” caught the first pages on all major media and
blogs around the world. In the following days more
than 300 videos were published on YouTube referring to the original Pokémon Challenge video, and
together they accumulated more than 2M views.
YouTube Announces Upcoming
Viral Video Trends
Published: 31.03.2014
Views: +2,6M
Likes & Dislikes: +20k
Comments: +5k
After all the rumors YouTube caused on April 2013
announcing their temporary shut-down, they managed to capture public attention yet again in 2014.
This time YouTube disclosed some of the upcoming
Viral Video Trends. The video initiated a whole campaign wherev people would post their ideas on viral
videos under #newtrends.
April Fool
brandboost Intelligence
04
Cheeteau by Chester
Published: 26.03.2014
Views: +1,8M
Likes & Dislikes: +400
Comments: +50
Just a few days before 1-st of April Cheetos published a video on YouTube announcing the release
of a new and dangerously tasty fragrance, branded
by Chester Cheetah. Despite the absurdity of their
new product, the company followed through on the
joke and launched some limited samples onto the
market, and guess what: it was just the cheesiest!
Nest & Virgin America
Published: 31.03.2014
Views: +200k
Likes & Dislikes: +800
Comments: +200
The founder of the airlines Virgin America got
together with a Thermostat company to install a
new feature on Virgin’s aircrafts. The customers will
be able to control the temperature in the cabins to
create their own favorite climate. Just too good to
be true!?
Peugeot UK | New Audio Sonic
Personalisation Programme
Published: 31.03.2014
Views: +74k
Likes & Dislikes: +100
Comments: +30
One the eve of April fool’s day Peugeot launched
their new amazing feature, the personalized horn. In
a cooperation with Sony Audio Systems using state
of art technology, the car horn would become fully
customizable, just like your smartphone ringtone.
How unique can you make yours?
April Fool