Anyone else have advertisers doing something special for April Fool's Day?
I have an appliance/TV/bedding client who voices his own ads throughout the year. Over the past few years, we've replaced his regular commercials on April 1st with special ads created just for April Fool's day.
Listeners enjoy them, based on the feedback he gets, and it's a nice way to give customers a smile.
Here's a link to my blog post with the story and all 19 of the special spots we've created so far.
I heard the Pet Dryer ad a few months ago from an older post here. I would LOVE to put together some goofy April Fool's Day ads for my clients. I'm still fairly new in the sales game, so this will be a goal to look forward to for next year.
One of our early clients at Slow Burn Marketing was United Eye Care Specialists. The first thing we said was, "Sam, you're one guy in a rural New Hampshire eye clinic. You're not United anything. You're Dr. Sam's Eye Care." And we rebranded the business and started running radio commercials featuring the voice of Dr. Sam. (One of the first spots is attached.)
In the first couple of months, Sam doubled his new patient base. In the first 10 months, a business that had been flat for three years was up 30%. But, when we're rebranding a business, there are always ridiculous names that come up.
In this case, one of the names we had for United Eyecare was Dr. Funkensam's Optadelic Vision Ship. Drawing on the Parliament Funkadelic penchant for absurd neologism (that's "made up words", Bobby), I created the attached. And I really did it just as a joke. But when Sam and his wife heard it, they asked if they could run it as an April Fool's gag. I said, "Hey, it's your business and your money." When the spot actually ran on 4/1, conservative talk radio listeners around rural New Hampshire were probably left scratching their heads. (The domain name in the spot sent you to a page with the "official" Dr. Funkensam's logo. When you clicked on the logo, it took you to the real Dr. Sam's site.)
"...he'll zapify you with his 20/20 bop gun..." hahaha
That entire spot had me cracking up! Thanks for sharing!
Love the spot! I'd be willing to bet more than a few listeners heard a "t" instead of a "p" when you said "Ship."
Had a similar thing happen many years ago when I did a spot for a shoe repair shop advertising "half soles and heels." Some people did not hear "half soles" but something entirely different, which also happened to correspond to "heels."
BTW, your fake website is on the market for $2500. (Shoulda kept it!)
Thanks for sharing your work, Blaine!
Yeah, I saw that domain name for sale when I was checking to see if the fake site still existed. That sale price ranks right up there with all those copies of my out-of-print book, Million-Dollar Mortgage Radio, on sale used at Amazon for upwards of $761. Perceived value is a lot different than actual value. (I'll teach anyone the material that's inside the book for only $500.)
Glad you enjoyed it, Joe. Always nice to know that someone else out there appreciates that which passes for my sense of humor. (Or, as I like to think of it, an homage to George Clinton.)
At the risk of incurring the wrath of PETA, this dog-lover couldn't stop laughing at that Pet Dryer ad! The sfx were perfect. Beautifully done, Rod. Thanks for posting both those ads. And if I had a Holographic Transport Radio, I'd shake Kevin's hand, too.
On April Fools Day, we traditionally offer our affiliates their choice of four bogus Time Capsule quizzes to air (www.tcapsule.com/fool). Yet our most notorious foolery took place not on April 1, but on January 1, 2000 -- when our stations were able to spoof the Y2K Bug nonsense, by transporting listeners back 100 years with 16 "Y2K Malfunction" drop-ins we'd cooked up for them (www.tcapsule.com/y2k). Naturally, the final drop-in led to a "Y19C Malfunction" that yanked everyone back to January 1, 1800!
Richard, thanks for the kind words. Love your spoofs, too!
