Welcome to the worst day on the internet! As Chaim Gartenberg pointed out in 2021, brands and a holiday dedicated to hoaxes are rarely a winning combo. If you’re a company with any kind of social media presence in 2024, you really, truly only have four options on April Fools’ Day: 1. Don’t do an April Fools’ joke. Put the time and energy into doing something productive that will materially benefit the world instead. Or just don’t do anything.
Does this defeat the purpose of doing an April Fools’ joke because you’re not “fooling” anyone anymore? Absolutely. 4. Lie to your customers, successfully tricking them into believing you are making some product, rebranding, or service you are not. By doing so, you will almost certainly annoy everyone once your deceit is made plain for the extremely small gain of pointless PR.