Yes, it's that time of the year again. April 1, a.k.a. April Fools Day, when would-be funsters cook up pranks that they consider to be cleverly amusing but most people view as being somewhere between monotonous and irritating.
It's bad enough when an individual pulls an April Fool's prank on friends or family, but it's another matter when a major corporation inexplicably thinks it needs to be funny on the first day of April. As a somber plea for the private sector to ignore the temptation to start this month in an advanced state of shenanigans, we offer this (admittedly subjective) list of five corporate pranks that caused more groans than giggles on April 1.
From Volkswagen to Voltswagen:We don't need to set the Wayback Machine for pranks gone awry, as this week offered a prime example of how a publicly-traded company should never try to be funny.
VolkswagenVWAGYstarted the week with news it waschanging its name to Voltswagenin order to better brand itself as an electric vehicle leader, noting this was done as "a public declaration of the company's future-forward investment in e-mobility."
While the company's April Fool's joke was somewhat premature – the fake story was dropped while the calendar was still in March – some people took it seriously and the company's stock soared by up to 12.5% on March 30.
For its part, the automaker issued a sorry-not-sorry statement acknowledging its hoax.
"What began as an April Fool's effort got the whole world buzzing," Volkswagensaid on Twitter. "Turns out people are as passionate about our heritage as they are about our electric future. So whether it's Voltswagen or Volkswagen, people talking about electric driving and our ID.4 can only be a good thing."
Tesla Model W:Volkswagen's effort to gain traction in the electric vehicle market involves taking aim at a corporate leader who is not shy about having fun in the media's spotlight.
No one ever accused Elon Musk of being a bore, and hisTesla Inc.TSLAis the rare company that came up with boldly creative pranks, ranging from the allegedparking ticket avoidance modeon the Model S to the wildly bizarre claim that the company was declaring "Chapter 14 and a half"bankruptcyand Musk drank himself into oblivion with a Tesla-branded tequila. And don't get us started on hisrap songhonoring a dead gorilla.
The one time when Musk's wicked sense of humor failed to show up was his April 1, 2015, introduction of the TeslaModel W. This wasn't an electric vehicle, but a wristwatch that looks like a miniature version of Big Ben.
"This incredible new device from Tesla doesn't just tell the time, it also tells the date," the faux press statement insisted. "What's more, it is infinitely adjustable, able to tell the time no matter where you are on Earth."
Musk was clearly trying to have fun at the expense ofApple Inc.AAPL, which was just getting into the wearable technology field. "This is in no way a competitive response to what some other company is doing," the phony announcement facetiously insisted.
Yeah, this prank was truly Grade Zzzzzzz. With the Model W, the creator of the Boring Company clearly lived up to his operation's name. But as Groucho Marx reminded the "Animal Crackers" audience: "Well, all the jokes can't be good. You've got to expect that once in a while."
Google's MentalPlex:The April Fool's Day prank has been something of a tradition atAlphabet's GOOGLGoogle, and this can be traced back to 2000 when the company inaugurated its annual efforts by claiming to unveilGoogle's MentalPlex, a tool that married search engine technology with mental telepathy.
The unsuspecting user who stumbled upon this page was instructed to "remove hat and glasses" and stare into a blue and red spinning wheel called the MentalPlex Circle.
"Project mental image of what you want to find," the page declared, adding that one needed to either click or visualize clicking within the MentalPlex Circle to achieve the desired search result. Several gag responses would emerge when the circle was clicked, ranging from "Brainwaves received in analog. Please re-think in digital" to "Error 445: Searching on this topic is prohibited under international law."
Incredibly, Google believed it scored a comic bullseye and spent most of the next two decades laying out April Fool's pranks of an increasingly dreary nature. But, then again, who's going to say no to Google?
Audible for Fish:Few people associate goldfish with comedy, but someone atAmazon.comAMZNdid an unlikely 2+2 and came up with a comedy zero. In this case, the e-commerce monolith used April 1, 2019, to roll out "Audible for Fish," a new service that enables goldfish to take advantage of the company's audiobook platform.
"Does your favorite goldfish display signs of aggression when you leave for work?" asked thehome pagefor this gag. "Did you know that 13 out of 27 fish owners reported a positive change in their pets' behavior after playing Audible titles for water-dwelling chums? Fill your fishes' three-second memories with the soothing sounds of underwater audio, and then play it again! Because they won't remember anyway."
To drive the point home, Amazon included a dull animation of a blank-faced goldfish wearing oversized headphones. This image was also used on the AudibleTwitterpage, which stated, "‘Audible for Fish' is designed to ensure these scaly sweethearts have a whale of a time in the tank when home alone."
Well, at least the pet fish weren't being subjected to bad Jeff Bezos-financed jokes.
The Boston Mayor is (Not) Dead:Sometimes, a company is not responsible for an April Fool's prank, but unexpectedly finds itself in a public relations disaster due to employees acting in a state of unilateral recklessness. This happened toEntercom Communications Corp.ETM 0.19%back in 1998.
Entercom owned the Boston rock radio station WAAF. The station's morning hosts, Gregg "Opie" Hughes and Anthony Cumia, decided to have some fun by using theirApril 1 showto post the deliberately false information that Boston Mayor Tom Menino had died in a car accident in Florida while keeping company with a Haitian prostitute.
Menino was flying home from Florida at the time of the broadcast and was unaware of what transpired until his chauffeur met him at the airport and declared with astonishment, "You're dead." At the same time, Menino's family was bombarded with sympathy calls as a result of the broadcast, which created genuine anguish that was anything but hilarious to them.
Menino filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission and angrily rejected the station's efforts to make amends by hosting a fundraiser for a charity of the mayor's choice.
Entercom's management, which learned of the non-joke after the fact, suspended the station's general manager and program director and fired the radio hosts, who took their Opie and Anthony act to New York and a much wider audience – and they later admitted staging the prank to get out of a contract they found financially stifling. Thus, it seems, the radio hosts used their employer's reputation to get the proverbial last laugh.