April Fools’ Day is loads of fun for children:
“Mom? I accidentally set the cat on fire.”
“What?!”
“Haha, April Fools!”
I mean, you were still grounded (and no longer allowed to play unsupervised with Fluffy), but when you’re a little kid, few things are more enjoyable than tricking big people. Along with Halloween, Christmas, and your birthday, April Fools’ Day is a legit top-five holiday for kids.
Today, lots of businesses will allude to April Fools’ Day on social media, but very few will commit to a prank. And for good reason, too: Compromising the trust and confidence of your target audience is almost always a bad idea. It hurts more than it helps.
Which might explain why — after 20+ years in PR — I’ve been involved in a grand total of one April Fools’ Day prank.
It was a weird prank, too: It involved Bill O’Reilly and an adult website, and it was featured in the New York Daily News.
The backstory is, I was the creator and executive producer of National Lampoon’s Strip Poker — a rated R-styled comedy title — and per our contract, I was responsible for handling all the PR for us and our partners. (My agency’s contribution was the concept, the PR work, the poker contacts, and the venue; National Lampoon and the financial partner were responsible for everything else.)
So, when National Lampoon leveraged an existing relationship with an adult website to help promote the titles, where the website would rig its search results so a link to purchase National Lampoon’s Strip Poker would run #1, I was obligated to give ‘em a free press release.
But a press release about… what?
After all, the mainstream media doesn’t like covering that kind of filth. It’s almost always inappropriate.
Unless, of course, it was funny — or involved a celebrity.
As fate would have it, we were a few months away from April 1. Which led to an idea: What if this adult website was hacked and taken over by Bill O’Reilly — so when users visited the homepage, the first thing they’d see was a giant image of O’Reilly calling ‘em disgusting perverts?
O’Reilly wasn’t the site owner’s first choice. Originally, he wanted to use the Reverend Jerry Falwell, but with Falwell in poor health, it would’ve been in bad taste. (Well, okay, everything about this was in bad taste, but using Falwell would’ve been in REALLY bad taste.) If I remember right, I got ‘em to pivot by pointing out that goofing on O’Reilly’s pomposity would be better received than targeting an ailing religious leader.
The adult website coordinated the April 1 homepage redesign on its own. I assume their legal team vetted the verbiage and content, but honestly, I don’t remember. (One year earlier, this site had tangled with Google’s lawyers, so they were very familiar with high-profile litigation.) I was in charge of writing and disseminating the press release, plus facilitating any media inquiries.
The site just wanted mainstream media coverage. For them, ANY publicity was good publicity.
Which was a good thing, because even the New York Daily News side-eyed the silliness/stupidity of it:
The no-sin zone
Did Bill O’Reilly hack into a p***ographic Internet search engine yesterday? Well, no, but his name was hijacked for an April Fools’ Day publicity stunt.Visitors to [name of website] found it had changed to [fake name], at the alleged behest of O’Reilly. Needless to say, the loofah-loving right-wing chat host had nothing to do with the prank.
Site owner Bob Smart said: “Originally, we had plans to use Jerry Falwell as the unwilling poster boy of our April Fools’ gag, but we understand he’s in ill health and therefore chose a more opportunistic target.”
How thoughtful.
It was the first time — and last time — I’ve ever worked with a website like that. Normally, whenever you land a nice media hit for a client, you’re awash with pride, but all I felt were pangs of regret and embarrassment.
Today, exactly 21 years later, I’m still embarrassed by it.
But it happened. I could’ve refused to participate and I didn’t. Sure, it was early in my career and I was still wet-behind-the-ears, but I still knew right from wrong. And I knew that kind of low-rent garbage was wrong.
No excuses. Just plenty of regrets.
I’ve pulled a few other goofy media stunts, like teaming with the mayor of Treasure Island, Florida — and announcing on the NFL Network that, for one day only, the city of Treasure Island would be renamed Revis Island, in honor of new Tampa Bay Buccaneer cornerback Darrelle Revis. (Which wasn’t on April Fools’ Day, but mid-September.) That prank was great: Revis’ mom was even there for the announcement, and we got some excellent PR coverage for one of my favorite beach communities.
All in all, it taught me an important life lesson: If it pains your soul, don’t do it. Even if you’ll get in trouble at work, it’s simply not worth a lifetime of regret.
Happy April Fools’ Day. (And keep a keen eye on Fluffy.)
