Today is April Fools Day, a day designed to trick consumers by bombarding them with fakes ads by companies trying to get in on the fun. In the Internet age it’s much harder to pull off a successful campaign that bamboozle’s an audience because the mob mentality can easily detect fibs. However, I’ve found three campaigns that had fun with the idea, even if they weren’t necessarily the most believable.
The first advertisement is from Motorola. The ad shows carpenters crafting something great, which turns out to be the ‘Moto Selfie Stick’. The ads confidence is palpable as one of the carpenters says, “to take such a raw form and craft it into one of the most practical and useful accessories around, it’s like when the sun turns the rain into a rainbow.” The longer we get into the spot, the more we realize it’s a joke. Motorola does a great job mocking its own mass production and picking a widely mocked product such as the selfie stick to feature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=584qPWzfhHY&feature=youtu.be
The next spot is from Microsoft. In the ad, the tech company announces they’re going back to basics and are launching MS-DOS as their new operating system for mobile devices. I doubt the ad tricked anybody, but it’s very clever. They even got Tom Mesestt, the real Director of Integrated Digital Marketing at Microsoft Mobile, to perfectly finish the ad by saying “people said it couldn’t be done, and questioned why it should be done, and they told us we shouldn’t do it, but you know what, we’ve done it anyway,” now that’s funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irJQDGw8Ptk&feature=youtu.be
PlayStation also jumped in on the fun releasing a spot their ‘newest feature’ PlayStation Flow. If you like swimming in video games, this product is perfect for for you. The fake wearable tech is a companion for swimming pools, that you wear when playing video games that feature swimming. When you swim your character does as well. The product is completely ridiculous, but the way they deliver it makes it seem like it’s not outside the realm of possibility. The ad also features a familiar line with a twist, saying “We’re going to take gaming out of the living room and into the swimming pool.”
What are some of the best fake ads you’ve seen today? Tweet them to us at @Awful_Ads.
