This is the ingredient many brands for good forget about in their ethical email marketing - but is crucial to their success
- Yuval Ackerman
- Apr 4
- 3 min read
If your inbox was surprisingly quiet, or not as funny as you'd expected this April 1st - same.
Tbh, it’s a weird year to be fooling around. I get why some brands are extra cautious.
But 6 brands for good did choose to go there this year and did exceptionally well:
MOYU, a stone-made erasable notebook brand that graced my inbox first thing in the morning with their new (fake) reusable game kit of stone, paper, and scissors.
As a happy customer of this brand, I thought this was very on-brand from them but refreshingly unexpected.
ManiLife | B Corp™, a delicious UK-based peanut butter brand that launched a combo of roast butter and peanut butter in one jar.
Tbh, I’m still not sure if that’s an April Fools’ prank or a serious announcement. Stu Macdonald’s post on LinkedIn on Tuesday was signed off with a #doublebluff. What do you think, will it be a real product or not? Do you spread butter on your toast before spreading peanut butter?
And because my inbox was quieter than usual, and because contrary to popular belief I'm not subscribed to every email list under the sun, here are a couple of honorable mentions from ethical brands that shared pranks I’ve seen on social media:
Narrative Food's limited corporate gifting experience, inspired by the brilliant AppleTV+ show, Severance: The Waffle Party Box, The Melon Experience, The Egg Bar Collection - and The Data Refiner's Delight.
As a Severance fan - this one was delightful, creative, harmless, and extremely on-brand!
Deep Indian Kitchen, an American-Indian food brand’s new ice cream line, with flavors like chicken tikka masala, butter chicken, chicken curry, and more.
I love Indian food, and am a savory person through and through. I was sorta disappointed when I realized that it was just a prank.
OLIPOP, a popular high-fiber soda brand that joined forces with Hidden Valley sauce company, and created a ranch-inspired product line, including a classic ranch, hot honey, garlic, and jalapeño.
Well played, Olipop. These are the levels of unhinged creativity I expected to see from you.
But my personal favorite had to be Grove Collaborative’s prank - launching their 5% collection: a lineup of their planet-friendly cleaning products that are 5% of their normal size.
Considering that only 5% of plastic actually gets recycled, they tied their mission and purpose to their prank seamlessly. I may have seen this online, immediately stood up, and clapped for a solid 2 minutes.
(Shoutout to Moses Abudarham for bringing this one to my attention!)
If you’ve been around here for a hot minute, you know that I’m such a big fan of fun that I included it as the first part of my signature framework.
NGL, I was a little disappointed this year that so many fun brands for good skipped April Fools and didn’t come up with harmless, giggle-worthy campaigns.
I asked Sandra Stewart, Principal at Thinkshift Communications (impact PR experts), about this relative silence. “Very few brands can pull off April Fools' pranks in a way that is actually funny and (ideally) makes a point, and doesn't backfire,” she told me.
I 10,001% agree with her.
An April Fools’ prank is not for everyone, because it depends on the brand.
There’s a good reason why all of the brands featured here are eCommerce ones and have “fun” as a part of their DNA all year round.
That being said, and regardless of April Fools’ Day, I do wish to see more fun in my inbox, and I know I’m not the only one.
Email marketing is a channel that can create a serious impact and incredible revenue for businesses, but in all seriousness, it doesn’t have to be all that serious... at least not all the time.
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