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April Fools Day: Confusion Is A Marketers Enemy

By Jim Kukral • March 31, 2009 • Confusion • 144712 Comments2009-03-31+20%3A32%3A09Jim+Kukral

I hate April Fools day. Why? Because I’m a marketer, and a marketers enemy is confusion.

april-fools-day-9

Confusion ruins everything for us. You can’t effectively promote anything if the possibility of confusion exists. Why? Because with confusion comes doubt. With confusion comes the loss of the product differentiation. With confusion comes the loss of trust between your message and the customer.

Confusion sucks. April Fools Day sucks.

Don’t ever launch a product on this day. You may think you’re being clever, but in reality, you’re audience is most likely going to be confused more than “aware” on your product/service.

Maybe they’ll laugh today, but tomorrow they’ve forgotten about you. April Fools day is a day I completely tune out to all marketing messages. In fact, I tune out to pretty much ALL messages on this day.

Too confusing to know what is real and what isn’t, so I don’t bother.

Don’t be the fool and think you can do it. It doesn’t work. Avoid April Fools Day.

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1447122009-03-31+20%3A32%3A09Jim+Kukral Awesome Comments So Far

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Sam Harrelson→
March 31, 2009 at 8:44 pm #

Wrong.
- Jim Kukral→
  March 31, 2009 at 8:58 pm #
  
  Ha, whatever. Prove it!
Sam Harrelson→
March 31, 2009 at 9:14 pm #

One example… I'm using it now to type this (and you are using it to read this): GMail. Launched April 1, 2004.
- Jim Kukral→
  March 31, 2009 at 9:41 pm #
  
  Great example. Not.
MattWilsontv→
April 1, 2009 at 12:55 am #

I think there is huge opportunity for people to utilize April Fool's Day for fun marketing ploys… stuff way outside the box that could get people talking….. just don't take it too far like those guys in Boston who got jailed for their viral campaign for that cartoon…
- Lisa Roberson→
  April 1, 2009 at 2:08 pm #
  
  Oooh, I missed that story – do tell me more! :)
Tyler Willis→
March 31, 2009 at 10:32 pm #

You have effectively explained why you hate launching products on april fools day, but why should you hate the holiday, do you really launch enough products that the material loss of 3 days fills you with rage?
Jim Kukral→
April 1, 2009 at 2:53 am #

No rage here Tyler, just venting. I'm not a big fan of being fooled, which is ironic since I find joy in building sites like http://www.blogbucks.com. Satire is one thing though.
Adam Singer→
April 1, 2009 at 5:40 pm #

Agreed – I maintain blog and Twitter radio silence on April 1 because no one takes today seriously.
Amulekone→
April 6, 2009 at 2:23 pm #

April fool's was a "mute day" for me. There was indeed a lot of confusion on
posts made that day. LOL
BGmarketing→
April 8, 2009 at 11:18 pm #

I fully agree with MattWilsontv.
Cool post.