You Can Only FOOL Your Customers Once!

As you know, earlier in the month we had April Fool’s Day. Practical jokes are played out all over the world during the morning hours of April 1st.

That got me thinking… I wonder what some of the best-ever April Fool’s jokes to have been orchestrated, that fooled thousands of people, include. Here’s my top 3 (keep reading to the end, there is a business lesson here too)…

1. Edison’s food creator, 1878

American newspaper The Daily Graphic published, in 1878, news of a technological breakthrough: Thomas Edison had invented “the Food Creator... a machine that will feed the human race!” How, exactly, was unclear, but it would be able to manufacture meat, vegetables, wine and biscuits using only air, water and “common earth”. A final paragraph in the April article revealed that “the Food Creator” did not in fact exist; but not every reader got that far, and Thomas Edison received “a flood of letters from all parts of the country”, as he wrote to tell the Graphic’s editor. “Very ingenious,” he said.
 

2. Alaska’s volcano, 1974

In Sitka, Alaska, the volcano Mount Edgecumbe had been dormant for around 9,000 years when, one morning in 1974, residents noticed dark smoke spooling from its top. When a coastguard helicopter flew in to investigate, the pilot saw that 100 tyres had been doused in cooking fuel and set alight in the volcano’s crater.
Meanwhile, around the rim, someone  had  spray-painted April Fool”  in 50ft letters. It was the careful work of a local joker, Oliver Bickar, who’d been planning the prank for four years. ...and my favourite…
 

3. Left-handed burger, 1998

Burger King’s 1998 unveiling of a “left-handed Whopper” – a normal burger, with “the condiments rotated 180 degrees” – fooled thousands in the US and UK with left-handers going out of their way to order one, and righties making it clear they’d prefer the original version. That’s funny!

So what’s all this got to do with you and your business? Well, it concerns your customers and makes sure you OVER-deliver on your promises. Your customers won’t be fooled into buying from you a second time. You owe it to them and to your own business to under-promise and over-deliver. I know that’s a cliché, but it really is a truism in today’s highly competitive market and with highly demanding customers!