DOGital Marketing – Our Branding April Fool

So on April Fools’ Day we had a little fun with our mailing list and our social media fans. After months and months of teasing our new brand we fooled many people (some were too wise) with our faux brand launch.

We didn’t put much time into it and to be honest we thought it up after discussing content for our clients.

Laura was the catalyst (as ever) with a probing question about April Fools’ Day. Before we knew it we were brainstorming and then we decided that we must include all the things thought would be funny.

So, we wanted:

• Animals

• Cheap logo

• ‘Solutions’

• And an awful name.

As we all love dogs that was the nominated animal and DOGital worked really well. The rest, as they say, is history.

Time taken: about 25 minutes of thinking and drinking tea.

DOGital Marketing – Our Branding April Fool

The logo

For the April Fool we decided that we would email our list and then share it on social media. We wanted it to be believable and we wanted it to be decent enough to fool people as this is our thing at the end of the day.

So the logo was briefed in. I say briefed; I iMessaged Matt at Jetpack Squirrel and he laughed and sent back some ideas within 10 minutes.

Three images later and we had a winner. Peter the Dog (as he was known as later) was chosen from these three images from stock.

Then Matt went away and created the logo and sent it back in Dropbox with a jpg on iMessage titled “Is this what you had in mind?”.

This took him about 10 minutes.

The web page – WordPress

Next up we knew we wanted to test the clicks and interest on this, so we created a bespoke page on our website to track it all. Our site is built in WordPress so that was simple to do. This was only a joke so it was an orphaned page (not linked from anywhere) and we stripped the sidebars and links from it. We wanted to concentrate on the ‘new’ brand alone.

Then we fashioned up some text and got all dog happy with puns and paws, and before we knew it we had a page with the new logo all set to go.

Time taken: 20 minutes on Tuesday evening whilst watching TV

Twitter – @DOGitalMarketin

In the copy I’d mentioned a Twitter account @DOGitalMarketing so I headed over to Twitter with an email I’d not assigned to a Twitter account and grabbed that. To my dismay the name was too long (15 is the max) so I dropped the ‘g’ and @DOGitalMarketin was born. Logo added, quirky bio completed, and we were set.

Jo added some tweets and dogs jokes to give it some content and we followed some dog-related accounts too. Done.

Time taken: 15 minutes

Emails  – Mailchimp

Then for the key part – the email to our list. I already knew how I would write this and the excited style with tongue firmly in cheek. We smashed out the copy in minutes added a link to the bespoke page on our site and then Jo proofed, edited and scheduled for 9am on April Fools’ Day.

Then we wrote the big reveal email to say “April Fools!” and let everyone know that we were joking. We added in the news that we are actually launching on May 1^st and we have a launch event. (We got some good interest in that as an added bonus!)

We scheduled that email in Mailchimp for 12:15pm on April Fools’ Day and the evil plan was set.

Time taken: 25 minutes (Mailchimp had some formatting issues)

Scheduling Twitter – Buffer

Then we scheduled some tweets from our new Twitter account, Peter the Dog, and also from our own accounts too. We teased the news on Twitter the night before and set Buffer up to launch the news at the same time as the email went out.

For added clout we grabbed the online link from Mailchimp and shared that in our tweets too.

Time taken: 5 minutes

#AprilFools

The whole lot launched at the same time from my Twitter, Peter the Dog, and the email at 9am on April Fools’ Day. It all went out automated (I was running around the racecourse with the real dog when it happened) and we dealt with the comments and replies on email.

Jo then waded in live later on and I replied to comments and followed back as Peter the Dog. (Bless – people actually followed him! Love it!)

We had a really fun time replying, responding and seeing who was really clueless, who were really our friends, and who were far too polite to say “OMG it’s shit!”

The replies – what you all said!

This was brilliant fun and the replies were brilliant. Here’s the pick of the best responses we had including the last one which was from our web and REAL new brand developer… nope… he didn’t know either!

“Love this…. you had me hook line and sinker. Thought you’d gone barking mad!!!!!!!!”

*

“OMG ha ha I didn’t reply as I thought it’s gawd dog awful!!!!”

*

“Omg!!! Oh my bloody good god!!!!”

*

“I am so relieved!!!”

*

“I have been thinking all morning, “I really like Jo and Todd should I say anything?”

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“Took me in for a good few minutes – until the penny dropped. Just seemed a bit whacky… EVEN for you guys!”

*

“I bloody knew something was up! I was thinking that’s the shittest re-brand EVER!”

*

“Well done Pinky Princess! I did think you had lost it! Excellent April Fool! Certainly fooled me!”

“OK so I fell hook line and sinker”

*

“Sniff our bums on email?
😀
I’ve just spat tea everywhere. I’ll send you the bill ;)”

*

“You got me, you totally got me! No one ever gets me but you got me!”

*

“For some reason today has been dogged with such posts….”

*

“Bastards.
I saw the email and I was like WTF are you doing?!?!
You got me.”

Haha… seriously, if you thought it was awful and you didn’t tell us, how very kind and polite you are… but please – tell us next time?!

Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the fun. We certainly did. It only took us a few hours to make it happen and it kept us amused all day. Thanks for joining in!

Here’s to May 1^st for the real launch… news coming soon.

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