Yes, I’m aware it’s April Fools Day…
As I’ve said in the past, my magic formula for viral content is quite simple: “do something ridiculous and absurd, but execute it unnecessarily well.” Doing something “because you can” is the easiest way to dilute people’s perspectives of you. If you can’t do it well, don’t try.
Sorry to disappoint, but I haven’t planned any epic pranks for today so I’m not going to be doing one. Since it is April Fools and I am known as a prankster… I’m just going to assume that regardless of what I say here, you’re going to be rightfully skeptical.
Instead, I’m going to point you in another direction.
Yesterday—not on April Fools Day—The Mountain from Game of Thrones came out with his own brand of water. To promote the new brand they created a tv reddit commercial.
Want to launch an entire business atop a single (video) marketing stunt featuring celebrity endorsement, and humor designed for a specific platform (reddit)? This is how it’s done.
Soak that in for a minute (pun intended).
The submission to Reddit’s /r/television has garnered 4,991 points and 1,173 comments which has driven 824,086 views to the video in the first 24 hours it existed on the web.
Notice my formula at work? They did something ridiculous and absurd, but they executed it unnecessarily well. You’d almost think the creators were members of Ghost Influence…
Many of the people I’ve interviewed on the Ghost Influence Podcast have described their front page stunts as a “fulcrum to their career.” They leap frogged years of the boring, tedious, and impersonal content marketing to invest in a singular initiative.
It’s not as hard as you’d think. I’ll often tell people the story of how I came up with an idea 5-10 times, gauging their reactions, before moving to the next step and allocation of resources (i.e. time and money). It’s how I research opportunities before investing.
The hipster deviant in me says, “pulling a prank on April Fools is way too mainstream.”
Pranks aren’t going to be right for everyone or in every situation, but varying forms of high personality content provides massive leverage (Exhibit A: This Email Series). It’s often terrifying to put such a huge piece of yourself out there for criticism, but it’s worthwhile.
It helps to have—passive pitch imminent—a supportive community like Ghost Influence to leverage for the initial feedback and fall back on when the criticism starts to overwhelm.