Most of the advertisements were too good to be true and to imagine that people really fell for these out-of-the-world advertisements shows how good these big companies are in their jobs of making people believe in the impossible.
Google’s Smell Search
You read it right, On 1st April 2013, Google had announced: “Google Nose Beta” a search engine invented to search with the help of smell. They had taken the dog’s sense of smell and had converted the data into programmed information with 15 million-plus scentibytes that give an incredible olfactory experience for the users. With Google’s introduction of Gmail on April 1st, earlier, people didn’t give second thoughts into thinking this to be a prank.
YouTube Will Shut Down
YouTube had made a throwback video with Tom Liston the communications director of YouTube telling that YouTube will no longer be accepting entries and how YouTube will shut down at the stroke of midnight. He proceeded to say that it will take about 10 years for the judges to view all the videos and decide on the winner. Therefore, YouTube will resume in 2023 with the announcement of the winner. Until then, two presenters would announce the best video nominees. This announcement was followed by a cameo video from YouTube celebrities describing how good of an experience it was to take part in the competition while requesting people to watch as many videos as possible before YouTube shuts down.
Does McDonald’s Have This Meal Box?
- A. The Minimalist Mmm Box
- B. The Ribster Mmm Box
- C. The Artist Mmm Box
- D. None of the Above
Duolingo Bird
The famous learn a language app had telecasted an elaborate passive-aggressive advertisement to prank its users on 1st April 2019. We all know how disturbing Duolingo’s push notifications can get when we skip classes. Duolingo’s new ad had informed viewers that it’s tired of having customers overlook notifications. Thus, taking the initiative to urge people into taking their classes, Duolingo announced that it will have the Duo owl mascot visit customers in person and not leave until the classes are complete. Given the past of threatening notifications, people actually believed this advertisement.
No More Nudity
On April 1st, 2016 Nat Geo took to Twitter to announce that they will no longer be publishing photos of animals without clothes in their magazine. Though this was a prank to ridicule playboy magazine’s debatable decision to not publish nude images, later in 2018 Nat Geo had understood that it had been racist in the past years and had decided that it will no longer telecast aboriginal tribes of color as simple-minded naked people but as people with real problems that need to be taken care of.
Match Making
Apart from being catfished, real pain for tinder users had been the height of their intended match. As a solution, tinder had developed its verification system. The new height verification system required users to input their real height and not their “I wish I was this tall” height. Users easily fell for this gimmick as Tinder had cleverly announced the big news on the 29th of March 2019.