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Advertising Themed April Fool's Day Hoaxes

Russian Standard Vodka ran ads in UK newspapers claiming to have created the world's first "lickvert": an ad dipped in vodka. Readers were urged to "Lick Here," though also reminded to, "Please lick responsibly."

Virgin Atlantic announced plans to begin advertising via genetically modified butterflies:

A billboard appeared in a field along route 66, near Glastonbury, Connecticut. It read: "Coming Soon, Hooters." It bore the owl logo of the franchise, famous for its scantily clad waitresses, as well as a phone number. Local officials soon began receiving calls from residents worried that the down-home, family-friendly feel of the town was going to be ruined by the new franchise. The officials responded that, as far as they knew, Hooters had filed no application with the planning department. The next day the words "April Fools" appeared on the sign, which turned out to be the work of a local prankster, John Tuttle. From the Hartford Courant:

Esquire magazine introduced its readers to an exciting new company called Freewheelz in an article titled "There Are No Free Wheels." Freewheelz apparently planned to provide drivers with free cars. In exchange, the lucky drivers had to agree both to the placement of large advertisements on the outside of the vehicle and to the streaming of advertisements on the radio inside the car. Prospective drivers also had to submit to a screening process, which required them to submit stool samples and notarized video-store-rental receipts. The article was actually a satire of the much-touted “new economy” spawned by the internet. Attentive readers would have caught on to the joke if they had noticed that Freewheelz’s official rollout on the web was slated to occur on April 1. However, readers who did not notice this barraged the offices of Esquire magazine with phone calls, demanding to know how they could sign up to drive a Stayfresh minivan. (See article: Freewheelz.)

On March 30 Guinness issued a press release announcing that it had reached an agreement with the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England to be the official beer sponsor of the Observatory's millennium celebration. According to this agreement, Greenwich Mean Time would be renamed Guinness Mean Time until the end of 1999. In addition, where the Observatory traditionally counted seconds in "pips," it would now count them in "pint drips." Finally, a Guinness bar would open in the astronomy dome and the Observatory's official millennium countdown would feature a Guinness clock counting "pint settling time" with a two-minute stopwatch.

Guinness issued the announcement as an embargoed release, meaning that reporters who received the release were not supposed to write about it until the day it was issued to the public on April 1. Nevertheless, the Financial Times, not realizing that the release was a joke, broke the embargo and discussed the announcement a day early in an article about how some companies were exploiting the millennium excitement to promote their brand names. It declared that Guinness, with its Greenwich tie-in, was setting a "brash tone for the millennium." When the Financial Times learned it had fallen for a joke, it printed a curt retraction, stating that the news it had disclosed "was apparently intended as part of an April 1 spoof." Guinness spokesman Roy Mantle said, "The best thing to say is that they pipped everybody to the post and we were very pleased to see that actually in such an august organ as the Financial Times." In a separate statement Guinness took a more charitable tone, explaining that "The Financial Times was running a perfectly serious business piece and Guinness faxed over the spoof among other information. It wasn't really his [the reporter's] fault."

Advertisement for Alligator Raincoats.