Today, we share how we created a successful April Fools’ Day Campaign for one of our brands in just a few hours that caught the attention of and got picked up by leading media houses, organically. (Do you really pay thousands of dollars to PR agencies for their media connections?!)
Quick Background
Funded by Peter Theil’s Valar Ventures (among others), Velocity is India’s largest revenue-based financier, helping thousands of eCommerce and D2C brands to grow on their own terms while keeping their equity intact.
For more than a year now, we have been helping Velocity on various marketing fronts to unlock growth. Whether it is PPC, SEO, social media, or content marketing, we keep running multiple experiments as part of our overall marketing strategy.
The April Fools’ Campaign was one such experiment.
The Idea
A day prior to April Fools’ Day, the brand shared they wanted to do something and if we could try to play around with the “10 minutes” trending post.
The idea was if groceries can be delivered in 10 minutes? Food can be delivered in 10 minutes? Why not funding?
To plan and execute this flawlessly in 24 hrs wasn’t going to be easy. We turned our Ninja mode on and started working on something that could stand out from the clutter and get us some traction.
And the 159 Rough Ideas…
We started brainstorming & whiteboarding and thought of all ideas you can possibly imagine – from memes to GIFs to loud jokes, to thinking about creating a video with Bollywood hotshots (yes we actually went that far 😬)
Finally, we all agreed that a successful prank has to be one that’s believable. So no jokes and memes but a real product launch solving a real problem was the route to be taken.
We crafted an entire campaign pitching the beta launch of Velocity Instant – a product that offers funding in 10 mins to businesses and encouraged users to signup via a Google Form.
Planning
As they say, “ideas are cheap, execution is everything”. So we buckled up and started executing.
At the center of our execution was a launch video that announces the beta launch of this revolutionary product to the world. We had to crack the positioning, the pitch, and deliver a decent video in less than 12 hours.
Apart from the video, there were multiple things we had to think through:
- Accounts to leverage to get more traction: Being a B2B company targeting D2C founders, LinkedIn was our primary channel (followed by Twitter & Insta). Since “people follow people” on social media, we knew we could get better traction if we leverage the founder’s account along with the brand.
- Post copies & publishing schedule: Post copies were customized for each platform and for all the people/brand accounts publishing the post. For LinkedIn specifically, we decided to go live at 10 AM on April 1, 2022, as this slot had been working well for us.
- Amplifying organic reach: We all know that nothing beats organic reach and so we wanted to leverage all we could to maximize our organic reach – brand handles, founder handles, employee handles, etc.
- The user flow: We kept the user flow as simple as possible. The users would see the video on social media, and to join the waitlist they would fill out a Google Form. Once they submit the google form, we reveal it’s a prank with a message (and also a CTA to apply for the brand’s current product 😬)
- Concluding the prank: Apart from customizing the thank you message on the Google Form, we planned to do a fresh post the next day explaining that it was an April Fools’ Day prank.
As they say, there’s no such thing as overnight success. Anyone who’s achieved something great has put in the hard work required to get there. Marketing campaigns are no different. Behind every successful one is a team who has planned and executed it flawlessly.
We put together a well-planned document with all the details.
The Launch
The next day, we went live all across!
We posted the video from the brand account.
And also requested the founder to post the video from his personal profiles (remember: the prank should look real)
And we knew we did a good job when people believed it!
Concluding the prank
And here’s how we told people that it was a prank
The Impact
Apart from reaching 30,000+ people, we also earned a press mention alongside some of the prominent brands.
“From ixigo’s ShoeX that comes with a built-in selfie camera to the 10-minute funding proposition of Velocity.in, to Razorpay’s Buy Now Pay Never, and Zomato’s Prank a friend — these new-age companies have managed to make their consumers chuckle.”
– Business Line
B2B marketing is all about experimenting and trying out new things. And it doesn’t have to be boring!
Even in B2B marketing, we are ultimately selling to “people in those businesses”. And people like to be intrigued and entertained. So next time you plan a marketing campaign think people and not the business. Think out-of-the-box and execute with all your heart and trust us, results will follow 🙂
While you do that if you need a partner who has been there and done that, write to us at hello@91ninjas.com and we will be prompt to catch up!
