More and more, foolishness is becoming part of the marketing mix.<\/p>\n
On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell announced that they had purchased the Liberty Bell and renamed it Taco Liberty Bell. \u00a0Hundreds of outraged calls poured in to National Historic Park before the truth was revealed.\u00a0 The stunt merited comment in the day\u2019s White House briefing when press secretary Scott McCurry said, off-the-cuff, that the Lincoln Memorial had been purchased by an automaker and renamed Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.<\/p>\n
In 1998, Burger King addressed the needs of southpaws with the launch of the left-handed Whopper. \u00a0Made from the same ingredients as the regular Whopper, all of the condiments were turned 180 degrees. \u00a0Dozens of people came in asking for it, including one guy who said he was interested but wanted to know if it came in a right-handed version.<\/p>\n
The tradition continued this year.\u00a0 Ben and Jerry\u2019s launched Cyclone Dairy, a new line of ice cream made from the milk of cloned cows. \u00a0On YouTube, videos played upside-down.\u00a0 And Southwest Airlines announced new service to St. Olaf, the fictional birthplace of \u201cGolden Girls\u201d matriarch Sophia Petrillo.<\/p>\n
But this year\u2019s winner was the Orlando Magic basketball team. \u00a0They pulled a fan out of the crowd for a chance to shoot a half-court shot, blindfolded, to win $100,000. Unbeknownst to the poor sucker, the crowd was in on the gag. \u00a0As his blind shot missed by a mile, the crowd erupted in faux celebration. \u00a0The man tore off his blindfold and ran an impromptu victory lap.\u00a0 As he was presented with an oversized check, he was asked what he would do with his winnings. \u00a0\u201cI just got laid off,\u201d he joyfully responded, \u201cthis money will save us!\u201d\u00a0 (Insert record-scratch noise here).\u00a0 The audience went silent in horror\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026until it was revealed that the man was, in fact, an actor. \u00a0It was the Orlando Magic fans who had been punked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More and more, foolishness is becoming part of the marketing mix. On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell announced that they had purchased the Liberty Bell and renamed it Taco Liberty Bell. \u00a0Hundreds of outraged calls poured in to National Historic Park before the truth was revealed.\u00a0 The stunt merited comment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[74,127,191,787,906,1198],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4","tag-april-fools-day","tag-ben-and-jerrys","tag-burger-king","tag-marketing","tag-orlando-magic","tag-taco-bell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}