At WhatTheyThink, we take April 1 pretty seriously. We generally plan for months ahead of time to deliver some comic relief if not try to trick people into thinking a story is real - no matter how preposterous. We look forward to this date like kids do Christmas.
Boy did we have fun this year! We had to stay up until 2am at On Demand getting this year's version ready, but we think it was worth the sleep deprivation. Regular Print CEO readers were treated to Richard Romano's awesome "Industry Association’s New Logo Imbued with Magical Powers". We got lots of great feedback on the fictional logo! The top feature story was in cooperation with Kodak as we broke their eyeCamera 4.1 story. This one got picked up by many blogs and I even had people asking me at On Demand if I saw "Kodak's new eye camera thingy". Hilarious!
There were many news stories to enjoy, including "Twitter Supplanted by New “Nanoblogging” Service", funny especially given how many people were Twittering about On Demand at the time!
Added to this year's fun was an incredibly realistic faux audio chart by Dr. Joe Webb entitled "Decrease in Baseball Steroid Use Causes Decline in Print Volume". Dr. Joe did a great job delivering this straight given the absurdity of the content!
Of course we had to have a video blooper reel (we also included last year's blooper reel for added fun). Additionally, Frank Romano joined in the fun with his exciting new mobile device announcement. "Flat Joe" made his first (and probably only) appearance. Included in this year's video fun was our CEO Randy Davidson's favorite video, "An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at WhatTheyThink".
2009 WhatTheyThink April Fools Page
We had a ton of fun putting this together and we hope you had/have fun with it. Feel free to send us any of your ideas, oh say around March of 2010. ;-)
Discussion
By Pat McGrew on Apr 13, 2009
Eric and Team!
Thank you for creating something to talk about! With the challenges all of us face it was great to take a moment out and have a hearty chuckle, if not full out belly laugh.
I remember my Psych professor quoting none other than Sigmund Freud and his "wit and its Relation to the Unconscious" - which clearly stuck with me all of these years. His guidance.. when times are touch, get laughing!
Keep it up... and perhaps think of a mid-year top-up just to keep us going!
By Eric Vessels on Apr 13, 2009
Thanks Pat! Good idea on the mid-year thing. I'll see what we can cook up. ;-)
Discussion
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