Positively Informed

Absolutely Positive Results for April Fools Spoof

May 2, 2012 at 1:10 pm Angela Leave a comment

By Angela Moriarty

Here at Positively Wellington Tourism we’re unapologetically positive about Wellington, tourism and pretty much most other things. We’ll talk up Wellington until the colossal squid, the ever growing population of tui and the Cuba Street hipsters come home because the coolest little capital in the world deserves nothing less.

But noone likes a skite. And we are also very wary of that. We don’t fancy people mistaking our absolute positivity and confidence in our fair city for arrogance.

From time-to-time we’ve got to balance out all that positivity with a bit of a self effacing elbow in the ribs. So in a nod to April Fools’ Day and a nudge at our unashamedly and unapologetically positive perspective on the world, on April 1 we released a spoof news broadcasting reporting latest ‘research’ has revealed Wellington is the Capital of Absolutely Positively Everything. Well, almost.

We never pretended it wasn’t an April Fools. While the point of April Fools’ Day is to trick people – and a few New Zealand companies pulled out some stellar efforts – we felt the concept didn’t really require or warrant that. Also, because April Fools fell on a Sunday we were heavily relying on our own databases and networks for distribution. And naturally anyone who signs up to or follows Wellington, is well smart and wouldn’t fall for it.

There are times when it’s appropriate to feature staff, and others when it’s not. This was the former for two reasons – firstly, budget. This was designed as a low-cost, tongue-in-cheek activity, not a big budget campaign. There was no room for talent fees, so we had to rely on in-house ‘talent’ (and I use the term loosely).  Secondly, we were sending ourselves up so we needed to front up. Viewers – including a number of media contacts - responded really well to this. 

So, what were the results?

:: Over 5000 views and 36 likes on youtube

:: Over 5200 web page views.

:: Facebook reach of almost 22,000, courtesy of 811 engaged users. There were 67 shares, 203 likes and about 33 comments.

:: 76 mentions and retweets on Twitter, including by the likes of @JustinFlitter (over 32,000 followers) and @GreerMcDonald (almost 6500 followers).

:: A few media mentions – Capital Day, a branded mug video bomb on TVNZ’s Breakfast, and StopPress.co.nz.

:: And of course the bit that we live for, some absolutely positive love for Wellington:

Entry filed under: Digital, Marketing, Media & PR. Tags: april fools, communications, marketing, news, PR, spoof, tourism, travel.