01 Apr

April 1, 2008

We’re starting a tradition at stressdesign: to observe —and announce via our AXNTâ„¢ e-mail tool— some of the less popular holidays and observances in the calendar year. April Fools day was one that we’d chosen to highlight this year. Our e-mail message went out to our regular database of more than 1,000 recipients. The message, was laid out in a combination backwards and wrong-reading text, as was the punch line, and we even purchased a backwards version of our URL www.ngisedsserts.com just to seal the deal. We clicked the send button, and didn’t think much of it.We watched the campaign statistics for a bit the morning of 01 April, and results typical of our previous campaigns. As people starting going through their inbox, they’d politely read our message, and we imagined to ourselves they would chuckle, and we assume a few did as they forwarded it to some friends. Then we started getting some replies.

“Dear stressdesign, want to let you know that we couldn’t read your e-mail or your website, It’s all backwards!!! Have a great day!”

“Hi guys, your latest message went out backwards and broken! Though you’d want to fix this before too many people see it!”

“ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm………………….???”

Then the phone lines began lighting up voicemails kept coming in and we were answering calls as quickly as we could, we began to get concerned. Did we go too far?

“Hi, this is Name Removed and we just called our IT department and they don’t know how to fix our e-mail, can you help?”

“Hi stressdesign, we just got this message that looks like a hacker go to you and is using your logo. You guys should be aware.”
“… That timing couldn’t have been worse. Just an hour ago I made a pitch for you to work on our new initiative. When the CEO went to your site he was very confused by the mirror image and was about to call IT to fix his computer before I realized the joke (I hadn’t read your email yet). He wasn’t impressed.

We’ll need to talk about this one later.”

Yikes. What had we done? We thought we were doing a harmless little gag that barely anyone would notice. Before noon, we’d logged more than a dozen calls, and twice as many e-mails from some fairly concerned citizens. It was too late for undo, so we did our best to talk folks down, and refer them to their desk calendars for a sanity check. We were starting to feel rather unfunny about this until one of our subscribers referenced the work of Joseph Juran, PhD, specifically the Pareto Analysis, or the 80/20 rule.

The Pareto Analysis is a statistical technique that observes 80% of problems are the result of 20% of causes. In the case of our April Fools attempt, that as many as 80% of the recipients missed the fact that it was April First, and only 20% thought it important enough to let us know. I’d heard of the 80/20 rule before, but was not so acutely aware of Juran or the Pareto Analysis. This made me start thinking about the work that we do as a communication design firm much differently. Can we only effect 20% of the population to make 80% of purchases?

It turns out that all of the calls and e-mail we received were genuine, except for the one about the CEO. However, we still didn’t get the job. I’m interested to see what we learn next April.

One Comment

Today is April 1, 2008. Would love to hear your comments about April Fools day!