Blackberrys Menswear Pranks its Fans with the ‘World’s Smallest Iron’ on April Fool’s Day

1st April, a day which gives every person on this planet the God given right to prank his fellow men. This right extends to brands as well, especially ones that boast of thousands of fans on social media. That’s why when Blackberrys Menswear, one of the most iconic menswear brands in the country decided to pull a fast one on its social media followers on April Fool’s Day, it was up to Grapes Digital – the company that manages its digital media activities, to come up with a uniquely hilarious prank.

Execution

Grapes Digital took a cue from Blackberrys latest campaign #Unwrinkle. #Unwrinkle was promoted on social media through a hilarious viral video. ‘The Curious Case of Rishu’ was a

chuckle-worthy story following the life a hapless young professional, whose obsession with keeping his shirt unwrinkled, makes him come as arrogant and withdrawn. He’s rescued from his reclusive life by Blackberrys Performance100 shirts, which are wrinkle resistant.

Given the success of the film and the overall campaign, Grapes Digital decided to go with the same theme, and came up with the idea of launching ‘The World’s Smallest Iron’ christened the Unwrinkler on April Fool’s Day. Designed in the shape of an electric razor, the product description of Unwrinkler Iron read "Blackberry's Unwrinkler is a palm-sized travel iron making it the smallest steam iron in the world. Smaller than a computer mouse, designed to look like an electric shaver; the iron stores can unobtrusively and fit in your pocket…"

Grapes in order to make the prank as realistic as possible, created a special page on Blackberrys official website, and introduced the product on the social media pages of the brand. On April Fool’s Day, thousands of people excited at the prospect of getting their hands on this truly revolutionary invention visited the page and eagerly pressed the ‘Buy Now’ Button.

Imagine their surprise, when they realized that they had well and truly been pranked. The prank however, gave another occasion for Blackberrys promote its Performance100 Shirts, as the reveal page had the following lines "Ahh! We fooled you! After all, it's April Fool’s Day!

Why on earth do you need a traveling iron, when you can choose from our revolutionary range of the wrinkle resistant Performance100 shirts? Get 24x7 performance and unfaltering style with these cool 100% cotton shirts that are tapered at the seams to offer a perfect pucker-less, wrinkle resistant wear which would keep you looking sharp and crisp all day long."

Results

The #Unwrinkler prank was a mega success both on Facebook and on Twitter. On Facebook, the campaign got more than 48 thousand views and enjoyed a reach of more than 255,734.

On Twitter, the campaign was further pushed through a contest. This helped further boost its engagement and generated almost 5000 conversations from over 700 participants. In total the campaign received over 46 million impressions. The cherry on top was the achievement of getting the #Unwrinkler hashtag to trend at the 1st position on Twitter.

Additionally, the prank also caught the fancy of several mega publications and was covered as one of the top April Fools pranks by Iighthouseinsights.com, Indianexpress etc.