5 great charity April Fools 2016
Melanie May | 1 April 2016 | News
Who doesn’t love an April Fools’ gag? This year saw some great fundraising ideas across a range of media from a number of charities, which largely aimed to grab people’s attention, and then redirect it towards a real issue or challenge.
Here are five that caught our eye, raising awareness of everything from events to health matters, and animal conservation.
1) WWF UK
WWF launched an April 1st campaign, asking people to adopt a unicorn, stating that demand for their beautiful horns and loss of their rainbow-spangled habitat has led to a catastrophic fall in unicorn numbers, to the point where unicorns now exist only in our imaginations. When that grabbed people’s attention, the charity pointed out that the real animals with horns that need protecting are rhinos, and asked people to adopt one of them instead.
Will you help protect a mystical creature? Please adopt a unicorn today: https://t.co/3RPUqlluJe pic.twitter.com/X6L9IszNWu
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— WWF UK (@wwf_uk) April 1, 2016
2) British Heart Foundation
The British Heart Foundation really has teamed up with Jaffa oranges but it tricked us all by announcing that to celebrate the new partnership, Jaffa had developed the new All-Red orange, which was, well, red, and was selling it in Tesco stores.
You caught us! All Reds aren’t real – but heart disease is. Help us fight back: https://t.co/3bp5Q9QWaF #AprilFools pic.twitter.com/cMRbUOFGxD
— British Heart Foundation (@TheBHF) April 1, 2016
3) NSPCC
The NSPCC added a twist to its real Gherkin Challenge, which takes place on 19th June and challenges people to walk or run the 38 floors to the top, by asking people to time how fast they could eat a jar of gherkins. How many people fell for that, then?
Love gherkins? You’ll love the new eating challenge added to this year’s #GherkinChallenge! https://t.co/dB7CL2gO0I pic.twitter.com/xcpuTZg28y
— NSPCC (@NSPCC) April 1, 2016
4) Coppafeel
Coppafeel rather entertainingly told everyone that it had received planning permission to build a giant boob on the roof of its headquarters, and then encouraged people who fell for their April Fool to remember to check their own boobs regularly.
https://twitter.com/CoppaFeelPeople/status/715849397452537857
5) Macmillian Cancer Support
With its pretend launch of #FlamingoFriday, Macmillan managed to get a lot of people standing on one leg for April Fool’s Day by challenging them to tweet a photo of themselves standing on one leg for the chance to be the face of a new challenge event. Quite a lot of people seemed to fall for it too.
Fancy being the face of our new challenge event? Send us your best flamingo impression using #FlamingoFriday to win! pic.twitter.com/dFvJZ2RCPN
— Macmillan Cancer Support (@macmillancancer) April 1, 2016
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.