Filed under: April 1
There I was yesterday, bragging about all the April Fool posts I’d written that had tricked people … feeling kinda-smug with myself … when I was informed that actually, the biggest fool of all fools, is me.
OK, that is not new news to anyone, but this is different because the very nice and clever Jon Evans of System 1 fame, dropped me a note to let me know that a post I wrote – albeit on April 29th, 2024 – was based on errrrrm, his April Fool.
D’OH!!!!
Given I wrote it a few weeks after the event suggests I didn’t see it on April 1, but even that is no excuse for my stupidity. Because while there have been times they’ve said stuff that I feel has been more subjective than objective – overall, they’re one of the good guys. An organisation that not only believes in creativity but wants to help it win.
So how the fuck I didn’t stop and say to myself, “hang on, this doesn’t feel like them” suggests that either:
A. I was stupid.
B. I was having a bad day.
C. I was triggered by the corporate speak arrogance.
[Which shows how well written it was because it sounds like many who mean it]
D. All of the above.
What’s even worse is that no one fucking pointed it out to me.
Sure, I had stopped allowing comments by then – but that doesn’t normally stop people writing to me to say I was an idiot. But in this case, they didn’t. Instead they literally let me get on my soapbox and announce to the World I was an April Fool …
Which is possibly the best result Jon could get.
Which is why I’ve asked Jon for his address, so I can send him a congratulatory gift … because that is pure genius.
And I am pure fool.
Filed under: April 1, Bird, Bonnie, Cats, Dog, Family, Home, Jill, Otis, Rosie, Sky
It’s April 1.
Normally on this day, I undertake an elaborate ‘April Fool’ post.
There’s been some good ones in the past.
The ‘Method Planning’ post.
The ‘Sniffer Dog, Retail Location Scout’ post.
The ‘AI Human Robot Focus Group’ post.
The ‘Poetry Drives Communication Effectiveness’ post.
… I say good, mainly because some people fell for them and then repeated the ‘methodology’ without realizing they were actually publicizing their own gullibility.
That said, there have been many that have just been shit … and I don’t mean that just because people saw through them like a greenhouse.
But today there is no April Fool … both because I’m trying to come to terms with the fact we’re in month 4 of 2025 already and because later this week, the joke is on me – because in just 5 days, we welcome a dog, Bonnie, into our lives and home.
A puppy is very different to a cat.
More energy.
More dependence.
More biting.
More noise.
More trouble.
More mess.
And yet, despite all that, I have to say I’m very much looking forward to the house having an additional member in the place.
While we have Sky – Otis’ bad-tempered budgie – the loss of Rosie, is still felt … despite the fact that she slept for a lot of her final years, and no one feels this more than Jill.
She used to love having Rosie sitting next to her as she worked.
Snoozing on a pillow next to her computer. Occasionally waking up to quietly judge her or her work or demand that Friskies be fed to her by hand whenever she chooses.
It was a nice interruption given she spent a lot of time on her own while I was at the office and Otis was at school.
And while she likes the momentary peace and quiet she gets from us being away – going from 1000 decibels of noise to 1 is extreme.
For her, the silence becomes loud-as-fuck with the time passing slower than a snail.
It can be pretty lonely and intimidating to be honest … and while she has never complained about it, I know that’s one of the reasons why she has always loved animals and why they’ve always been so important in her life.
So while Bonnie will, for all intents and purposes, be Otis’ pooch … she, along with Sky, will be Jill’s workday colleague and after 20+ years of waiting for a dog, I’ve never been so happy to be the April Fool.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, April 1, Comment, Reputation, Resonance, Strategy, Stupid, Television, Wieden+Kennedy
God, that’s a heavy title for a post isn’t it.
Especially when it’s not about the state of the World, but the fact it’s April 1.
A day – like International Women’s Day – where brands put out work in an attempt to show another side of them.
The human side … as defined and written by the AI system they outsourced thousands of people’s jobs too.
Anyway, with all the shit going on around the world, I don’t know if any joke is suddenly going to make humanity feel better … unless of course, they reveal we’ve all been living in a real-life version of that episode of 80’s TV show Dallas, where – after a whole series exploring ‘who shot JR Ewing’ – they revealed it was all just a bloody dream.
[Look it up, it’s wild]
Soooooooo … instead of going through the effort of trying to write an April Fool post that won’t fool anyone and certainly won’t make anyone care, I thought I’d just point you to the best one I ever wrote.
A post that not only fooled a few people – who obviously didn’t read it all the way through – but was picked up by some international media as a ‘new methodology to the planning discipline’. Hahahaha.
It was even more pleasing than the time The Times newspaper in the UK quoted the fictitious research company we set up – Halibut Fisher – to highlight how badly Chinese society was being represented and understood by Western media. You can read some of the ‘insights’ we wrote about on Asian Yang – the blog we set up to commemorate how blinkered, gullible and lazy so many organizations are when dealing with cultures outside of their own.
Anyway, with that, have a great April Fool Day and enjoy reading about Leon and his introduction to Method Planning™ …
For the record, Leon still – amazingly – talks to me.
Even more amazingly, he has an important gig at a tech company.
Which means [1] even my best efforts couldn’t undermine his talent and [2] tech companies don’t check all the data they steal from everyone. Haha.
Oh, and if you’re so inclined, you can waste even more of your time reading some of the other April 1st posts I’ve written which some people also fell for … which I’d love to think was due to my brilliant writing, but was likely due to the fact I was in a totally different timezone to them so it wasn’t April 1 for them. Damnit.