Brands use Clear Channel Digital OOH initiative to reference April Fools’ Day

Digital OOH: April Fools’ Day Brilliance from Leading Brands

Some of our leading clients, including McDonald’s and Comedy Central, have used digital OOH to promote their brands in creative ways on April Fools’ Day.

This year, Clear Channel challenged advertisers to tease the nation on April Fools’ Day via its Adshel Live national network. The Out of Home media owner offered brands the chance to deliver a unique April Fools’ campaign across 500 digital screens, delivering up to 600,000 plays and 1,000,000 impressions. No joke!

Clear Channel invited advertisers to invent a campaign that intelligently utilised Adshel Live and the power of digital Out of Home on the 1st of the month, when the flexibility of digital creates a truly engaging April Fools’ opportunity. Brands had their ads displayed to the nation all morning – and then their April Fools’ activity was revealed instantly come 12pm.

The overall response was fantastic and both McDonald’s and Comedy Central were hand-selected as some of the very best ideas to appear across the Adshel Live network.

Comedy Central, PHD and Talon launched a fictitious new TV channel for “socially advanced young people” called Hipster TV,  complete with a trendy logo and show listings which included hilarious titles like “How Dangerous is Your Bread?”, “Coffee Barristar” and “Ukelele Hour”.

Alex Norris, Creative Director, Comedy Central comments: “Our main criteria for choosing an April Fools’ idea was whether it was believable. HipsterTV feels so believable that I’m pretty sure it’ll be real by this time next year! I would definitely watch ‘Geordie Shoreditch’ and can well imagine nodding off to ‘Ukulele Hour’.”

McDonald’s, with Talon and OMD UK, also got creative with the launch of an out of this world new McDonald’s restaurant – in space! The hoax #McMoon ad saw McDonald’s “Preparing for Lunch” with a slowly drifting astronaut as the iconic  ‘M’ logo was gradually revealed, unveiling the campaign as an April Fools’ prank.

A number of April Fools’ advertisers created exciting and engaging campaigns that worked fantastically – showcasing the powerful flexibility and context that can be delivered by digital OOH, and harnessing the reach of the digital estate to engage the UK public with some innovative April Fools’ pranks.