The Secret to Going Viral: April Fools’ Edition #PrankTheInternet

I once met a beautiful writer in college and with her help, I was able to grow boogie [out of college] to a team of 8 operating in Albany and Brooklyn, NY. I decided to propose to that writer on Valentine’s Day 2014, and it was one of the happiest days of her life my life. We created a video of the proposal to share with our friends & family but a few days later, it had over 40,000 views on YouTube. Some really nice folks saw our story and loved it so much that they decided to sponsor our wedding.

Shortly after the wedding, I wrote a piece called ‘The Secret to Going Viral: My Wedding Proposal Edition’. In the post, I shared some of the secrets that marketing professionals use everyday to get their products and services to gain viral attention.

The post stimulated a lot of interesting conversations surrounding viral marketing so I decided to write another edition, but rather than discuss how something emotional and sentimental can catch on, I’ve outlined 5 reasons why our April Fools prank, Chute, caught on.

It was late-March, and April Fool’s Day was right around the corner:
During a strategy session for one of our clients related to April 1st, we decided we’d have a little fun and come up with an initiative of our own.

Our Objective: #PrankTheInternet

We gave ourselves exactly one week to come up with the viral initiative, conduct market research, create a brand identity, design the necessary promotional pieces, develop a website, write copy, create an email subscription process, and reach out to the press.

Within that week, we came up with Chute (short for word parachute), an iPhone app that prevents your phone’s screen from shattering.

“It uses your phones gyroscope and accelerometer in the background to measure your phone’s orientation and to determine when it’s free-falling. Chute responds by using the vibration motor in your phone to emit pulses at various frequencies, forcing your phone to shift on impact and preventing your screen from shattering“ -Dahcia Bastien (told you she’s good with words).

First we designed Chute’s logo, mobile app, and created Chute’s website (featuring FAQs, and an option for early sign up). We then created Chute’s social profiles and Mailchimp account (for easy communication).Lastly, we created a product video (looks very cheesy) and drafted up our press release to be sent out to a few tech startup writers.

The Results: What Made Chute Catch On

We launched Chute’s website on March 29th, 2015. Within 48 hours, Chute took off! The app itself received approximately 6 million impressions all over the web and 3,004 people signed up for early access. Chute was published on a few online magazines a number of publications expressed interest in sharing Chute with their audiences including Mashable, USA Today, TechCrunch, and many more. Though, I'll admit, not everyone enjoyed learning our app was not real ;)

We even received a few internship applications from eager potential users who were interested in being a part of Chute’s team in hopes of developing an app for Windows and Android phones.

On March 31st, we decided to let the cat out of the bag early in order to let all of the publications interested in writing about Chute know it was an April Fool’s Day joke. On April 1st, Chute was mentioned in a number of April Fool’s Day listicles across the internet (alongside the likes of Google, Uber, Tinder, and more), and even landed on the front page of Digg.

A few of my fellow university professors in the informatics department learned about Chute and pranked their classes with news of the app, while others used Chute in their lesson plans as a marketing case study.

But how did we pull all of this off in less than 48 hours?

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