April Fools! … or Not? Amazon tries a new approach.

Sometimes the best April Fools exposure for a brand is to buck the trend and not come out with a somewhat-cliché, day’s worth of phony advertising. Sure, it’s entertaining to read about how Virgin America will begin offering non-stop flights to Branson, MO, or Vegemite will introduce an energy drink complement the peculiar spread. But what about releasing a new product that *is* real, but so strange that people may mistake the launch for an April Fool’s Day prank? Well, that’s exactly what Amazon has done.

Amazon’s latest product is an interesting new foray into the Internet of Things (or IoT as us nerds like to say). The so-called “Dash” buttons are physical buttons Amazon users can use to purchase online goods. Each button is branded by companies like Tide, Charmin, and Kraft. When customers push the button, a signal reaches the Amazon mobile app and instantly orders more of the customer’s preferred product in its preferred quantity.

This futuristic product is confusing and sounds like it could very well be a prank. Therefore, in a stroke of brilliance, Amazon announced its launch right around April first in order to promote customer awareness during a time when potential users are most open to entertaining new ideas.

At first blush this product seems crazy but, upon further reflection, powerful use cases begin to emerge: Imagine running low on diapers in the diaper room. You have, ahem, urgent business to attend to and no time to get online to order more diapers. With Dash, you would push a button placed next to the diaper closet and new Huggies would be instantly ordered and drop shipped to your house within two days.

The future is looking strange, and sometimes the best marketing strategy is to let truth, even if ambiguous, stand amid the fiction. It certainly helps when you can time such a product launch with the the best week of the year for faux prank.