Objectives

As an April Fool's Day prank designed to both engage fans of truTV's hit series "Impractical Jokers" and create momentum for the launch of the new series "The Carbonaro Effect," the network's digital content team produced a hilarious video that introduced the alleged replacements for all four of the beloved stars of "Impractical Jokers" and then seeded it via social media. The strategy included teasing a big announcement to Jokers fans, unveiling the "new" cast in the original digital video, having the cast "confirm" the news on social media and then finally revealing that it was all for April Fool's in a final post that drove tune-in to a new episode of "Jokers" airing on truTV, which in turn was the lead-in to the "Carbonaro" debut. The result was a massive success across all key metrics.

Strategy and Execution

Since its debut in 2011, truTV's reality series "Impractical Jokers" has regaled viewers with the hilarious antics of four life-long best friends who love nothing more than to pull good-natured pranks on each other. So as a reward to the fanbase that made the series such a success for the network, as well as a means to create the biggest possible lead-in for the new series premiering directly after "Jokers," the truTV digital content and social marketing team collaborated on an April Fool's Day prank that would out-prank anything seen on the show – but this time, fans would NOT be in on the joke.

The key features included two original videos produced by truTV's digital team: a faux introduction of the supposed new cast of "Impractical Jokers," shot and edited to look identical to the network's standard promos, even using the same VO (voice-over) guy, and then later the actual cast revealing that it was all a prank. The strategy was primarily executed via a series of posts on the network's official Facebook page for the show.

The business objectives were to deepen engagement with the show (particularly on social media), reach new fans and drive viewership to both the new episode of "Jokers" premiering on April 1, 2014 and the series premiere of "The Carbonaro Effect" that immediately followed it.

The result was an impressive 2.7 million users reached on Facebook, 1.1 million Facebook impressions and 30K Facebook Likes/Comments/Shares – almost all of it within an 8-hour timeframe on April 1, 2014.

On air, the increased audience for this episode of "Jokers" helped launch a new franchise for truTV in the form of "The Carbonaro Effect," which debuted after "Jokers" with ratings that made it a Top 15 episode in the key 18-49 demographic. (Since then, "Carbonaro" has gone on to become a cornerstone of the truTV programming slate, all thanks to that initial April Fool's Day push from Jokers fans.)

Finally, and just as importantly, the sentiment expressed in the thousands of comments about the Jokers prank video affirmed the deep, passionate connection between the show and its fans. As one person wrote (in all caps, naturally): "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Media