Welcome to Masterprank Theater. It’s your host Prank Sinatra, AKA Benjamin Pranklin, AKA Dr. Prankenstein taking you inside our April Fools Day 2023 Prank “Remote Coworking.” Join us Inside the Prankster’s Studio and we’ll share how we pulled off this prank.
We used Mailchimp, Youtube, and ChatGPT.
The Press Release
First in ChatGPT, I entered the following prompt:
I need a newsletter to be used as an april fools prank. I’m going to do a fake livestream of mukbang, but instead of eating, I’ll just be doing my job. It’s cowork-bang to help remote workers feel less lonely. The prank newsletter should read like a real press release advertising this new trend and advertising that I will be livestreaming from my office “Remote CoWork with The Director of Venture Asheville” for example. Again, it has to feel real, even though it is a prank
Sure, here’s a sample newsletter that you can use as an April Fools prank. Feel free to modify it to fit your specific needs:
Subject: Introducing the Latest Trend in Remote Work: CoWork-Bang
Dear [Name],
We are excited to announce the latest trend in remote work: CoWork-Bang! CoWork-Bang is a new concept that combines the social aspect of mukbang (a Korean trend where people livestream themselves eating large amounts of food) with the productivity of remote work.
To kick off this exciting trend, we are pleased to announce that [Your Name], Director of Venture Asheville, will be livestreaming his/her remote work sessions on [Date and Time]. You can watch him/her in action, typing away on his/her keyboard, attending virtual meetings, and crossing items off his/her to-do list.
We understand that remote work can be lonely, and CoWork-Bang is the perfect solution to combat that isolation. You can tune in from anywhere in the world and work alongside [Your Name] while chatting with other remote workers in the chat room.
We hope you’ll join us for this exciting event and try out CoWork-Bang for yourself. Who knows, it may just become your new favorite way to work remotely!
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
With very few tweaks to the copy, the body was set. I asked it for a “quick and snappy closing” and it poduced:
How about this for a snappy closing:
“Join us for CoWork-Bang and experience remote work like never before! Let’s cowork and chat, even if we’re not actually eating together. Happy April Fools’ Day!”
Now for the video.
The Video
The video was pretty easy. I planned to record myself for less than 10 minutes and loop it a few times. I posted it to our YouTube Channel as “unlisted” so no one would stumble upon it. A lot of friends messaged me to laugh about the video, asking what I was doing for those 10 minutes. It was this. Literally, writing the press release and creating the Mailchimp Campaign. If you fell for the prank and watched the video, you watched a video of the prank being created that you fell for. In-prank-ception.
MailChimp
Mailchimp is our email marketing tool, we’ve used it for years here and typically schedule all our newsletters. So the formula was easy to follow. I customized the ChatGPT text and linked the video. Then I scheduled it for 7:45 am on April 1. You can see the exact newsletter we sent out on this page.
Only 4 people unsubscribed, which is pretty low for us. We had a nearly 40% open rate, which is right in our average.
But What Did We Accomplish?
In the words of our Keynote Speaker at the Entrepreneurship Resilience Summit, Jay Richardson, “You should be able to have fun while you do your work.” You can think about it as spreading awareness, raising visibility, etc…But more importantly, I think about more as market positioning. For every 1 person who moved out of our county, 4 are moving in. Our county is growing, our region is growing, and our startup ecosystem is growing.
At this inflection point, as people evaluate where to move, we need to think about how we present to the world and who we want to attract. We’re not a corporate haven of Fortune 100’s. We’re not a staid ecosystem beholden to an industry. We’re not competing with other metro areas. That’s never been out M.O.
Years ago people used to talk about Asheville being the next Boulder or next Austin. I never liked that conversation, I prefer to be Asheville, to make thing our way in our own name. So this prank is in that vein, to reinforce the common values and trends of our ecosystem, which informs our culture and community. And I really don’t think it’s about competing with other ecosystems or the major metros in our state, it’s like the Grateful Dead said, “We’re not the best at what we do, we’re the only ones who do what we do.”
PS – Much of the guiding philosophy in our community building comes from Radical Marketing, by Sam Hill and Glenn Rifkin. If you are interested in how to break rules to build community and culture, this si the book for you.
