Jamie at Equentity reminded me over the weekend about April Fool’s Day. This is a great opportunity for word of mouth publicity, especially this year – it falls on a Sunday, so a lot of businesses won’t bother. What could you do to fool your customers, but with a gentle joke they can be let in on? Could you announce some bizarre new branch of business you’re moving into? Produce a fake advert? Pretend it’s a Monday? Change the name of your business? Say you’ve sold out to Richard Branson?

Some of the funniest I remember from the past are BMW adverts – one year they announced an inflatable steering wheel on the passenger side for when you went abroad. And a radio station I once worked at got the normal breakfast show in on Saturday 1st April, and pretended it was a Friday… quite a few listeners woke top that and went to work by mistake!

Remember to think through the implications, and how you are going to reveal it’s a joke.

If you’d like to try and get media publicity, send your local media a press release detailing the joke and the reveal, the Thursday before. Write at the top that it is embargoed until 12noon on Sunday 1st April – that tells the media you don’t really want it published before then. Sending it to them on the Sunday or Monday will be too late for some

If you haven’t already come up with some marketing ideas to mark Red Nose Day on Friday 16th March, do it now. Every local newspaper will want to know about businesses doing things to raise money for the event. Your challenge is to be different to all the other businesses, so the paper picks you for a photo and story.

Getting all your staff to wear a nose isn’t enough. But getting your building to wear a giant nose would be. Could you paint all your staff totally red for the day? Paint customers? Put giant ears on your vehicles (not while they’re moving)? Sell red noses and match every sale with a donation? Use the Red Nose Day site’s news section for inspiration