Over the past few years the guys at Howard Hughes  Appliance, TV, and Sleep Shop have used their radio advertising on April 1st to feature imaginative new products or uses for existing products, invented solely to give listeners a little chuckle.

They’ve introduced breakthroughs such as refrigerator planters, pet drying attachments for clothes dryers, pedal-powered appliances for the fitness-minded, self-cleaning refrigerators, Holographic Transport Television (HTTV), and innovative uses for your microwave oven (think: Peep jousting).

Here’s a small sampling of my favorites.

Enjoy!

The first time we did this, listeners were caught off-guard. Many called the store or even dropped by just to express their appreciation. A few actually came in looking for the items being advertised, improbable as that sounds.

It’s strictly for fun, not for profit (in a short-term transactional sense). But this is a forward-thinking advertiser, who recognizes that there’s more to a relationship than to be sell-sell-selling all the time.

In today’s (4/10/17) American Small Business Institute monthly video with Roy H. Williams and Wizard Academy Vice-Chancellor Daniel Whittington, I asked the Wizard what he thought about this use of advertising dollars. After listening to a few spots, he said that not only is this a good idea for April 1st, but for an advertiser committed to building long-lasting relationships with listeners, it could be worth doing at different times throughout the year, just to change things up.

Might this be something worth doing in your market?  It can’t hurt to give it some thought. After all, we’re pummeled by so much bad news throughout the day, your listeners might find it refreshing to hear from an advertiser whose objective is to make them smile.