Hate the game, and the game is chasing earned media on April Fool’s Day

Welcome to a Friday edition of Unmade, the analytical email your boss might ask you about.
Today: Why do brands still persist with April Fool’s Day? And a modest rebound on The Unmade index.
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It’s funny when brands do April Fools’ gags and their customers seem to actually want the joke product.
A few examples on Facebook:
-Chicken salted cinnamon donuts from Donut King.
-the Bilson’s breakfast themed alcohol pops
-Shapes’s late night treats including chicken salted chips and doner kebab flavours
-Goldfields Campers’ Galactic Camper with all sorts of out of this world features (admittedly this one is my family business started by my parents of which my brother turned to ChatGPT’s GPT-4 generative AI to come up with. It did great numbers on social media)