Don’t rely on magic to create marketing outcomes.

It is April Fools’ Day, a fun annual calendar event. What was once just a day for pranks has actually become a marketing event for numerous brands with the evolution of digital marketing channels. One of the best known examples of this is Google, which unleashes a prank on unsuspecting searchers every April 1. This year’s prank is Google Nose, a faux offering designed to produce search results by smell.

While numerous brands use April Fools’ Day to get some publicity for rattling a few cages with a well thought out prank, brands in industries that are highly regulated like insurance, financial services and healthcare typically don’t use this day to unleash a prank in the digital marketing space. This does not mean that brands in this space can’t have fun with marketing efforts; it is just that pranks are not part of brand authenticity for these types of brands. While consumers may laugh off a prank from Google or Scope (P&G is introducing Scope Bacon today, a bacon flavored mouthwash, via website, YouTube video clip and Twitter hashtag), a prank coming from a life insurer or financial service provider may not be as well received.

However, something that is not a joke are the marketing outcomes that brands in distributed marketing organizations can achieve through use of distributed marketing management software. Our brand management software offering has demonstrated numerous impressive results, including, but not limited to:

• 25% increase in marketing efficiencies
• 15% reduction in compliance costs
• 10% reduction in support/maintenance costs
• 10% increase in sales conversions

It could be considered foolish not to take advantage of something that can produce these sorts of impactful results in an organization. The joke could be on those who aren’t leveraging quality multi-channel distributed marketing management software, as a Gleanster study noted that that top performing companies were 7 times more likely to have implemented distributed marketing management software.