Everybody loves a good April Fools’ gag — especially the media, although it’s questionable if anyone else is laughing.
Condé Nast dipped into its video budget to reveal chef Bobby Flay’s appointment as editor in chief of Bon Appétit. Condé Nast chief executive officer Bob Sauerberg made a cameo, delivering the news of Flay’s addition as being “a change we’ve been working on for quite a while now.”
The video features Flay milling about Condé headquarters, tearing up dummy pages of upcoming Bon Appétit issues, drinking wine out of the bottle and insulting cooks in the magazine’s test kitchen.
The video accompanies an all-too familiar text on Flay’s hire and includes a quote from “outgoing” editor in chief Adam Rapoport, who is “leaving to pursue new opportunities,” such as working with “wasted vegetables.”
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Glamour took a page from “Candid Camera’s” book by pranking actual staffers of the magazine. The centerpiece of the video is a meeting between Glamour executive director of communications Kimberly Bernhardt and “Dave,” a celebrity publicist, who would “do anything” to work with the women’s glossy. Dave gets up and begins undressing to expose his hairless chest. Bernardt looks to her colleagues, panicked, as Dave rips off his pants stripper-style. A red faced Bernhardt makes a quick exit for the door, only to meet the executive producer of the clip for her “gotcha” moment.
Sibling pub GQ used images of “Seinfeld’s” George Costanza to pair with actual fashion stories such as “Hedi Slimane Is Leaving Saint Laurent” and “4 Raincoats You’ll Actually Want to Wear.”
The New Yorker ran a cartoon depicting a man in an “Obama 2016” T-shirt. It couldn’t be determined if that was indeed an April Fools’ joke.
Elsewhere, National Geographic poked fun at Playboy, which said earlier this year that it would stop publishing naked photos.
“The media group says that it will no longer degrade animals by showing photos of them without clothes,” said NatGeo, which ran a slideshow of clothed animals.
The photos were accompanied by a headline: “National Geographic to Stop Publishing Nude Animal Pictures.”
Meanwhile, at Hearst, Marie Claire tried out Snapchat’s face-swapping filter using celebrity photos. Flexing its digital muscle, they posted the results on Instagram.
Netflix took to Twitter, unveiling a “VERY exciting new original documentary” called “John Stamos: A Human Being.” It accompanied a short clip of Stamos in a black turtleneck sitting in a director’s chair, talking about his life — set to dramatic music, of course.
In the fashion world, H&M ran a Mark Zuckerberg ad, debuting its new collection with the Facebook chief executive that consists of a gray T-shirt and blue jeans.
Hot Topic produced a commercial highlighting its newest “Golden Girls-inspired collection,” while Google spoofed virtual reality with their newest headset: “Google Plastic” — which is just a piece of plastic worn over your face. They called it “Actual Reality.”