Nearly every brand with a social media presence tries to one-up each other on April Fool’s Day.
5G Moto Mod – the first way to connect to 5G on Verizon became available for purchase on April 1st. Auspicious timing.
Although Verizon doesn’t normally participate, we knew that we had to lean into the occasion if we wanted our device launch to get any traction on this day.
The first mobile call ever placed happened in 1983, on Verizon’s network using a Motorola phone. Conveniently, the 5G-enabled Moto Mod is also from Motorola. This juxtaposition of the past and future presented the perfect opportunity to show a more playful side of the brand. We knew what we had to do: bring the Motorola Brick phone back.
We created a social video announcing the Brick’s return and pushed it on Facebook, Instagram Stories, and Twitter. When people clicked through to buy it, we let them in on the joke and offered the 5G moto mod instead.
And it worked! We were able to garner over half a million organic impressions, beating our benchmark by 371%. Engagement rate outperformed expectations by +58%. It was one of our most shared and loved posts ever.
What we didn’t expect was that people would actually want the brick phone. Because of popular demand we sourced functional Brick phones and sent them to customers who wanted them most. Finally, the original phone was back on the original network. No joke.
