Knowing our audience as we do (by constantly monitoring their traditional and social media channels) we went big with an audacious prank. Mashing the innocence and nostalgia of Teletubbies with the futuristic financial trend of cryptocurrency, we introduced the TubbyCoin Big Hugs Token: the world’s first Teletubbies-endorsed crypto-currency – made with special HugTech from WildBrain Labs.
Except, of course, no such thing existed. By announcing our bitcoin on April Fools’ Day, we intended to give Teletubbies the pop culture currency that can only come from media over-reaction, disbelieving social media shares, and instant memes.
To stand out in the crowded April Fools’ environment, we went straight to the niche cryptocurrency community and their passion for meme stocks and meme Bitcoins such as DogeCoin. Any response from them would feed into the larger Millennial audience of original ‘90sTeletubbies kids.
Most importantly, we gave them all a good reason to share. For each social media share of the hashtag #TubbyCoin, the currency would "increase" in value. To make our TubbyCoin even more convincing, we dug deep into the crypto space and ensured our creative and copy were authentic to the community, using the same hashtags, emojis and memes.
And to honor the genuine big-heartedness of Teletubbies, our TubbyCoin Big Hugs Token prank would deliver very real assistance to our charity partner, the Canadian e-mental health crisis hotline and services provider Kids Help Phone.
On March 31, the team changed Teletubbies’ profile pictures and posted a mysterious image teasing news of something coming in the Bitcoin space from Teletubbies. We nodded to the crypto community putting 'laser eyes' on the characters. In the community, 'laser eyes' was a symbol of the cryptocurrency community. As a result, Twitter went crazy over this tease, wondering what Teletubbies could possibly be announcing. The Tweet instantly went viral and “Teletubbies” shot up to #18 on the U.S. trending list with even Lil Nas X teasing out a fake collaboration with us.
On April 1, the team revealed The TubbyCoin and a charitable mission behind our prank. Fans reveled in it, leading to 1,500 comments, 16,400 Retweets and 38,000 likes -- sustaining our place on Twitter's U.S. trending list.
For zero paid media dollars, Teletubbies stood out in an already crowded April Fools’ Day media environment. Our stunt earned the attention of dozens of news and lifestyle media outlets like The Guardian, Hypebae, Comicbook.com and Daily Mail.
Even Elon Musk and Goldman Sachs took a little social media heat from their Teletubbies competition.
To capitalize on the excitement surrounding the TubbyCoin, we had one more clever chapter to our stunt up our sleeves. We decided to sell the coin itself as an NFT (non-fungible token).
Any additional money made from the NFT would go to benefit Kids Help Phone. Our fans responded in a big way: TubbyCoin sold for $4,216.12 and we brought in more than $14,000 in donations to Kids Help Phone.
In just a few days, our scrappy social prank resulted in millions of impressions.
For WildBrain, it proved to be a savvy “investment” in public relations. For a modest budget of $5K, our April Fools’ Day prank went viral organically without any paid media support.
34.3 MM + TOTAL SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS
106K TOTAL SOCIAL ENGAGEMENTS
+84% GROWTH IN TWITTER FOLLOWERS
+600% INCREASE IN TWITTER MENTIONS
+360% INCREASE IN TWITTER ENGAGEMENT