Hef's Rotorua holiday home April Fool's Day prank
Hugh Hefner's new holiday home - a "boost" for Rotorua tourismAfter various newspapers published articles about the recent research findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where scientists at Italy's University of Naples had discovered a link between hydrogen sulphide - the gas that gives Rotorua (New Zealand) its rotten egg smell - and male sexual arousal, KingSt Advertising, Auckland saw an opportunity for an April Fool's Day prank to raise awareness of Rotorua's natural aphrodisiac properties.
They ran full page "articles" in The New Zealand Herald and The Dominion Post, and released PR kits announcing that the research findings had caught Hugh Hefner's attention - and that excited by the architectural similarities to the Playboy Mansion, Hugh had brokered a deal with the Rotorua Trust to convert the final stage of the Rotorua Museum development into his Playboy Holiday Mansion.
View the video interview with Hugh Hefner at www.rotoruaNZ.com
Agency: KingSt Advertising, Auckland
Account Directors: Chris Williams, Joelle Cross
Creative Director: Tony Aubrey
Design: Sheree van den Broek, Hone Tutua
Viral production: Konrad Smith, Patrick Hui
This is getting boring.
You can tell there's a recession on. Lots of ad people sitting around twiddling their thumbs with nothing better to do than April Fool's hoaxes.
Plop.
You know what gave this away immediately as a hoax?
The girls' tits weren't big enough.
An awesome hoax that doesn't pretend to be anything but. Convincing performances from the kiwi bureaucrats. Cheap, funny viral and a shitload more engaging/cost-effective than Tourism NZ's lame TVCs. The only thing that lets it down is the Hef interview.